Today, in the US, we commemorate the life of the Reverend, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We remember the legacy of Dr. King, who, as Coretta Scott King, his wife, put it, was the “preeminent nonviolent commander,” who used nonviolent campaigns to bring about “redemption, reconciliation and justice.”
Of the holidays in the US, named in honor of people, Dr. King’s is unique. In an effort to remember him, the day has become a national day of service. Across the nation, following the lead of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the first “Martin Luther King Day of Service” was organized, millions of volunteers, are now “turning their community concerns into volunteer service and ongoing citizen action on King Day and beyond.”
Travel to historic sites helps bring the past alive in one’s mind, can add to our perspective of past events, and can help us gain a better understanding of the history, architecture, archeology, engineering, and culture of those times, and learn from it.
Last year, I had the honor and privilege of attending and covering the 40th Anniversary Celebration of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in Montgomery Alabama. If you’re unfamiliar with SPLC, it’s an internationally known nonprofit civil rights organization “dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society.”
I decided to use my trip to attend the SPLC’s anniversary as an opportunity to take a journey to see some historic locations important in the life of Dr. King, to in a sense, remember the past and honor a person who so influenced and shaped our nation in the 20th century. Along with going to Montgomery, I decided to start the trip in Atlanta, his birthplace.
Here I visited the King family home where King was born. King grew up there with his older sister, Willie, and his younger brother Alfred, until 1941. The home, a modest middle class wood frame structure stands much as it did when King lived there with his family. The home may be visited only via a National Park Service ranger tour. Visiting the home, you begin to get a feel for King’s growth toward adulthood.
The home is part of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site. The Site includes a number of buildings, which include: the Visitor Center, Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, the King Center, the World Peace Rose Garden, King’s Tomb, along with the King childhood home.
Strolling down Auburn Avenue, just a block and a half from King’s birth home, you will find the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church.
Martin Luther King Sr. became the leader of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in 1931, with the US in the midst of the Great Depression, when King Jr. was just two. Despite the Depression, King Sr. organized membership and fundraising drives which enabled the struggling church to begin to thrive. King Sr. fought for equal justice and civil rights his entire pastoral life. In 1960, Dr. King joined his father as co-pastor of Ebenezer.
After enduring the murder of his son Martin in 1968, and the accidental drowning of son Alfred a year later, King Sr. suffered the murder of his wife Alberta in 1974, while she sat at the organ in Ebenezer. King Sr. retired the next year.
From Atlanta, I journeyed to Montgomery, Alabama. There I visited the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, just a few blocks from the Alabama State Capitol building. King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Church in 1954, at the age of twenty-five.
Just a year later, after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on her bus, the Montgomery Bus Boycott began, led by King and others. The boycott lasted more than a year, and during it, King’s house was firebombed. King, along with other leaders was arrested during the boycott.
King continued to preach non-violent action for civil rights and justice from the Dexter Avenue Church pulpit when in 1957 he and others, including Ralph Abernathy, founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He went on to fight for civil rights in Birmingham, Selma, St. Augustine and across the country until his murder.
Going to Sunday church services in the Dexter Avenue Church, with Reverend Michael F. Thurman leading the service, sitting in the pews in front of the pulpit where Dr. King preached was a very moving experience.
Behind the Dexter Avenue Church, you will find the Southern Poverty Law Center and Civil Rights Memorial Center. The Center has exhibits about the Civil Rights Movement, a small theater and classroom.
In front of the Center, is the Civil Rights Memorial, designed by Maya Lin, who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The Memorial honors the achievements and memory of those who died during the Civil Rights Movement from the time of the 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown vs. Board of Education, to the assassination of Dr. King in 1968.
The black granite table at the center of the Memorial records the names of those who died during the movement, and chronicles its history. Water emerges from its center, flowing across its top, and over its side, reminding all of Dr. King’s paraphrase of Amos 5:24,
“…we will not be satisfied, until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
This is a journey worth taking!
After many years working in corporate America as a chemical engineer, executive and eventually CFO of a multinational manufacturer, Ned founded a tech consulting company and later restarted NSL Photography, his photography business. Before entering the corporate world, Ned worked as a Public Health Engineer for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. As a well known corporate, travel and wildlife photographer, Ned travels the world writing about travel and photography, as well as running photography workshops, seminars and photowalks. Visit Ned’s Photography Blog and Galleries.
