Civil Rights Museum Planned for King Home
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The house where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lived in 1955 as he led the Montgomery bus boycott is undergoing a $300,000 renovation to become a living history museum. The project, scheduled for completion in 2004, a year before the 50th anniversary of the historic boycott, will be the latest addition to the Montgomery area’s growing number of restored civil rights landmarks. ”It was the scene of a lot of the hustle and bustle at the height of the civil rights movement,” said the Rev. Michael Thurman, the pastor at King’s former church, now known as the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church. The house was bombed in 1956, with Coretta Scott King, the Kings’ young daughter and a church member inside. No one was injured. Thomas McPherson, vice president of a foundation formed a year ago to raise money to restore the house, said the building was used as a parsonage until 1994 and has been empty since then. Mr. McPherson said the main focus of the museum would be to give visitors a feel for the era when King wrote sermons before he was catapulted into the international spotlight. ”We have the desk and the chair he worked in while he lived there,” Mr. McPherson said. Plans for the 2,000-square-foot house, which has a four-column porch, hardwood floors and a fireplace, include reupholstering much of the original furniture from the Kings’ bedroom and living room. King and his family lived in the house from 1954 to 1960, when his oratorical and leadership skills brought the growing civil rights movement to a head and he left to become a full-time organizer. The foundation has received a $240,000 community development block grant from the city and $70,000 from church members. The Alabama Historical Commission has contributed $50,000 to the project. The house is in a neighborhood known as Centennial Hill, which was developed in the late 1870’s and was the first substantial black residential neighborhood in Montgomery. Teachers, ministers, doctors and businessmen made their homes in the neighborhood, which is bordered at one end by historically black Alabama State University. ”It was our hope the parsonage would become the catalyst around which other buildings in the community would be restored,” Mr. Thurman said. More : query.nytimes.com |