ML King Coming Alive

While in Atlanta at the beginning of this month for the 94th Annual AMSmeeting, I made it my business to see visit the Martin Luther King, Jr.,National Historic Site and Preservation District.  This area, about two miles east of downtown Atlanta, centered along Auburn Avenue, contains sites related to the life of the Rev. King, including the home where he was born and raised, his grave, and Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he served as co-pastor during the 1960’s.

I had foremost in mind to visit the home where he grew up.  The King family still owns the home through the King Foundation, and the National Park Service administers the home, especially for the free tours offered at scattered times on the hour on a daily basis.  I found it apt to go there just weeks after the celebration of his birthday, and at the start of Black History Month.

The places where a person lives speaks greatly to the human side of a person, and that’s certainly what I got to experience on this tour.  The home straddles a block where there were single-story homes for blue-collar families, and then Queen Anne-style homes for the more well-to-do families.  The picture below shows some of those blue-collar family homes on the right side, the north side of Auburn Avenue.

The Queen Anne houses were first built in the 19^th Century for Caucasian families, but then were acquired by well-to-do African-American families by the early 20^th Century.  The King family home itself was splendid indeed.  Doug, the ranger leading the tour, said Dr. King’s grandparents purchased the home in 1909 for a mortgage of $3500 down and $35 a month.  (The Queen Anne house next door has also been restored, and houses a gift shop, and is where all tours start.)

This is the home on Auburn Avenue where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was born.  Below is a close-up of the plaque that appears near the sidewalk-end of the walkway leading up to the house.

Inside the home, we saw the main entrance parlor, the dining room, the kitchen, and the bedrooms, and other areas, too.  Dr. King was born in a bedroom upstairs, where his mother gave birth to her other two children.  As happens with any family, they give away items and bring new ones in.  So many of the furnishings in the house are not original, but are typical of the time period when Martin Luther King, Jr., grew up.  There are, however, a few originals, like the piano, and the dishes in the dining room table.  (By the way, I have no pictures of the interior of the home.  The King family allows public tours under the condition that no photographs are permitted inside.)

Doug told lots of stories about Dr. King as a child, when he was addressed as “ML”.  ML was like any boy, prone to being naughty and getting into trouble for his antics, like how he tried to damage the piano so as to avoid having to learn to play it, since his friends thought it was something “sissy”.  Something ML thought was sissy was washing dishes.  So when it was his turn to do the dishes, right as dinner was coming to an end, ML darted away and shut himself in a washroom, sat down, and read his comic books until the dishes were done.  Eventually, his father decided to teach him a lesson, and made him do the laborious chore of shoveling coal.  As it turns out, ML liked shoveling coal because it was more manly, and allowed him to build up muscle.  So his father got him to work, while ML did something he liked and got out of doing dishes--hard to say if his father's plan backfired, or just worked out in a way that wasn't expected.

Up on the second floor of the house, Doug pointed out one of the bedrooms where an extended relative of the King family stayed, who taught ML how to read, which was something he carried with him all his life.  Because African-Americans couldn't find lodging when they came to town back when ML was growing up, his parents would rent out rooms to the lodgers, as would other African-American households.

And Doug also told us the heartbreaking story of what happened to ML when he was 6 years old.  When ML was 3, he became very good friends with a Caucasian boy his age whose parents owned a store that once stood across the street from the King home.  (Now, only a slab is on the site, which I presume is the store’s foundation.)  They went to separate schools because they were of different skin colors, but every day after school, ML would go across the street and play with his friend. 

Then, when ML was 6, he started noticing his friend wasn’t as glad to see him as he used to be.  Then came the day when his friend said his parents forbid him from playing with ML anymore.  ML was devastated, and it showed that evening when he was at the dinner table.  His father asked him what was wrong, and ML told him.  ML thought he had done something wrong to displease his friend’s parents.  His father then realized the time had come that he would have to tell his son of the history of oppression that African-Americans had suffered throughout the course of US history.  That was quite a day for a 6-year-old.  Hearing Doug tell that story gave me a new perspective on racial discrimination, and how wrong it is to discriminate against someone just on the basis of skin color.

