(This image is of the memorial to Dr. King on the Mall in Washington DC. We like this one, and choose to run it today instead of the more stylized one unveiled in Boston this weekend. There is some controversy about the design of that one, and we prefer the resolute character of the one here in Washington. But that led us to some memories that are undisputed. On this day, we offer this in memory to an American who helped define the parameters of the times in which we lived.
– Vic).

It was not that long ago. September, Anno Domini 2006. Back then, there had been an incident on the plane going to Atlanta, a medical one, and thus that trip started out with a jerky edge. When eventually I got to it, the Conference had its moments. I had a chance to work the booth to attract government interest to our products, and I felt our Company got its money’s worth. Late on the second day, full up with glad-handing, I made a break for it.

The President was in the news then for a visit to the Ebenezer Church. Not the same one, of course. Then it was President Bush. On this weekend in the here-and-now of a New Year, it is President Biden. On the 2006 trip, the President was in town for a major address to a favorable audience about the War that was in progress at the time. I wanted to pay respects to Dr. King but avoid the Presidential entourage.

I would hate to have been in this town without a visit. Not to the President, of course. We are always stumbling over him back home. I skipped the afternoon Conference break-out session and took a cab to the Ebenezer Baptist Church. It is eight dollars on the meter to take you from the world of the Hyatt Hotel and Conference Center to the Church where Doctor King and his father thundered from the podium. And his mother’s fingers danced on the keyboard in accompaniment.

I wanted to tell them- or their memories- that I was sorry things had worked out the way they had. Their demonstration of courage helped shape all our young lives back then.

It was a quiet afternoon, since the kids were back in school. The blind Park Ranger was alone in the lobby of the church, and he told me to go upstairs on my own since the tour was self-guided.

The smell was old varnish and wax, and a little mold. The church had been declared a historic site in the 1970s, and the congregation moved to the modern new structure across Auburn Avenue, leaving this one as a National Monument.

There was a family down in the front row, and I waited quietly until they left and I was alone in the sanctuary. I walked down front, right to the velvet rope that encloses the pulpit, and the organ seat where Doctor King’s mother, Alberta Williams King, was gunned down in 1974. I turned around to imagine what this space would have been like, alive and full, with the rich robust music swelling around.

In the passage on the way out there was a gigantic photo blow-up of the funeral procession when they brought Dr. King’s coffin back home. The casket was placed in honor on a farm wagon pulled by two mules. I looked hard to count the white faces in that crowd long ago and remembered the days that followed his murder all across the nation.

His death brought a moment of change as profound as anything in that century.

Then I walked down the stairs to the street, and up the street, past the once-segregated Fire Station #6 and the Birth Home across the street from the shotgun row houses.

I took some pictures of the neighborhood before I went to see Doctor King. He is on an island in a cascading reflecting pool that angles away from the new Atlanta skyline. His marble vault is parallel to Peachtree Street. It is solemn and majestic, and a Park Service Ranger and I were the only ones there on the plaza.

Doctor King’s wife Coretta, a woman of immense dignity, rests in a less grand but equally solemn white tomb across the brick walkway, adjacent to the church outbuildings. Her resting place is surrounded by green growing things, and is as tranquil as Doctor King’s is stark.

I had to get back to the Conference, and I realized that while it was easy to get a cab from the highrise downtown to Sweet Auburn Street, but it was difficult to get back. I waited for a while, suit-coat over my arm, sweat starting to trickle down between my shoulder-blades.

No cabs cruised the area looking for business. It was very quiet.

In the end, I returned to the cool dark vestibule of the Ebenezer Church and asked how one might secure transportation from this National Monument. The Ranger looked into space with his sightless eyes and deftly hit a speed-dial number on his cell phone. He spoke into after a moment, saying “I have one from here. Going back Downtown.”

I thanked him and then stood pensively outside the church. I was panhandled politely by a man who was taking contributions to purchase a fried chicken special. The wait was long enough for a contemplation of the nature of time, but eventually a Checker Cab arrived, piloted by a man from a Caribbean island nation that he said was getting too crowded.

He was turning the car around when I looked back at the church. Five tourists in crash-helmets mounted on the curious Segue two-wheel personal transportation devices were rolling across Auburn Street. They stopped to congregate at the entrance to the church, under the neon sign.

The placard in front of the church clearly said: “No Parking,” and as we rolled away toward the downtown, I wondered what Doctor King might have thought about that, and I asked the driver.

He laughed when he saw the riders perched on their wheels. Their backs were straight to maintain balance and avoid falling. They looked like curious birds. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think he might have thought we would be flying by now.”

Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com