Category Archives: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

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Ebenezer Baptist Church Hosts Post-Election Reconciliation & Accountability Unity Service TONIGHT!

Hello World,

If you live in Atlanta, you know that the recent mayoral race was a hotly contested one resulting in a razor thin runoff that only wrapped up yesterday with Mary Norwood finally conceding the race despite her belief that  “there were some irregularities with the election,” according to the AJC. Mayor-elect Keisha Lance Bottoms is the mayor, but she cannot lead the city without Norwood and others who care about the city. I would guess that is the reasoning behind Ebenezer Baptist Church hosting a Post-Election Reconciliation & Accountability Unity Service tonight at 7 p.m. According to WAOK, the service will be held in the old versus the new sanctuary. I pray that some of those mayoral candidates and the current Mayor-elect find their way to this service. Going to God and prayer should not be the last resort, it should be the first tactic to tackle a new challenge. Now that the end of the year is here and the next year is unknown, this is a prime opportunity to meet before God. See the flyer above for the details!

Any thoughts?

 

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Discovering Atlanta Through the Eyes of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Driver Tom Houck…A Repost…

054(me and my hubby & Tom Houck and another tour goer)

Editor’s Note: I originally wrote this post in 2016, but in honor of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday today, I thought I would share it again. Enjoy 🙂

Hello World,

Last week my husband Robert and I were thinking about what we could do to celebrate the sixth anniversary of our first date yesterday. As I was listening to 1380AM WAOK on the way home from work on Wednesday, I realized I had a fun and educational option. Derrick Boazman host of “Too Much Truth” was interviewing Tom Houck whom I had never heard of before. Tom, a white man, was the driver of Dr. King and his family for several months. In a gruff, hearty voice likely emboldened because of the precious history he possesses, Tom described how being kicked out of high school in Jacksonville, Florida for merely participating in a Selma march in 1965 eventually led to being in the inner sanctum of the very leader of the Civil Rights Movement as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s driver.

In 1966, Tom’s civil rights activism brought him to Atlanta to work for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). In one of those fortuitous moments that forever changes someone’s life, Dr. King saw Tom across the street from the SCLC where he had gone to make a call on the pay phone and invited the 19-year-old to have lunch with him and his family. That lunch led to him being asked to drive for the King Family. Tom describes his experiences as their driver as a part of his Civil Rights Tour, a bus tour in which Tom takes people to see the historic sites in Atlanta that provided the landscape of the capital of the Civil Rights Movement.

At the end of the conversation, Tom offered two tickets to the first person who e-mailed him the answer to this question: What was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s real first name. I was literally pulling into my driveway when I heard him ask the question. I parked, unlocked my front door and ran to my computer, hurriedly e-mailing him the answer: Michael. For the first five years of Dr. King’s life, his name was Michael. However, when his father Michael King Sr. changed his name to Martin Luther King Sr. after becoming inspired by Martin Luther, his son, who was Michael King Jr., became Martin Luther King Jr. I nearly fell off of my bed when I received an e-mail later that evening from Tom letting me know that I had won the tickets! I told my husband we could celebrate our history as a couple by celebrating the history of our beloved city. He agreed that it would be a great way to celebrate our first date anniversary!

005Tom Houck beginning his tour…

001My hubby focusing on Tom…

Dr. King’s first home is in the Old Fourth Ward area of Atlanta which was once known as Shermantown after General Sherman took over the area during the Civil War. The home is on Auburn Avenue known as Sweet Auburn, but I didn’t know that Auburn Avenue was once Wheat Street. However, the name of the street was later changed because Wheat Street was thought to be too rural of a name for a metropolitan street. Yes, Sweet Wheat doesn’t sound as cool for sure! But that explains the name of the historical Wheat Street Baptist Church on Auburn Avenue. Wheat Street Baptist Church was the site of the church scenes filmed in the movie “Selma,” Tom told us.

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In the beginning of the tour, we went by Dr. King’s elementary school Howard Elementary School. The school building, which is vacant, later became a high school which has notable graduates including Maynard Jackson, Atlanta’s first black mayor; Walt Frazier and Vernon Jordan. Tom also took us to the SNCC Freedom House. Freedom Houses were designated places where civil rights workers could retreat and reside.

