Martin Luther King:
Martin Luther King was born in Atlanta in 1929 and his legacy has left its mark on Atlanta. During the 1960's Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr. transformed the city into the centre of the American Civil Rights Movement. Throughout the decade of the 1960's King held a number of non violent demonstrations to protest against the widespread racial segregation of the time. Before King, Black people were denied the right to vote, they could not sit on juries, they could not eat at lunch counter or use white only bathrooms, they even denied the right to own their own home. The movement that Dr King established changed this. King was a huge believer in peace and believed that the only way to achieve equal rights for the black community was by peaceful means. King was born in on Auburn Avenue in the Sweet Auburn district of Atlanta. Sweet Auburn has traditionally been the home of the black community in Atlanta. It is home to many meetings conducted by civil rights leaders such as Hosea Williams and John Lewis. Dr King was assassinated in 1968, but in Sweet Auburn his memory lives on. The area is now home to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site.
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