Four days after Rosa Parks’s arrest in Montgomery, a young Martin Luther King Jr. stepped in front of more than five thousand people and delivered a speech that changed the trajectory of history. His comments on December 5, 1955, launched the Montgomery bus boycott and what would become the modern civil rights movement. After decades of neglect, the site of the mass meeting, Holt Street Baptist Church, recently reopened as a museum and joined the United States Civil Rights Trail. The congregation, which remains active in the community at a different location, raised $1.5 million to restore the crumbling building, says the Reverend Willie D. McClung, pastor emeritus and a friend of King and his family’s. Museum visitors can now see the desk where King quickly scribbled his remarks before his speech, and then sit in pews and listen to a recording of him delivering the rousing address. It’s an emotional experience for visitors, McClung says. “They get very quiet. There are a lot of tears shed.”
Southern Agenda