The tour was over in about 30 minutes, and afterwards, I walked the short distance west on Auburn Avenue to the King Center building.   There’s a large promenade there with a long pool (see first picture below), in the center of which is the final resting place of Martin Luther King, Jr., and his wife, Coretta Scott King (see second picture below).

I had seen some pictures of the grave site before, but being there in person at that hallowed site caused chills to go through me.

Walking along to the other end of the promenade, I came to the Historic Sanctuary of the Ebenezer Baptist Church.  This is where Dr. King preached and served as pastor.  It has been preserved to look as it did back then.  (The picture below is of the inside of the sanctuary.)

The congregation out-grew that sanctuary space and now uses a larger facility across Auburn Avenue for its Sunday worship services.  After looking around, I took leave of the neighborhood to carry on with my day.

The outside of the Historic Sanctuary of Ebenezer Baptist Church 

What an experience this visit was, especially to tour the home, and get a feel for who ML King,  Jr., was as a person.  But what was equally amazing was the diversity in the tour group I was in.  We started out the tour with a brief introduction in the house next door.  Before walking to the home, Doug held a “contest” to see who was from the farthest away.  Though I started by saying, “The Chicago suburb of Oak Park, IL”, I was quickly trounced by the many international visitors, who came from France, Japan, Taiwan, and Buenos Aires, Argentina.  It was amazing to see that the story of ML King, Jr., resonates with people not just in the United States, but with people all over the world.  When I asked the couple from France about what it meant for them to be here, they said the story of freedom is very important in France.  When I spoke with the couple from Argentina, they said that they remembered well hearing about Dr. King at the time he was a leader in the Civil Rights movement.

And I was also very inspired by Doug, the ranger who served as tour guide, who was blind.  His disability did not hold him back one bit from making meaning in his life by leading the tours of the home and telling us the stories of ML growing up.  And he was also a fun guy to be around, inserting plenty of humor into his narration.

The story of Dr. ML King, Jr., is one I’ve heard since elementary school, usually in January as we geared up for the annual observance of his birthday.  I even remember seeing his home in the children's animated program Our Friend, Martin.  And now, on this day, February 3, 2014, I saw him come alive at the home on Auburn Avenue in Atlanta.  I saw the human come alive, and his story come alive:  The story of how he was stamped down by the oppression of racial discrimination, but soon garnered determination and refused to stay down.  He stood back up to courageously fight the oppression and create a better society for all people.  It is truly a human story, of freedom, and triumph over oppression.

It inspires me in my own struggles to look at what Dr. King faced and how he overcame, doing good for the world.  I even think about how Doug has overcome a disability to do the good work he's doing now.  It gives me reassurance that I can face any struggle in life and overcome.

It makes me think of the lyrics of the song, “Lift Every Voice and Sing”.  It is considered the Black National Anthem, and it is a GREAT song, one of my favorites.  As I was walking around the neighborhood, I wanted to belt out the lyrics.  They speak to the triumph achieved after enduring great, wearying struggle, all the while praising God as we walk before Him, with His hand guiding us.

And that is the story of Martin Luther King, Jr.  Being a person of faith, striving to walk faithfully before God drove him in his work to create a better society that would provide a better life for all people, challenging the system that denied that reality, dreaming big.  His work inspires us today, and makes us free, for we all become free when we do the same work as Dr. King, seeking betterment of our fellow people.

So truly, truly, Dr. King up in Heaven cries out, “Free at last! Free at last!  Thank God Almighty, I am free at last”, just as his gravestone declares.  Next to him, his wife’s gravestone adds another meaningful anecdote to what he strove for during his life.  It has the verse 1 Corithians 13:13: “And now abide faith, hope, and love.  But the greatest of these is love.”  We have faith, and we have hope because of love, namely that God first loved us so we could love each other.  And in living love toward each other is how we love God, and what truly makes us free, and that is the triumph.