We spent most of the day at the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site today. They have a wonderful museum with interesting photos, videos and time lines on Martin Luther King Jr’s life. The roots of King’s lifelong fight for equality are here with the home where he was born and lived his first twelve years. When the park service bought the home they decided they had better try to buy the surrounding homes so that the neighborhood would stay in tact. It is an ongoing process. The Ebenezer Baptist Church where his grandfather, father and later Martin preached is right down the street. At the time, the black neighborhood had everything necessary for the community with shops, a grocery, cleaners, doctors, lawyers etc. The neighborhood had been all white when it was first built but as the whites moved out the blacks moved in. It was a mix of houses economically including large ones like the King families and small ones across the street. They were not welcomed in the white neighborhoods nearby. We took a tour through the home with the ranger telling many stories of his childhood. He was just an ordinary kid pulling his sister’s hair, having a messy room and sliding down the banister. He excelled in school and entered Morehouse College at 15. We heard about the family sitting down for dinner each night with the three children expected to be ready to discuss their school day plus news events and recite a Bible verse. Another story was when Martin, or M.L. as he was called by his family, was walking down the street with his father and saw some shoes in a store window that he wanted. They went into the “white” store and the clerk told them that they needed to go the rear of the store so they wouldn’t be seen and he would help them. His father marched them out of the store. His father told him they should be treated like everyone else and were not going to “move to the back.“ Martin Luther King, Sr. was head of the Atlanta branch of the NAACP. Conversations like the one with the shoe store, conversations in their front parlor with civil rights meetings going on, preaching’s by his father and grandfather, and college students living in their home with their conversations all helped to form M.L.’s passion for the betterment of their community and civil rights in general. Early on he became a spokes person for peaceful change. In 1959, he traveled to India to study the nonviolent teachings of Gandhi as the guest of Prime Minister Nehru. His Nobel Peace Prize in on display. Outside the museum is a reflecting pool and the crypts of Martin and Coretta King. It was good to be reminded of his passion and what he accomplished in his short life with peace and love as his focus rather than hate. I wrote my high school senior term paper on school desegregation in 1961 and remember being shocked at some of the news articles I had read.. I would love to read it today. Dr. King earned his place in history with his dream of equality for African Americans, but his ultimate dream was of human rights worldwide. I have heard about his faults but he was certainly an amazing man and accomplished much in his short life. The museum is very moving. We didn’t feel like doing any other site seeing and headed home.
I came home with this quote:
Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the “fight with fire” method which you suggest is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community. Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but it cannot create and organize anything permanent, only love can do that. Yes, love - which means understanding, creative, redemptive, goodwill, even for one’s enemies - is the solution to the race problem. Martin Luther King Jr., 1957
More:
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking moment of their lives to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
 |
| Martin Luther King Jr.'s home until he was twelve years old. |
 |
| Memorial Pond |
 |
| Church where he preached along with his father and grandfather. |
 |
| Beautiful time line mural outside the museum. |
No comments:
Post a Comment