Qualla: Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park

Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park: Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Department of the Interior, CC BY-SA 2.0. The house at 501 Auburn Avenue is not grand. It is a two-story Queen Anne, built in 1895, with a front porch and a parlor and bedrooms upstairs -- the kind of home that lined thousands of Southern streets at the turn of the century. But on January 15, 1929, a boy was born in its second-floor bedroom who would change the conscience of a nation. Martin Luther King Jr. spent the first twelve years of his life in this house, walked a block west to be baptized at Ebenezer Baptist Church, and returned to that same pulpit as a pastor. Today, the 35 acres surrounding these places form a national park dedicated not just to one man's life, but to the movement he came to embody.

Image: U.S. Department of the Interior | CC BY-SA 2.0

Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park: Sweet Auburn's Roots

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Netherlands Embassy, CC BY 2.0. King's maternal grandparents, the Reverend Adam Daniel Williams and his wife Jennie, bought the Auburn Avenue house for $3,500 in 1909. Reverend Williams was pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, the spiritual anchor of what would become one of the most prosperous Black neighborhood...

Image: Netherlands Embassy | CC BY 2.0

Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park: The Church That Shaped a Movement

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Netherlands Embassy, CC BY 2.0. Ebenezer Baptist Church, just a block west of the birth home, is where three generations of Kings preached. Martin Luther King Sr. served as co-pastor beginning in 1927, and his son joined him at the pulpit in 1960. The church became a staging ground for the civil rights movement...

Image: Netherlands Embassy | CC BY 2.0

Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park: A Place of Rest and Remembrance

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit edward stojakovic from Portland, OR, United States, CC BY 2.0. After King's assassination on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, his wife Coretta Scott King founded the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change on Auburn Avenue. In 1977, a memorial tomb was dedicated, and King's remains were moved to a plaza between the ce...

Image: edward stojakovic from Portland, OR, United States | CC BY 2.0

Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park: Hallowed Ground, Living History

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit edward stojakovic from Portland, OR, United States, CC BY 2.0. The park's footprint has expanded steadily since the original National Historic Site designation on October 10, 1980. A bipartisan bill championed by Congressman John Lewis elevated it to a national historical park in January 2018. An 1894 firehouse -- Fire Station No. 6 -- serve...

Image: edward stojakovic from Portland, OR, United States | CC BY 2.0