AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) – The life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are once again being celebrated across the nation today.
The civil rights icon is the only non-president with a federal holiday named in his honor.
On Monday, we learned the Lucy Craft Laney Museum is working to teach that history.
King was assassinated in April of 1968 when he was just 39 years old. He would be turning 96 this month.
King’s home congregation was in Atlanta – and just a few hours away, Augusta is full of history and ties to MLK as well.
History – we’re surrounded by it.
“One of the great things about Augusta is that we have a long legacy of civil rights here,” said Corey Rogers, a historian at the Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History.
Names like reverend C.S. Hamilton and Lucy Craft Laney. Then there’s one name connected to Augusta in more ways than one.
“His entire family would often come here to Augusta for different Baptist conventions and different conferences that were being held here,” said Rogers.
Growing up, Dr. King and his family would stay at the Bohler House on Phillips Steet.
Far from his last stay here.
“Dr. King came here in 1962 with other civil rights leaders like Wyatt Walker, and they came here to talk about voter registration and voter education,” said Rogers.
Fast forward six years later.
“His return trip was geared around the second march on Washington, which was being framed as the poor people’s march,” said Rogers. “So he was crisscrossing Georgia, rallying people. Rallying the grassroots, getting them ready for this second march on Washington. Unfortunately, about a week and a half after leaving Augusta, he would be assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.”
Times have changed since – but one thing remains constant.
“Connecting people with their civil rights roots, telling them about the richness of Augusta and how the students at Paine College, the preachers in Augusta, the students from Augusta, came together and affected change in our city,” said Rogers.
Ensuring generations to come remember those who came before.
“It’s incumbent upon us to dig a little bit deeper,” said Corey Rogers, a historian at the Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History. “Find out those connections between Dr. King and other civil rights leaders in those respective towns and share those stories because everybody, every town, every city has a very unique story to tell as it relates to civil rights and Dr. King.
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