Atlanta, Georgia

After a short drive from Montgomery, I arrived in Atlanta eager to explore one of the biggest cities in the Southeast. It was Saturday night, and I decided to go to a Japanese restaurant near the hotel. I ate my sushi happily, thankful to be settled in a new state for several days. After dinner, I located the hotel, checked in, brought in my massive haul of luggage, and collapsed into tranquility.

The next two days were going to be relatively low-key. It was Veteran’s Day weekend, and the Capitol building was closed. Despite that, on Monday I ventured out to explore part of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site. It included his birthplace, a museum, his and his wife’s grave, and Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. was baptized and later preached as a minister. It was located fairly close to downtown, and after a late lunch, I was only able to see a few things before they closed for the evening.

First, I visited the memorial where Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King have been laid to rest. The site was situated in between the Ebenezer Baptist Church and his childhood home further up the street in a large courtyard. As I walked up, I was touched by the care that has been taken to ensure a peaceful resting place. The grave stood on a platform surrounded by a long reflecting pool that spans from the gravesite to the Freedom Center on the other end of the courtyard. Although it was just a short distance from the street, the courtyard felt very peaceful, as though the chaos of the city could not penetrate its boundaries. Across the walkway from the gravesite was an eternal flame, placed there to represent the everlasting effect that the Kings have had on the world.

There were no more tours of the King home available for the rest of the day, so I decided to visit the church, which was open to the public. When I entered, I greeted the gentleman inside, who told me that I was welcome to go upstairs and stay as long as I liked. I thanked him, and climbed to the second floor, where the congregation room was. When I entered, I felt the aura of serenity that is usually present in churches. It was after four in November, and the setting sun beamed golden light through the stained glass windows. The room felt as though it had borne witness to many years of struggle, growth, and faith, and I was merely one of many thousands that had entered those doors. I obviously had never met the people who helped Martin Luther King Jr. become the man that he was, but standing there, I felt as though my connection to King grew stronger.

I decided to come back the following day to take a tour of King’s birthplace and childhood home, and take a look in the museum. There were a lot of things to see at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, and I wanted to take my time to absorb everything. I decided to buy food for the next few days at grocery store close to the hotel, and I spent the rest of the evening making dinner, planning future stops of the trip, and working on blog posts.

The next day I returned earlier in the day and went into the museum to reserve a free ticket to tour King’s childhood home. The gentleman behind the desk told me that the next tour is full, but if one of the ticket reservations didn’t show up for the tour, I could squeeze onto the next one. I had to wait for a few minutes, so I looked around the museum. The exhibits traced MLK’s life from birth to assassination, and there were several stories that I had never heard before. One of the stories that stood out to me was when King was stabbed with a letter opener while autographing his new book about the Bus Boycott, Stride Toward Freedom. He was in a crowded Harlem department store when a crazy woman attacked him. The surgeon later told him that the point was pressing on aorta, and had he sneezed while waiting for surgery, he would have died.

One of the other more famous incidents in MLK’s life was in 1963, when King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference organized widespread, public protests throughout Birmingham, Alabama. Thousands of people began staging sit-ins and other displays of non-violent defiance, and the police responded by using high-pressure water hoses and police dogs to fend off the protestors, including on women and young children. Images of the violence that were released by the media shocked people throughout the country, and many were disgusted with the way that police responded to the protests. The SCLC was unwavering in their advocacy of nonviolence, but there were some individuals that retaliated to police aggression, and they were met with even more drastic attacks. During the Birmingham protests, MLK was arrested, along with Ralph Abernathy and others. It was during his time in solitary confinement, that MLK wrote his famous, “Letter from Birmingham Jail” in which he eloquently expressed the importance of nonviolent protest against injustice, no matter where it occurs, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

The back wall of the museum outlined the timeline of events during the Civil Rights Movement, starting with the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 to his assassination in April 1968. During these thirteen years, King traveled 6 million miles, spoke over 2,500 times, and was the youngest man to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He wrote five books, shook hands with two Presidents, and was named Time Magazine’s Man of the Year. Most people do not accomplish half of what Martin Luther King did during the Civil Rights Movement in their whole life. He was an exceptionally compassionate individual, and this site in Atlanta did an amazing job of honoring his life and his contributions to the betterment of society.

The gentleman behind the counter motioned to me as I emerged from the museum, and he told me that the tour was about to start in a few minutes, and he didn’t think that there would be many others coming. He handed me a ticket and directed me to the house just up the street. As I hurried over, I saw that it was a large, tan house with brown trim. The gift store was in the house next door, and that was where the tour was supposed to start. I found a seat in the front room and waited as other visitors gathered for the tour. A short while later, the tour guide arrived. First, we all introduced ourselves and said where we were from, and then we all got up and walked next door. There was an inviting, covered front porch that shielded the door from the sun, and we all gathered outside while the guide asked the group not to take any photos of the inside, or inadvertently bump against anything. The guide was a very boisterous older gentleman whose personality came through in every sentence he spoke. I could immediately tell that I was going to enjoy the tour.

