"What'll Ya Have?"

We started out the day with a walking tour of downtown. We walked by where the Race Riot of 1906 happened. We learned about where the headquarters of the 1915 Ku Klux Klan was located, or at least was presumed to be located. On our walk we saw several different things related to Atlanta's history, or at least saw the spot where it took place. Rich's department store Clock was were many people would meet up in town, it is also at this site where Lonnie King and Martin Luther King met on the bridge for their sit in.

Next stop was Georgia's State Capitol building. This is where we had the pleasure of meeting and listening to Gwendolyn Middlebrooks speak. Gwen was one of the students that went along with Lonnie King during the Student Movement of the 1960's. She went to the all-girls school Spelman, which was located right next to Morehouse. She started out her speech by saying that she had known Martin Luther King, but the way she said it sounded like she had only met him a few times. After listening to her for a little while, you came to realize she actually knew the King's very well and her stories about him humanized him and made him relatable rather than just a public figure. Gwen used to drive him around and she described his car as a beater, with scratches and even a hole in the floor. She would babysit for the King family, she remembers one night specifically, she was babysitting and all of a sudden she saw that the cross outside the window was burning. Members of the Klan had come to send a message. To be at the King's house when something like this happens, I can't even imagine how I would have reacted, but Gwen, was scared but calm while she called Daddy King to figure out what she should do. She also talked about lighter times, she had Martin Luther King's car while he was out of town, so her and her girlfriends went out to get burgers and fries and bring them back to Spelman. They had a curfew and were going to be late, so they were driving as fast as they could to get back in time. All of a sudden the road was narrow and another car tried to pass, Gwen ends up grazing three separate cars, she "unethically" kept going back to Spelman. When they got back and checked the car, she couldn't even tell where she hit the other cars because the car already had so many scratches on the side, it was hard to tell what she had done. That got a laugh out of all of us. Hearing stories of Martin Luther King from his family life, rather than the political side made him seem like any other person.

Lunch was at The Varsity. It was a large restaurant and you order up at the registers before trekking through the place to find a seat. When you head up to the register, you better know what you want because all of the servers start asking you, "What'll ya have?" They have chili cheese dogs, burgers and fries. When we went to have a seat (we didn't listen to the instructions of the third room back) we found this room that had all school desks in the room. Since this is a conference for teachers, we thought it was a little ironic that there were all school desks in this room, so we ended up sitting there and enjoying our food.

Right after lunch, we headed over to the National Center of Civil and Human Rights. This was a very powerful museum. It reminded me of when I had attended the Holocaust Museum in DC. Everyone in there was very quiet and taking everything in. It was very interesting to me to see several of the things I had just had the opportunity to talk to my students about. It was fresh in my mind, so it was really interesting to see information on The Little Rock Nine, Orval Faubus and the Jim Crow Laws. The next area of the museum was the most impactful. There is a section where you sit in a diner seat, put on head phones, place your hands on a counter, and close your eyes. It is a recreation of what might have happened in a sit-in. In your ear, you hear someone calmly saying you've made it, you're doing just fine. As this persons voice disappears, you start to hear a bunch of people talking, almost as if you were in the diner. Next comes, the banging of the chair. The shouts. Someone screaming in your ear, calling you names. Bang. Bang. Bang. Yelling. Shouting. Whispering nasty, evil things in your ear. I know this doesn't even do the actual sit-ins justice, but just getting a little taste into what it must have felt like for those who sat there, you realize how powerful those moments in our history really are. Overall, this museum was a speechless experience and I'm so thankful to have walked through it. It really left you thinking and opened doors for a conversation, which I can't wait to have with students.