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Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park

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Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park

The Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park covers about 35 acres (0.14 km2) and includes several sites in Atlanta, Georgia related to the life and work of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Within the park are his boyhood home and Ebenezer Baptist Church – the church where King was baptized and both he and his father, Martin Luther King Sr., were pastors – as well as the grave site of King and his wife, civil rights activist Coretta Scott King.

The park is administered by the National Park Service and has a visitor center and museum.

These places, critical to the interpretation of the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and his legacy as a leader of the American civil rights movement, were originally included in the National Historic Site or National Historic Landmark listings first established on October 10, 1980. The site was expanded and designated as a national historical park through a bipartisan bill long championed by John Lewis and signed on January 8, 2018, by President Donald Trump.

In total, the buildings included in the site make up 35 acres (0.14 km2). The visitor center contains a museum that chronicles the American Civil Rights Movement and the path of Martin Luther King Jr. The King Center for Nonviolent Social Change includes the burial place of King, and his wife, activist Coretta Scott King. An 1894 firehouse (Fire Station No. 6) served the Sweet Auburn community until 1991, and now contains a gift shop and an exhibit on desegregation in the Atlanta Fire Department. The "I Have a Dream" International World Peace Rose Garden, and a memorial tribute to Mohandas K. Gandhi are part of the site, as is the "International Civil Rights Walk of Fame" which commemorates some of the courageous pioneers who worked for social justice.

In 2019, the National Park Foundation purchased the Life Home of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Sunset Avenue, where the family moved in 1965, from the estate of Coretta Scott King and transferred it to the National Park Service for restoration before it is opened to the public as an expansion of the National Historic Park.

Annual events celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January typically draw large crowds. Speakers have included presidents of the United States, national and local politicians, and civil rights leaders. Remembrances are also held during Black History Month (February), and on the anniversary of King's April 4, 1968, assassination in Memphis, Tennessee.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Historic District, an area bounded roughly by Irwin, Randolph, Edgewood, Jackson, and Auburn avenues, was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on May 2, 1974. The district included Ebenezer Baptist Church, King's grave site and memorial, King's birthplace, shotgun row houses, Victorian houses, the Atlanta Baptist Preparatory Institute site, Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, Fire Station No. 6, and the Triangle Building at the intersection of Old Wheat Street and Auburn Avenue.

Much of the area was designated as a national historic landmark district on May 5, 1977. The Trust for Public Land purchased 5 single-family homes along Auburn Avenue in the late 1970s, the same block Martin Luther King Jr. grew up on. The Trust for Public Land purchased more than a dozen properties over the next 20 years to create a parking lot as well as a pedestrian greenway to link the King district to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Center. In 2008, The Trust for Public Land acquired one of the remaining historic properties in the neighborhood, on the corner of Auburn Avenue.

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