Today we traveled to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta administered by the National Park Service. This site contains the Ebenezer Baptist Church (where King pastored), the MLK Jr. Visitor Center, and the King Center (where King and his wife Coretta Scott King are buried). King’s connection with India was strikingly revealed in the statue of Gandhi placed in an open plaza along with his notations in E. Stanley Jones Gandhi: An Interpretation. Jones was an American missionary who worked in India and whose writings on Gandhi inspired King. After a quick lunch at a local favorite called The Varsity (where orders are taken with gusto prefaced by a “What’ll ya have?”) we traveled to the University of Georgia where historian Dr. Glen Eskew gave us a succinct overview of the Civil Right Movement. The highlight of the day was a meeting with Juanita Abernathy wife of the late Rev. Ralph David Abernathy (1926-1990) a prominent Civil Rights activist and close friend of Martin Luther King Jr. Juanita Abernathy spoke eloquently with wit, and with a passion that was hard to resist. The courage, sacrifice and persistence she and many other like her displayed was what was inspirational. The courage of ordinary civil rights activists, in the face of impossible and unpredictable odds, and even death is something that is sobering and certainly needs to be remembered.
In the bus we heard a sermon by Martin Luther King Jr from a collection of his sermons titled Knock at Midnight. The sermon touched on many themes, including the “midnight” (King’s dark night??) that King saw pervading the social, psychological, and moral order. It is clear that his involvement in the civil rights movement did weigh on him, but he left his audience with three loaves—faith, hope, and love. A History Channel documentary called King gave us another glimpse of the life and work of King. Finally, a movie on the Rev. Vernon Johns (1892-1965)
gave a poignant insight of the daily grind of racism in the south, especially in Montgomery, Alabama that African-Americans endured, long after the Civil War had ended. John’s suggested long before Martin Luther King Jr and others, the possibility of a mass bus boycott to make a dent in the system of segregation in Alabama.
We ended the day in a hotel in Albany, GA and tomorrow we will move to Montgomery, AL.
Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta
Mohandas Karamchand "Mahatma" Gandhi in Atlanta!
E. Stanley's Jone's "Gandhi: An Interpretation." King had noted in the margins that Chapter 8 (on Gandhi's ideas on non-violent struggle) was important.
Juanita Abernathy's captivating presentation