On Wednesday we headed back to Atlanta again. We started the day with lunch at True Food Kitchen in Buckhead (the Beverly Hills of Atlanta) to have lunch with our friend Sherrie, who moved here last December. It was fun to see her and catch up and the food was awesome! Like being home!

Then we drove over to the MLK National Historic Site.

Unfortunately it is being renovated so things were limited. We had a chance to see MLK’s boyhood home and neighborhood which is a national park preserved historical site. We would have had to wait 2 hours for the tour of his house, so we eavesdropped on the tour outside the house for a few minutes, but did not get to go in.

A block down from the historical block there is a center which has rooms dedicated to artifacts of Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King, Ghandi and Rosa Parks. We also had a chance to visit the original (and beautiful) Ebenezer Baptist Church which is where MLK was a preacher. It now preserved as a museum. (They have built a new Ebenezer Baptist Church across the street.) When you walk into the nave they have a recording of Martin Luther King’s Drum Major speech playing. It is quite an experience to sit in the silent room hearing his booming voice.

Afterward we headed back home, hoping to be ahead of the Atlanta traffic, which is just as bad a LA!

With Nate gone, on Tuesday we had some decent weather to go into Atlanta which is about and hour drive from Jasper where we are staying. Alexis took the day off from school to join us. (There was a funeral that day for a student from her school so the teachers were not doing much in class.)

We started the day at the Center for Civil and Human Rights.

Going through the exhibit was like taking a walk though civil rights history. The displays were set up in chronological order of the significant events from the early 50’s to the late 60’s. It was a perfect summary of of events for Alexis and Shayna to learn an overview of what happened in the south during the civil rights era. The one hands-on exhibit was a lunch counter. You sit at the counter, put on a set of headphones, then put your hands on the counter which starts a recording and a timer. The recording replicates the harassment experienced by the participants of the lunch counter sit-ins, and it measure how long you can tolerate it. It was very difficult for Alexis who lasted about 20 seconds. Shayna was not allowed to do it without my permission and the recording was a bit too violent for her in my opinion.

The exhibit included a biography of many of the key players during the civil rights events. We were able to find multiple pictures and descriptions of John Lewis, which connects to our seeing him while we were in the House gallery in Washington.

The upper floor of the Center holds a human rights exhibit which provided a overview of the meaning of human rights, summaries of some of the human rights issues people face today and biographies of key players in the human rights efforts from the past and present.

From there our day got a bit less educational. We went to the World of Coca Cola which is right next door to the Center for Civil and Human Rights. It is interesting if you are a Coca Cola fan or thirsty because you receive free drinks when you walk in, and unlimited tastings in the tasting room.

After that we walked through Centennial Park,

which was not as big as I had imagined, to get to CNN where we took the CNN tour. It was interesting but not as immersive into the world of news production as I was hoping.