011The site of the pay phone where Tom met Dr. King…

012Tom met Dr. King across the street of the SCLC headquarters, which I took a picture of from the bus…Not the best picture, but you get the idea hopefully…

017Morris Brown College, the only HBCU founded by black people, was organized in the basement of Big Bethel AME Church, which is located in the Sweet Auburn district…Civil rights leader Hosea Williams and Derrick Bozeman are Morris Brown College graduates…

018See that blue sign? It is the sign for the original site of the Atlanta Daily World, the oldest black newspaper in the city…It was once a Republican newspaper as blacks were mostly Republican years ago since most segregationists were Democrats…

015A Loss Prevention Hero series mural honoring Congressman John Lewis…

014The second The Loss Prevention Hero series mural honoring Mrs. Evelyn Gibson Lowery, the deceased wife of Rev. Joseph Lowery. Mrs. Lowery founded SCLC/Women’s Organizational Movement for Equality Now, Inc.

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Although it wasn’t an official part of the tour, Tom told us that Citizens Trust Bank, which was founded by black businessman Heman Perry, on Auburn Avenue, was where he received his first car loan! AND Daddy King, who was on the bank’s board of directors, co-signed the loan!!!

Before we left the Sweet Auburn district, we learned about John Wesley Dobbs, a rail clerk who was unofficially named the mayor of Sweet Auburn because of his work to achieve equality for black people…Seemingly in homage to Dobbs, Atlanta’s public schools were integrated on the day of this death, August 30, 1961, Tom told us…Above is a statue honoring Dobbs, who is the grandfather of Maynard Jackson…All of his six daughters graduated from Spelman College. They are reported to be the largest group of sisters to graduate from the school…Incidentally, I interviewed Dr. June Dobbs Butts, the youngest of the sisters and a sex therapist, for an UPSCALE magazine article I wrote years ago…

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We rode by the now defunct Terminal Station, which was once a prominent train station in the city. Atlanta was once named Terminus which I originally learned after watching “The Walking Dead,” which is back tonight!!! Yay!!! And before Terminus, Atlanta was known as Marthasville. I cannot see Atlanta residents calling ourselves Termliens or Marthaaliens so I’m glad we changed to Atlanta because ATLlien is so doggone cool…

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We passed through the Castleberry Hill District, which was revitalized by Herman J. Russell, a construction magnate…I had the opportunity to meet him just months before he passed away in 2014. He attended the National Book Club Conference while promoting his book Building Atlanta: How I Broke Through Segregation to Launch a Business Empire.”

Tom took us to Dr. King’s last home before he died which is located at 234 Sunset Avenue…

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038Daryl, a recent graduate of Clark Atlanta University, sang freedom songs as we passed by some of the historical stops…

Along the way, we passed by Washington High School where Dr. King graduated from when he was 15 years old to attend Morehouse College. I did not know that Lena Horne also attended Washington High School!

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One of the stops was the home of Alonzo Herndon, who was once Atlanta’s wealthiest black man. Herndon built his fortune on his barbering business. His stately home is across the street from the home of Grace Towns Hamilton, the first black woman elected to the Georgia General Assembly. Unfortunately, her home was barely visible due to the overgrowth of weeds as well as the overall decay of the structure…We also passed through the Atlanta University Center and by the original Paschal’s Restaurant location as well as Busy Bee Café.

One of our final stops was South-View Cemetery, which is located on Jonesboro Road and was designed “to provide a respectable place for Christian burials” for all people including black people who were once not allowed to be buried in certain cemetaries. It opened on April 21, 1886. It began as 26 acres and is now over 100 acres. 80,000 people are buried there including Herman J. Russell and the wife of John Lewis,  Lillian Miles Lewis. Below are pics of the graves of other important people who are also buried there…

045The grave site of John Wesley Dobbs

048The grave sites of Daddy King and his wife Alberta King…

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057If you look at to upper left of the grave marker, you can see this tiny picture of Daddy King….

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Dr. King was originally buried in South-View cemetery before his body was moved in 1970 to its current location alongside his wife at the King Center. One the way back to Auburn Avenue where we started the tour, we passed by Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. Tom told us that Marcus Garvey was imprisoned there which is interesting to me as the daughter of Jamaican immigrants.

We learned much more that I wasn’t even able to include in this already lengthy blog post!

And hopefully, you will be inspired to take a Civil Rights Tour with Tom Houck, the driver of Dr. King and his family. For more information, go to civilrightstour.com.

Enjoy your Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday!

Any thoughts?

