This week’s theme is “Whole MLK”
Tag: Martin Luther King Jr.
Posted inColumns, Main Slider, Maynard Eaton
Stephon Ferguson: Mimicking MLK ‘is my calling’
During this 33rd annual celebration of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Holiday Observance and February’s Black History Month, one of the nation’s most sought after speakers is Stephon Ferguson, whose compelling and captivating impersonation of MLK is said to be one of the best ever heard or performed. He nails Dr. King’s tone of voice, cadence, charisma and character.
Posted inDavid Pendered, Latest News, Main Slider
Grant to preserve five houses on same block as Martin Luther King Jr.’s birth home
The rejuvenation of Auburn Avenue is expanding, this time in the preservation of five houses on the same block as the Martin Luther King, Jr. birth home, through a grant provided by American Express and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Posted inUncategorized
Being first — how Jackie Robinson integrated professional baseball
This week guest contributor STAN DEATON, historian at the Georgia Historical Society, recalls Jackie Robinson’s extraordinary first season in the major leagues, nearly seventy years ago.
For most of us, being first is something we long for. Americans like being first in everything. But what if being first means having people hate your guts?
Posted inDavid Pendered, Latest News, Main Slider
As Atlanta marks historic march, Ga. lawmakers to vote Monday on bill to restrict early voting
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed is slated to kick off at noon Monday the city’s commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the historic Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March.
Posted inDavid Pendered
King’s final frontier: Georgia losing war on poverty, GBPI study calls for new policies to mitigate poverty
A new report shows poverty is expanding in Georgia, a grim reminder of the final frontier Martin Luther King, Jr. had identified before his death.
The Georgia Budget and Policy Institute found that Georgia residents now comprise the sixth poorest population in the nation. Georgia’s poverty rate is at its highest since 1982. Some 1.8 million Georgians live in poverty – more than 19 percent of the state’s population.
King had announced his Poor People’s Campaign five months before his assassination in April 1968. Five weeks after the shooting, the campaign built an encampment on the National Mall in Washington to house demonstrators for six weeks. Robert Kennedy’s funeral procession passed through Resurrection City in a show of respect, according to Stanford University’s King research institute.
Posted inDavid Pendered
SCLC joins effort to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. with statue at Capitol
The SCLC is adding its voice to the call for Georgia to install a statue of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the State Capitol, on the site left vacant by the removal of a statue of Tom Watson.
Friday at 11 a.m., four leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference are slated to deliver this message on the first floor of the Capitol. The Rev. Joseph Lowery, an SCLC president emeritus, expects to attend if his health permits.
“We think it’s the right thing to do,” SCLC CEO Charles Steele, Jr. said Thursday. “Time is of the essence because of the imagery Dr. King can project 50 years after the March on Washington, and the anniversary of the 1964 Voting Rights Bill.”
Posted inDavid Pendered
Statue of Martin Luther King, Jr. proposed for Georgia’s state capitol
A statue of Martin Luther King Jr. will be installed at the frontage of the Georgia state capitol if lawmakers approve a bill filed by state Rep. Tyrone Brooks.
Brooks said Monday the King statue could be placed on the same spot from which the statue of Tom Watson was recently moved. Any site along that west side of the front of the Capitol would be appropriate, Brooks said.
“We take the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for granted, and I think it’s time we recognize him with a statue of the grounds of the capitol, in the city where he was born just five blocks away,” Brooks said.
Posted inMoments, Moments Season 1
Rev. Joe Roberts followed in the footsteps of both Martin Luther Kings, except for one 1964 Moment
By Chris Schroder
Rev. Joseph Roberts wasn’t prepared for all the adulation he was receiving as he glided down the aisle of a church in the northern New Jersey city in which he had been named pastor of a small Presbyterian congregation a mere two weeks earlier. It was a stirring and soon-to-be embarrassing Moment for the man who would later follow Martin Luther King Sr. and Jr. in the pulpit of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.
In a city of relatively few historically significant buildings, Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church stands as a touchstone to American history: the birthplace of the civil rights movement that changed the course of our region and nation.
