Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Draws Visitors Worldwide

By David Pitts
Washington File Staff Writer

(Located in Atlanta, Georgia on historic Auburn Avenue)

Atlanta, Georgia -- "It's not just black people and not just Americans who come here," says a spokesperson for the National Park Service. "This site pulls in visitors from all over the world. People come not just on his birthday (which is now a national holiday in the United States) but really all year long."

The place is the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site on famed Auburn Avenue just up the street from the renowned Ebenezer Baptist Church where the civil rights leader often preached. The memorial is located in the heart of one of Atlanta's oldest African American neighborhoods.

Children outnumber adults on this particular day at the museum and seem most drawn to the newsreels of the many struggles in which King engaged from the fight to desegregate public transportation in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955 to the demand for justice and fairness for African American sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968.

There also are still photographs, many of them capturing painful moments in the quest to build what King often called "the beloved community" -- such as Myrlie Evers listening to a eulogy for her husband, Medgar Evers, a civil rights leader in Jackson, Mississippi, who was murdered in 1963. Many of the photographs show King leading demonstrations and rallies in the many cities in which the civil rights struggle was waged, including some in the North, such as Chicago, which he visited in 1966.

But King always stressed that racism is a worldwide and not just an American problem. "It is no mere American phenomenon. Its vicious grasp knows no geographical boundaries," he once said. It is not so well known that King traveled to cities worldwide as well as to American cities -- always preaching the same message. "All inhabitants of the globe are now neighbors," he said. "We have inherited a large house, a great world house in which we have to live together -- black and white, Easterner and Westerner, Gentile and Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu -- a family unduly separated in ideas, culture and interest who, because we can never live apart, must learn somehow to live with each other in peace."

His contribution was recognized internationally in 1964 when he received the Nobel Peace Prize. At 35, he was the youngest recipient in history. King told the assembled audience in Oslo, among them King Olav V, that he was a "trustee" for a movement that provided nonviolent answers to a menace -- racial intolerance -- that so often resulted in violence. "I believe," he said, "that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality." He continued: "This award, which I receive on behalf of the movement, is in profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and racial questions of our time -- the need for man to overcome oppression without resorting to violence and repression.

"I accept this award with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in mankind," King said. "I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life that surrounds him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daylight of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality."

King made it clear that his dream of racial justice was for all the world. But in the conclusion of his speech, he returned to the dilemma then faced by his fellow African Americans and his unswerving belief that America could be a better place. "When the years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focused on this marvelous age in which we live -- men and women will know that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization -- because these humble children of God were willing to suffer for righteousness' sake." The audience rose to its feet as the Norwegian Broadcasting Orchestra played selections from American composer George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess.

When King spoke those words more than 36 years ago, many of the young people visiting the memorial here in Atlanta on this day were not even born. But the little notes they leave suggest that King's legacy is very much alive in the minds of the young as well as the old. "I think what Dr. King did is cool," wrote one young African American teenager. Another wrote, "He was alive when my grandpa was alive. Dr. King, I would be happy if you were alive today."

Not all the notes were left by the young. One elderly lady wrote: "As a senior citizen, I remember having to sit at the back of the bus. I thank God for Martin Luther King, Jr." An elderly white man wrote, "More than any other man and more than any event, Martin Luther King freed me from prejudice. So I feel he made me free as well."

King once summarized his abiding theme of the common bond among all people this way. "It really boils down to this," he said, "that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."