By Tim Cooke in Atlanta, USA
Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church
If ever you have the opportunity, I recommend you visit the Martin Luther King Jr. Historic Site in downtown Atlanta on a Sunday morning. Sunday is the best day of the week for getting the strongest sense of the Sweet Auburn neighbourhood and the context and legacy of Dr King’s ministry.
Begin with a call at the Historic Ebenezer Baptist Church where Dr King was pastor. Here you can sit on the wooden pews and absorb something of the atmosphere of times past and see the pulpit from which he preached, before crossing the street to the new and much bigger Ebenezer Baptist Church where you will be made welcome by today’s impressively large and voluble congregation.
It’s a humbling experience, with a remarkable sense of authentic engagement with the neighbourhood which shaped and which witnessed up close a man who was to make such a mark on America and on the world.
The New Ebenezer Baptist Church and the Visitor Center
Today the 23-acre site is overseen by the National Park Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior. It includes the house where Dr King was born on Auburn Avenue and a Freedom Hall at the King Center right by the tomb of both Dr King and Coretta Scott King. The Reflecting Pool around the tomb throws out spectacular colour and light. Just by the pool burns an Eternal Flame, with the high rise towers of modern-day Atlanta visible through the trees.
In the National Park Visitor Center you will find the Courage To Lead exhibition exploring Dr King’s life journey and the evolution of the Civil Rights Movement. Among the display objects which particularly caught my attention was the wooden mule wagon used to transport Dr King’s coffin through the streets on the day of his funeral in April 1968.
The Mule Wagon which transported Dr King’s casket
My time spent there was an experience I will never forget. It worked for me in a manner in which I love to see museums and heritage sites working. It provided me with knowledge and insight, reinforced by the physical encounter of a powerfully authentic historic site. And it shouted out its own challenge of all that is yet to be accomplished around the world in the field of human rights, civil rights and in encouraging respect between peoples.
The Reflecting Pool with the tomb in the distance
Visit this site in Atlanta for a lesson in how the power of place, story, objects, thought and feeling combine to deepen meaning and to inspire present and future action.