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Why Racist Reactions to Mall of America’s Black Santa, the Emanuel AME Church Shooting Trial & More Show America is Still Sick…

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year?

black-santa

Hello World,

It’s supposed to be the “most wonderful time of the year,” a time when built-up grievances melt under the glow of multicolored Christmas lights and warm Christmas music, families flung far across the country corral themselves to remember their roots and strangers smile at one another for no other reason than to demonstrate “peace and goodwill to all men.” But this Christmas season of 2016, despite all of the light displays and songs, planned family pilgrimages and spontaneous smiles, the parasites of racism are still attached to America’s underbelly and will not release its host even for the reprieve of Christmas…

While I celebrate Jesus and not Santa Claus at Christmas, the image of Santa Claus, though not real, has always brought comfort and joy! A jolly man awarding nice not naughty children with gifts, who swoops down, with the help of reindeer led by Rudolph and his red nose, on homes across America every Christmas  – what’s not to love? In the broader culture, yes, Santa Claus is typically white, but here in Atlanta, the birthplace of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I remember black Santas malls in black neighborhoods when I was growing up. Though I may be wrong, I don’t remember there being any controversy regarding being black Santas in some neighborhoods.

But I guess the first black Santa at the Minnesota’s Mall of America, no less, is too much! At least for some Americans…According to rawstory.com article “Santa is WHITE. BOYCOTT Mall of America’: Online racists are Having a Meltdown Over Mall’s Black Santa,”  Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s editorial editor had to shut down comments on its black Santa article because of offensive comments. How disturbing particularly since Santa Claus is not even real! And Santa Claus is based on Saint Nicholas, who according to New Testament and early Christianity expert  Harvard Professor Laura Nasrallah was ” born into a family that probably considered itself to be ethnically Greek but in an area of the world that we now call Turkey.” She further noted that,  “Historically, you can’t import a category like ‘white’ into fourth century Asia minor,’ according to the politico.com article “Scholar: Santa Race Claim Nonsense” which was written after Fox’s Megyn Kelly said Santa Claus and Jesus were white in 2013.

Last year, I wrote the post  “Why is the ‘Real Face’ of Jesus Controversial? The Real Christmas Story” about the medical artist Richard Neave’s rendering of the real face of Jesus going viral. I expressed confusion because “although my earliest recollections of portraits of Jesus featured a man with blonde hair and blue eyes which I probably learned about in Sunday School and or the private Christian school I attended as a child, I stopped believing those depictions were accurate once I understood the Christmas story even as a child. That was probably around the time that I read ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ and began to study world history. My deductive reasoning led me to believe that Jesus, while in human form, must have been of a darker hue and looked similar to those who live in the Middle East.”

All of this to say, a black Santa, or an Asian Santa, or a Hispanic Santa, etc.  shouldn’t be offensive to anyone born in America (or elsewhere for that matter), which is promised to be the melting pot of all cultures and countries…

And then juxtapose that display of racism with the display of racism that is unfolding in Charleston, South Carolina where Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church shooter Dylan Roof is on trial for killing nine black churchgoers following a Wednesday evening Bible Study in 2015. In an FBI video, Roof said of his murderous acts, “Somebody had to do it.” According to the CNN article “Mass Shooter Dylann Roof, With a Laugh, Confesses,’I did it'” he also said, “Black people are killing white people everyday… What I did is so minuscule compared to what they do to white people every day.” He specifically targeted the church because it is a historic black church. “It’s historic, too, you know. I think at one time it had the highest ratio of blacks to white during slavery, and AME is a historic church. I researched black churches.” Maybe it’s no coincidence that this church is named after the name of Jesus Christ that we use at Christmas time and that this trial is unfolding during the Christmas season.  The Jesus Christ I believe in and know to be real wants all of His children to be treated as human beings. Anything less than that demonstrates that America still needs healing despite how far we have come.

Just miles away from me in Carrollton, Georgia, another display of racism at Christmas time happened last week. Gerald Byrd, who is black and Carrollton’s Mayor Pro Tem, was collecting pine cones in a local park for an art project, when he was approached and threatened by a white man after the man questioned him about why he was in a state park. “Then he said, ‘My wife is coming and she has something for you, too.’ Up comes his wife with a German shepherd and I’m too far from my car to run and I’m petrified,” Byrd said,” according to a wsbtv.com story. Byrd posted a video about the incident at the park shortly afterward on Facebook and has received death threats since then!

These are just three incidents that demonstrate how deeply America has been and is still infected by racism. At this time of the year, I would like to pretend that racism doesn’t exist and even just for a month (the last month of President Obama’s presidency,) we can all get along but sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case…

Any thoughts?

 P.S. This some came out in 1973…