Martin Luther King Jr Day

Today is a holiday.....it is the day we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr and his life. Many of my students did not know about him and I have been teaching about him the last couple of days.  I do emphasize that there were others in the struggle for Civil Rights, but he became the leader and the most famous because of his death.  There is a great video for children called Our Friend Martin.  I used to own the movie, but it was damaged, but by chance I found it on youtube.  My students watched it this week. 

The past two summers, I have been lucky and have been able to bookend Martin's life.

On my 2012 summer trip, with my niece Allison, we stopped in Atlanta and visited the National Park site that is Martin's childhood home, the place he was born.  I was overwhelmed with knowing who this man would grow up to be and the fact that I was walking in places he had walked...(I just checked and it doesn't seem as if I blogged about it then)  There were no pictures allowed in the house.

The site includes his childhood home, plus the MLK center, which is down the street.  You can also visit the church where he was baptized and became a co-pastor.

The last place you can visit is his grave.  Coretta is also buried with him.

We stopped here on our way back to Connecticut, but when we stopped in DC on our way down, we also stopped at the MLK memorial.

Now this past summer, 2013, on our way back from Texas, my brother and I stopped in Memphis.  A high school friend had offered to let us stay with her overnight....and we went to visit the Lorraine Motel, where he was shot and killed.  It was dusk and the light was really bad, sorry.

So I bookended my last two summers with the birth and death of Martin Luther King Jr.  A great man, who died too soon.