Martin Luther King, Jr. Park and Family Ent Center
MARION, Ala. (AP) — Bullet holes pock a rusted mailbox outside the vacant home where Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott were married in 1953. Office of the old wooden structure has complanate, equally have nearby utility buildings.
Virtually anyplace continued to the all-time-known voice of the ceremonious rights motion is a magnet for tourists, particularly around the Jan vacation honoring King'south birthday and in February during Blackness History Month. His birthplace in Atlanta is a national historic park; the parsonage where he and his married woman lived in Montgomery is office of the U.Due south. Ceremonious Rights Trail.
All the same the spot where the Kings spent 1 of the nigh of import days of their lives — the childhood domicile of Coretta Scott King, who went on to establish the King Eye in Atlanta following her husband'southward assassination in 1968 — sits all just unknown on the side of a 2-lane highway in rural Perry County, ane of Alabama's poorest places. Even some locals remain largely unaware of its historical importance.
"I don't really know anything about the firm," said Kay Beckett, president of the Perry County Historical and Preservation Society.
An expert said the Scott habitation is one of many important Black historical sites that have been forgotten across the nation.
"Information technology's really more than typical than you'd imagine. We laissez passer past many Black heritage sites every twenty-four hour period, standing in apparently sight seemingly without history or meaning. Yet, these overlooked places hold infrequent cultural and educational value," said Brent Leggs, executive director of the African American Cultural Heritage Activity Fund, part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The activity fund recently received a $20 meg donation to preserve Black churches, and it has raised more than $lxx 1000000 to assistance with more than 200 preservation projects nationally since being started following the deadly "Unite the Correct" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. Notwithstanding the Scott and King families' wedding ceremony venue is all but off the radar.
At that place's no unmarried reason why the place is a forgotten relic, officials say. One problem is that it's far off the beaten path for travelers, nowhere near a major highway and about 75 miles (121 kilometers) from Birmingham to the northeast or Montgomery to the due east.
Besides, it's privately owned and not open to the public. Tax records prove the property is owned past Bernice King, the couple's youngest daughter, and not much has e'er been washed with it. Bernice Rex didn't respond to email messages well-nigh the home that were sent to aides at The Male monarch Center, where she works every bit chief executive.
"It is standing and they accept a caretaker who cuts the grass," said Albert Turner Jr., a county commissioner whose begetter Albert Turner led civil rights activities in the region and advised King.
Cars and bout buses occasionally terminate by, longtime neighbor William Carter said, just there'due south no sign or historic marker to tell the holding'south story. He still misses Coretta King's parents, Obie and Bernice M. Scott, who died in 1998 and 1996, respectively.
"Him and his wife were the nicest people I e'er met in my life," said Carter.
Coretta Scott, a Marion native, and King, who grew up in Atlanta, met in Boston in the early on 1950s while he was attending Boston University and she was studying opera at the New England Solarium of Music.
"She talked nigh things other than music. I never will forget, the first discussion we had was almost the question of racial and economical injustice and the question of peace," King wrote in his autobiography.
The two midweek in the front yard of the wood-frame home on June 18, 1953, with King's father performing the anniversary; a hymeneals photo showed him in a white jacket, her in a gown. Their marriage license is still at the county courthouse in Marion, logged in a volume marked "COLORED" in keeping with the Jim Crow law at the fourth dimension that required segregating everything by race, even wedlock records.
Scott'due south parents remained at the white business firm with a wide front porch while the young couple lived in Boston and so Montgomery earlier settling in Atlanta. Obie Scott preached at the nearby Mt. Tabor A.M.E. Zion Church and operated a country store right beside the dwelling house; a cash annals, scales and cigar boxes are among the items however visible through a broken front window.
It's not that the Kings are forgotten in Perry County. The home is located on Coretta Scott King Memorial Highway, and a bust of Coretta Male monarch erected following her death in 2006 stands outside the Mt. Tabor church.
Only some believe more should be done. Perry County Probate Judge Eldora B. Anderson, who lives in suburban Birmingham, said she took her grandchildren to come across the house and church.
"They had so many questions," she said.
Leggs, the preservationist, said in an electronic mail interview that the Scott home "is a cultural asset important to our nation's 20th century history."
"This habitation stands equally the physical bear witness and existence of a nifty American and a slap-up family legacy," he said.
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Reeves is a member of AP's Race and Ethnicity team.
Source: https://chinapost.nownews.com/20220210-3100588
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