King’s Legacy Lives On
World civil rights icon was humbly born

ATLANTA — “I have a dream!”

The powerful words of civil rights champion and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. rang and reverberated in my ears as we explored his birthplace on Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, Georgia.

It was an historical home from which came a man whose leadership, teachings and ideologies had so much influenced and changed the course of history in America and also around the world.

Dr. King’s contributions to history placed him in an inimitable position. In his short life, Dr. King was instrumental in helping Americans realize and rectify unspeakable flaws which were tarnishing the name of America. The events which took place in his life were earth-shattering, for they represented an America which was hostile and quite different from America as it is seen today.

Dr. King catapulted to fame when he came to the assistance of one Rosa Parks, a Montgomery, Alabama, black seamstress who refused to give up her seat on a segregated Montgomery bus to a white passenger.

In those days African Americans were confined to positions of second class citizenship by restrictive laws and customs. To break these laws would mean subjugation and humiliation by the police and the legal system. Beatings, imprisonment and sometimes death were waiting for those who defied the system.

African-Americans needed a Dr. King, but above all America needed him. The significant qualities of this special man cannot be underestimated nor taken for granted. Within a span of 13 years from 1955 to his death in 1968 he was able to expound, expose, and extricate America from many wrongs.

Champion of Nonviolent Passive Resistance

His tactics of protest involved nonviolent passive resistance to racial injustice. It was the right prescription for the country, and it was right on time.

Hope in America was waning on the part of many African Americans, but Dr. King provided a candle along with a light. He also provided the nation with a road map so that all people could locate and share together in the abundance of the great democracy.

I was so engrossed during my visit, mentally trying to link my splintered knowledge of Dr. King with all the physical evidence of his life in the house, that I was momentarily startled when the tour guide announced the end of the tour, saying: "So, he was not a special person. He was just like you and I."

King was humbly born in the house, in a bedroom because it was not possible for his mum to have him in a proper hospital. Stories had it that on the eve of his birth, his dad, who was standing outside the room, jumped and punched the air, touching the roof, although it looked physically impossible. His brother and sister were born in the same room.

King’s childhood bedroom, which he shared with his brother and an uncle, had all the appearances of a typical boys’ room, having been recreated to look like what it was then.

He truly lived a normal childhood, doing things that every other child would do. His favorite pastime was being in the kitchen with his grandmother. While she cooked, they would spend time chatting and whenever the food was ready, he would get the first chance to taste it.

One significant part of his upbringing was that his parents taught him (and his brother and sister) what would become an important part of his life — to treat all people with respect.

While he was growing up, King found that not everyone followed his parents’ principles. He noticed that black people and white people were treated differently. He saw that he and his white friends could not drink from the same water fountains and could not use the same restrooms.

His best friend as a child was a white boy and as children they played happily together. But when they reached school age King found that even though they lived in the same neighborhood, they could not go to the same school. His friend would go to a school for white children only and King was sent to a school for black children. After the first day of school he and his friend were never allowed to play together again.

A Dream of Brotherhood

As we left the house, his world-famous “I have a dream” speech, which Dr. King delivered in March 1963 to more than 200,000 civil-rights marchers at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., came flooding back to me. I let the words flow freely as we walked alongside a water fountain that led to his shrine.

“I have a dream,” Dr. King continued, “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.

“I have a dream that one day the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but the content of their character. I have a dream today.

“I have a dream that one day down in Alabama — with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words ‘interposition and nullification’ — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today.

“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low; the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”

How true are the thoughts. They have become a reality just like he dreamt them.
Today, black Americans have federal legislation that provides access and legal protection in the areas of public accommodations, housing, voting rights, schools, and transportation. These rights were not easily won, nor readily accepted, but the goodwill and conscience of an enormous spectrum of American society both black and white said “Move On.”

I let the words roll away from memory as we entered the historical Ebenezer Baptist Church on the same Auburn Avenue where Dr. King acted as co-pastor until his death on April 4, 1968.

By chance we walked into the middle of the last speech he made before his assassination. This recorded speech, a series of others and the church all have been preserved for visitors.

We then left for the King Center, established in 1968 by his late wife, Coretta Scott King. The King Center is the official living memorial dedicated to the advancement of the legacy of Dr. King.

More than 650,000 visitors from all over the world are drawn annually to the King Center to pay homage to Dr. King, view unique exhibits illustrating his life and teachings and visit the King Center’s library, archives, his final resting place, his birth home, gift shop and other facilities. The center and other significant sites in the area are managed by the National Park Service of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Other important features include the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame, the “I have a dream” International World Peace Rose Garden, and a Memorial Tribute to Ghandi. The adjacent Preservation District comprises the surrounding “Sweet Auburn” community where many of the residents of Dr. King's neighborhood made their living.

Dr. King was born on Jan 15, 1929, to the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. and Alberta Williams King as Michael Luther King but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family’s long tenure as pastors of Ebenezer Baptist Church, serving from 1914 to 1931; next came his father, and from 1960 until his death Dr. King served as co-pastor together with his father.

He attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of 15. He received a bachelor of arts degree in 1948 from Morehouse College, a distinguished Negro institution in Atlanta from which both his father and grandfather had been graduated.

After three years of study at Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, where he was elected president of a predominantly white senior class, he was awarded a bachelor of divinity degree in1951. With a fellowship won at Crozer, he enrolled in graduate studies at Boston University, completing his studies for the doctorate in 1953 and receiving the degree in 1955.

In Boston he met and married Coretta Scott, a young woman of uncommon intellectual and artistic attainments. Two sons and two daughters were born into the family.

In 1954, Dr. King accepted an appointment as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

As a strong worker for civil rights, Dr. King was, by this time, a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation.

A Large Life Cut Short

He was ready, then, early in December 1955, to accept the leadership of the first great Negro nonviolent demonstration of contemporary times in the U.S. The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted 382 days. On December 21, 1956, after the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the laws requiring segregation on buses, Negroes and whites rode the buses as equals.

During those days of boycott, Dr. King was arrested, his home was bombed, he was subjected to personal abuse, but at the same time he emerged as a Negro leader of the first rank.

In 1957 he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the now burgeoning civil rights movement. The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the 11-year period between 1957 and 1968, Dr. King traveled over six million miles and spoke more than 2,500 times, appearing wherever there was an injustice; meanwhile, he wrote five books as well as numerous articles.

In these years, he led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world, providing what he called a coalition of conscience and inspiring his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” a manifesto of the Negro revolution; he planned the drives in Alabama for the registration of Negroes as voters; and he directed the peaceful march on Washington, D.C., in 1963 where he delivered his immortal “l Have a Dream” address.

He conferred with President John F. Kennedy and campaigned for President Lyndon B. Johnson; he was arrested upwards of 20 times and assaulted at least four times; he was awarded five honorary degrees; was named Man of the Year by Time magazine in 1963; and became not only the symbolic leader of American blacks but also a world figure.

At the age of 35, Dr. King was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize. When notified of his selection, he announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 to the furtherance of the civil rights movement.

At the age of 39, Dr. King was shot to death while standing on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. James Earl Ray pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in prison for the assassination although later claimed to be innocent of the crime.