In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., I wanted to take time to share my personal experience visiting the King National Historic Site. The following is a letter I sent to Superintendent Judy Forte, in appreciation and gratitude for my experience.
I wish to express my appreciation for the solemn experience I had visiting the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site. My wife and I had the opportunity to visit the site in April of this year, and we felt the presentation of King’s history and legacy was outstanding.
The experience of sitting in a pew in The Heritage Sanctuary of Ebenezer Baptist Church, with King’s voice filling the hall as selections of his recorded sermons were played, was extremely powerful. For a moment, I imagined what it might have felt like to be present when King spoke those words. Instead of thinking of King solely as an historic figure, I felt I could feel the heart of the man, calling out and summoning the hearts of all of us. I was profoundly moved.
On a personal note, we also had the great fortune to interact with a friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable young man employed at the site. When we arrived, my wife and I went to the Visitor Center’s front desk, and this gentleman was kind enough to answer our questions and give us some recommendations for lunch, even labeling a map for us. After lunch, we visited King’s Birth Home, the book store, and The King Center.
We then stepped into Ebenezer Baptist Church, where we met the same young man. We thanked him for his lunch recommendation, and he described the layout of the church and offered to answer any questions we had. We visited the Fellowship Hall, then ascended the stairs and entered The Heritage Sanctuary.
When we returned to the entryway, my wife asked the young man if there was significance to the hymn numbers displayed in the Sanctuary. He explained that those were the hymns for King’s funeral service. He also shared, poignantly, that one of the recordings played in the Sanctuary was a sermon King had delivered just months before his death; a recording that, because it was a most fitting and appropriate eulogy for his life, was played at the funeral. Those were the words that had just filled my ears, mind, and heart in the Sanctuary.
The young man further went on to describe how prophetic King’s last days seemed, and recommended the short film about King’s Last Days that is shown at the Visitor’s Center. Another worker there pointed out that there would only be one more showing for the day, so our friend suggested we hurry over and ask them if they could show “King’s Last Days.”
When we arrived, a film had just begun, and we were the only ones in the room. The film shown was indeed “King’s Last Days.” We may have just been fortunate; but I suspect that, perhaps, this young man had a hand in our luck.
At any rate, I was deeply affected by my entire experience at the King National Historic Site. And, this young man, whose name I sadly do not know, will forever be inexorably woven into that experience.
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