I was in Atlanta last weekend for the annual CCCC.  I managed to find time Saturday morning to visit the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site.  An explanation as to why I made this visit hardly seems necessary-- any American-- likely, any citizen of the Western world-- recognizes King's significance.  The site includes King's childhood home, burial tomb, and several buildings holding exhibitions on King, Rosa Parks, Ghandi, and other civil rights information.  The Ebenezer Baptist Church is in the same block-- this is the church where King, Jr. grew up-- watching his father at the pulpit.  King, Jr. held the pulpit there too. 

The site is run by the National Park Service.  In the past, I've always been impressed by NPS sites and facilities.  This site, however, seems less well-kept. 

There's chipping paint along the border of the pool which surrounds the burial vault that holds King and his wife.  There's debris resting in the bottom of the pool.  Shouldn't this be better maintained?  Why isn't the site pristine?  This doesn't seem to do him justice.

 

Inside the exhibits, there are history lessons and artifacts.  Clothes, signs, letters, etc.  (See my full set of photos here.)  In a poorly-lit hallway was a modest showcase with a few items displayed. 

I saw this and I stopped.  I shivered.  Nobel. Peace. Prize. 

It's here.  Right here.  And I'm looking at it. 

I felt something larger than myself in that moment.  I felt humble.  I felt awe. 

But I also felt this display was inadequate.  Hallway, bad lighting, slightly crooked case.  This, I felt, deserves more.  This is how I envision the display:

You walk into a velvet-black room.  You see nothing except the medal, suspended from the ceiling at a height about a foot above eye level-- so you have to look up to see it.  Spotlights focus on it.  It rotates slowly.  It's a quiet room-- no King audio here.  It is a reflective space. 

As I pictured this, I thought about that medal.  How I want it to spin so everyone can see both sides.  Then I looked again at this display-- both sides of the medal are shown. 

Immediately, I became suspicious.  Is this a fake?  Does the Nobel committee issue each winner a handful of museum-appropriate replicas?  Where is the real one?  I reread the caption-- it doesn't actually say "The Nobel Peace Prize"-- in English, we're trained to closely read the text.  And this text isn't telling me what I want to hear. 

Is it fake?  I don't know.  I suspect it is.  I would have asked, but I wanted to protect the possibility that this medal is the one that King held in his hands.  I want to see the REAL thing-- not a replica. 

I left the exhibit, a little disappointed.  I picked up a book and a DVD in the gift shop and walked out, past the burial vault again.  Noticing the disrepair.  The anticlimactic medal display.  There seems a disparity.  I want the polish of the memorial to mimic-- at least aspire to mimic-- King's significance. 

In the days since Saturday, I've been reading The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.  This is a posthumously crafted, edited, and published work that traces King's political and religious life.  It contains some texts penned directly by King, but the bulk of it is a crafted first-person narrative (authorized by King's estate). 

Reading this has vastly expanded my understanding of the civil rights movement.  It has also reminded me that for King, his work was always about the movement, not himself.  He would not seek to be idolized, sanitized, or put on a pedestal.  He would not, I think, want to simply be a day off work. 

I think he would also resist being remembered as anything but a fallible human.  We don't talk about it as much, but King was unfaithful to his wife.  He was also found to have failed to give proper credit to source material in his doctoral dissertation.  (More on both here.)

Clearly, King was not perfect.  He never claimed to be.  And I would argue that none of his foibles undermine his strengths. 

In his death, though, he became a martyr.  We forget or ignore the flaws in our martyrs.  They become figures that we use for our own ends.  I think, in the case of MLK, we use him to feel good about the progress our country has made since the days when a white man could own-- OWN-- a black person. 

King would not want this feel-good veneer to obscure the persisting problems of poverty and war.  King would want-- did want-- us to serve:

President Obama called attention to this when he called for MLK Day to be a day of service. 

As I finish the autobiography-- perhaps tonight-- I'm left with enduring questions-- what can I do?  About inequality?  About poverty?  Give a dollar to the homeless vet-- they're always homeless vets-- standing at the edge of the road?  Buy some Kraft Mac & Cheese and donate it to the food bank?  Any of these might be a little helpful, but none of these address the problems that lead to unemployment, hunger, and poverty. 

I wonder where our champions are now-- our fallible but intelligent and committed leaders.  I want to draw on the well of inspiration, but I can't help feeling a little hopeless at the same time.