Day 18 (November 19th)

Today we took the subway and a bus to the Martin Luther King Birthplace. After navigating our way through several museums and historic houses, we finally found our tour group and headed for the house.

At the time, MLK lived in the comfortable middle-class in a roomy house. His father and grandfather were both pastors at the Ebeneezer Baptist church just down the road. He lived with his brother, sister, parents and Grandma. Occasionally, he would share rooms with a cousin or a guest as his father was a prominent minister.

As a kid, King loved to help his grandmother cook, but hated to do the dishes because he thought it was woman’s work. For punishment his parents made him bring in the coal from the yard. However, this punishment was not very effective because Martin enjoyed moving coal! He thought this was a real man’s job, because he got to lift heavy soot and get nice and dirty.

MLK also enjoyed ripping the heads off of his sister’s dolls and playing baseball with them. Obviously, this is before he learned the tenets of nonviolence!

After this, we watched several presentations on the rights’ struggles of the day, walked through a museum including several pieces of clothing he wore on prominent occasions. Finally, we visited King’s (and his wife’s) crypt.

Once we were finished, we waited for an hour for a bus, and then went for the High Museum of Art. We saw several original Leonardo Da Vinci sketches and sculptures of the day. We also went to an exhibit of Modern Art. Much of it looked painstakingly beautiful, like a 10’ x 14’ foot of layered painting depicting a starry night sky, and some of it looked over-appreciated, like a room full of 4 odd shaped canvases of plain colored paint. I guess my appreciation is just in the wrong place.

The other exhibit we saw there was full of stunning impressionist paintings (largely from the renaissance and post-renaissance). There were even a handful of Monet paintings (like one of the incredibly famous paintings of Notre Dame cathedral in fog).