Wednesday was supposed to be a “personal” day for the bus writers,
but shutting off civil rights is no easy thing when you’re in Atlanta.
So while Vern Smith took the day off to be with his family in his hometown,
a quorum of us squeezed into a rented van with our bus driver, Andy Walker,
at the wheel and spent the day with Sharon Richardson. She runs Legacy Tours,
which specializes in African American History Tours of the city she was born
and raised in.
Sharon filled our ears with all the requisite facts and figures about this
dynamic international city. Atlanta is the birthplace of Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. W.E.B. Dubois spent 30 years here. Booker T. Washington delivered
a famous speech in Atlanta in 1895. Walter White and Vernon Jordan came from
here. Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s home run record nearby.
Our tour began with the Margaret Mitchell House, a block from the hotel
where the author of Gone With the Wind lived. Mitchell, Sharon told us, invested
some of her royalties in educating young black men and women.
We passed through the campus of Georgia Tech, where the nation’s
first black engineers were produced and where African American architects
designed some of the facilities built for the 1996 Olympics. We saw the Varsity
Drive-In restaurant where James Brown honed his dancing skills as a car hop.
We toured the Herndon House, home of Atlanta’s first black millionaire,
Alonzo Herndon, a freed slave who built his fortune from barbering and founded
the Atlanta Life Insurance Company. The exquisite mansion, built on the highest
hill in Atlanta, was constructed almost exclusively with African American
hands. We drove past Morehouse College, King’s alma mater, Spelman
College, and the other institutions that comprise the Atlanta University
Center, the largest black consortium of higher education in America. We pulled
up to the curb by the humble home where Martin and Coretta King lived with
their children until his death.
We got off schedule when we hit “Sweet” Auburn Avenue, once
the Black Wall Street of the World, passing landmarks like the Atlanta Daily
World newspaper, the Royal Peacock Club (the crown jewel of the chitlin’ circuit),
and the Odd Fellows Hall, where Lena Horne won her first talent contest.
The main attraction on Auburn Avenue is Ebeneezer Baptist Church, a storied
red brick building where four generations of Kings have been preaching since
1896. The adjacent National Historic Site includes two museums and King’s
white marble tomb in the center of a reflecting pool.
Ebeneezer was full of King’s spirit, with the stained glass likenesses
of his maternal grandfather, A.D. Williams, and his father, Martin Luther
King, Sr. staring down from opposite sides of the sanctuary. We listened
to a park ranger talk about the church’s history as "The Rock" of
the movement (the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was founded in
its basement) while we sat in the front pew where a young "M.L." sat
as a child, while his daddy preached and his momma played organ. If we had
stuck around until that evening, we could have heard King’s daughter
preach, too.
We viewed King’s Nobel Peace Prize and took in as many exhibits as
we could before we were shooed along. But the clock ran out. Sharon told
us we’d have to come back to get the full African American experience
in the city, an offer I intend to take her up on one day. But we also learned
that Sharon Richardson had her own story to tell—-of being a teenager
prompted by her mother to hand out water to the hundreds of thousands of
marchers who came to pay their last respects to King in his funeral procession
one hot day in Atlanta in 1968.
She admitted she wasn’t too enthused when she was urged to do that
simple act of charity all those years ago. Today, though, she’s thankful
that her mom made her do it. Sharon Richardson is part of Atlanta’s
rich history as much as anyone.
