Saturday, April 4, 2015

Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site

After a mostly sleepless night in a hotel near Atlanta's airport last night, we headed up to the "Sweet Auburn" section of town to visit the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site. We started our visit in the visitor center and toured the exhibits there.
Because of the somber occasion, the 47th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination, tours of the home would be in a different format than normal. We would not need tickets for a tour, but instead we could just show up at the boyhood home for a silent walk through. From the visitor center we made the walk past some really interesting and vibrant murals,
and shotguns homes on Auburn
to the Martin Luther King Jr. birth home.

After a short wait, we walked through the inside of the home. The rangers and volunteers stationed throughout the home did offer some basic information about each room. Actually this tour format probably worked better for Sierra than a traditional tour. She was very good on the tour, which was our first home tour since a somewhat challenging one we took of the Thomas Wolfe home in Asheville, which was probably about a year and a half ago.

From the boyhood home, we headed over to the Historic Fire Station #6.
There was an interesting old fire truck inside
and some exhibits about the early days of firefighting in Atlanta, and eventual desegregation of the fire department. From there we passed by the Kings' graves
and eternal flame,
before we headed over to the historic Ebeneezer Baptist Church.
After we toured the church we had seen the whole site and so we headed back to the car for our drive back to Greeneville. We stopped in the northern suburbs for lunch at a burrito place and then headed straight for Tennessee.

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