What Happened Here?

“Sweet Auburn” was the center of black Atlanta. Racial tensions in the early 1900s led influential blacks to migrate there. By 1909, blacks were in the majority. Auburn Avenue became a mecca for enterprising black businessmen and citizens looking for life free from racial harassment.

Here, at 501 Auburn Avenue, on January 15, 1929, a son was born to Reverend and Mrs. Martin Luther King. Named after Rev. King, he was called “M.L.” by the family. During the next 12 years, “M.L.” would live in this fine two-story house with his parents, extended family, and boarders.

Two blocks west was the Ebenezer Baptist Church, the pastorate of Martin’s grandfather and father, where “M.L.” learned about family and Christian love, segregation in the days of “Jim Crow” laws, diligence, and tolerance. He accepted the call to the ministry at 17 and preached his trial sermon at Ebenezer.

From this foundation, Dr. King became one of the most influential men in the American Civil Rights Movement. In the late 1950s, in Ebenezer’s Education Building, Dr. King formed a temporary organization that would become the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, “the sustaining mechanism of the Civil Rights Movement.”

After living in Montgomery for several years, in 1960, Dr. King and his family returned to Sweet Auburn where, with his father, he served as co-pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. He opened SCLC headquarters on Auburn Avenue and continued fighting civil injustice, poverty, and involvement in the Viet Nam War. On April 4, 1968, Dr. King was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

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What Happened Here?