King Site Honors His Memory

Dennis Ulysees, 31, a stonemason from Tacoma, Wash., stood in front of Martin Luther King Jr.’s resting place, his right arm wrapped around his daughter, Casandra, 10. Neither spoke for several minutes. Both just stood there gazing at the tomb.

As they left, Ulysees explained he had brought his daughter to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site so she could learn more about the slain civil rights leader. “I want her to know him, to know how important he was for black people like us,” Ulysees said. “I want her to live her life with his life as a model.”

A few minutes later, Charlene Mitchell Rogers, a Detroit television newscaster, appeared with her son, Jonathan, 8. “I came to Atlanta especially to visit the site,” Rogers said. “I brought my son along because I believe it is essential he come here.

“He has never known segregation,” continued Rogers, 39. “He has grown up in a privileged environment. I want to make certain he knows who he is and where he came from, that this man was responsible for the freedoms he has. I don’t want him ever to forget.”

Every day people gather here in the heart of Atlanta’s Sweet Auburn district to pay homage to King, who died April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tenn., the victim of an assassin’s bullet. But on this day, which would have been King’s 60th birthday, thousands are expected to gather at the site’s reflecting pool where his tomb is mounted on a pedestal. Inscribed on his crypt are King’s words: “Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty I’m free at last.”

The two-block-long national historic site was set aside by Congress in 1980 and has been administered since by the National Park Service. Its purpose is to protect and interpret for the benefit, inspiration and education of present and future generations the place where Martin Luther King Jr. was born, lived, worked and worshiped.

“Last year 840,000 visitors came here, half black, half white,” explained Randolph Scott, 58, a former Norfolk, Va., high school history teacher who has been the site’s superintendent for the last four years.

Among the site’s points of interest: the home at 501 Auburn Ave. where King was born; his tomb a block away at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change, founded in 1968 and headed by his wife, Coretta Scott King; and Ebenezer Baptist Church, located two blocks from his birthplace.

Like Father, Grandfather

His father, Martin Luther King Sr., was pastor of the church from 1931 to 1975; his grandfather, A. D. Williams, presided from 1894 to 1931. Martin Luther King Jr. preached his first sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church when he was 17 and served as co-pastor with his father from 1960 to 1968.

It was there that his body lay in state and also where his mother, Alberta Williams King, was slain six years later as she played the organ during a religious service.

At the two-story, 14-room Queen Anne clapboard home where King was born and lived until 1941, visitors are taken on a tour by ranger Shelly Lewis.

“Many people say they can feel Dr. King’s spirit, feel his presence in this house,” said Lewis, 30, of Bolton, Miss. “Many visitors get quite emotional. They break down and cry.”

Also born there were his brother, A. D., who drowned in a swimming pool accident in 1969, and his sister, Christine King Farris, a professor at Atlanta’s Spelman College.

Family Belongings

The home contains the family’s original furniture, including the piano King played as a boy, his baseball glove, Monopoly game, family icebox and washing machine.

“Sweet Auburn was a mecca of Atlanta’s leading black business and commercial enterprises and a middle-class black residential area when Martin Luther King lived here,” site superintendent Scott said. The Park Service now owns 13 turn-of-the-century homes and buildings in 21.5-acre site and plans to acquire 27 more, he said. Seven have already been restored to their original state.

Among the area’s buildings is Atlanta’s famed Royal Peacock Club where Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstein, Louis Armstrong and other well-known black entertainers performed. John Wesley Dobbs, grandfather of former Atlanta Mayor Maynard H. Jackson, is credited with giving the area its nickname, Sweet Auburn.

At the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change, the Park Service operates a museum filled with memorabilia and photographs highlighting the life of the civil rights leader.

On display are the Nobel Peace Prize he received as well as the Medal of Freedom, his clothing, clerical robes and favorite neckties. Behind glass is the key to Room 307 at the Lorraine Hotel where King was killed, the wallet he was carrying when shot, his handwritten sermons and well-worn Bible.

“What is important to my mother, my brother and my two sisters is the ever-growing interest in my father and what he worked for in his lifetime,” said Martin Luther King III, 31, a Fulton County, Ga., commissioner. “I hope and pray it will continue to grow with his memory helping to achieve justice and equality for all mankind.”