This was home to Martin Luther King, Sr. and his wife Alberta Williams King, and their three children Willie Christine King, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Alfred Daniel Williams King. As a child, Martin Luther King Jr.’s family called him ML. The tour began in the front of the house, where our guide set the scene for the formal sitting room. This was generally the part of the house where the children were not allowed to play, because the nicest of the family’s possessions and furniture typically resided in the sitting room, where the parents would entertain guests. This room was also where the children were supposed to take piano lessons, which was not one of their favorite pastimes. Like many little boys, ML greatly preferred playing outside to learning how to play piano.

The tour continued into the dining room, which was set for Sunday dinner. Children were supposed to wear their church clothes, and they all ate dinner in the mid-afternoon as a family. Here is where ML told his father that his friend, who was white, wasn’t allowed to play with him anymore because he’s black. This was a defining moment in ML’s life, and would be one of the many injustices that would motivate him to become a civil rights activist. King, Sr. was also very passionate about social injustice, and refused to accept the inequality. When ML was young, he was riding in a car with his father when a police officer pulled them over. The policeman called King, Sr. “boy” and King pointed to his son, saying "This is a boy, I'm a man; until you call me one, I will not listen to you." His father’s beliefs and refusal to accept an unjust system shaped ML’s conscience, and definitely contributed to the man he became.

The kitchen, bathroom, and smallest bedroom were all on the first floor. It would take a full day to do the laundry for this family. ML’s chore was tending the house’s coal furnace, a chore he greatly preferred to washing dishes. The bedroom downstairs belonged to ML’s older sister Willie Christine, and it had a couple of dolls and feminine décor. The group filed upstairs to look at the boy’s room, the parents’ room, and the room where ML’s grandmother, Jennie Celeste Parks Williams lived until her death in 1941. She would read to her grandchildren often, and was a consistent caregiver throughout their childhood. The rooms were spacious and the boy’s bedroom has a mess of toys spread across the floor, for accuracy’s sake. It was very interesting to see the King’s home as it would have looked when King, Jr. was growing up.

After the tour, I returned to the hotel for the evening. The next day, I was going to visit the Capitol before driving to Tallahassee. After waking up, packing up all my things, and checking out, I drove downtown.

When I first arrived, it took me a while to find parking, which I did in the pay lot across the street. I walked inside, presented my ID, and complied with the other procedures. The security guard directed me to the information desk, which was right next to the Governor’s office. On my way there, I noticed that the rotunda was roped off, and after seeing the renovation in Arkansas, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to see it in all of its glory. 

After getting my book stamped at the information desk, I went into the Governor’s office to sign the guest book. I was told that if I left my name and address, I would receive a signed card in the mail a few weeks later from the Governor, thanking me for my visit. [When I returned home in early December, I found the signed and stamped card in my mail backlog.] I started talking with the two ladies in the Governor’s office, and ended up conversing with them for quite a while about everything from the road trip to the weather to amusing stories about our pets. After a while, I began to notice that there was a crowd congregating in front of the grand staircase just outside the office, and the ladies explained that it was a rally for the election for the new superintendent of one of Atlanta’s school districts. I asked them about the rotunda, and they told me that the enormous Christmas tree was going to be put up the next day, so they were getting everything prepared. Apparently the tree was several stories high, and it took the entire day to get it set up. As the clock crept closer and closer towards 5pm, I realized that I would need to begin exploring the building soon or I wouldn’t get to everything before it closed. I said goodbye and left the Governor’s office, clutching a map of the building.

I visited the House and Senate Chambers, which were almost indistinguishable from each other. The main difference was their size, the House Chamber being the largest room in the building. Oddly enough, the gallery of the House Chamber was unlocked and the main floor closed, but in the Senate Chamber, the gallery was locked and the main floor was open. It was a little bit disconcerting, but I’ve learned that every Capitol handles things in its own way, so I didn’t question it.

Although I enjoyed visiting the Capitol, I found that the building itself was not what stood out to me the most in Atlanta. The highlight of the stop was visiting the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site. It was heartening to see that his life had been honored so beautifully with the preservation of his home and his church, and that MLK and his wife, Coretta Scott King, had both been laid to rest between two of the places that meant the most to their family. By visiting the historic site, I felt that my understanding and appreciation of Martin Luther King Jr. grew exponentially. 

I returned to my car as the sun began to set. It was mid-November, and it was unusually cold for Georgia. Thankful to be heading further South, I set my GPS for the hotel in Tallahassee. I appreciated what I had seen and learned about in Atlanta, but as always, it was time to move on. As the afternoon grew older, I traveled towards the sunshine state.