Historians at Morehouse College are using the week of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday to draw attention to how specific places across Atlanta helped shape his thinking and the civil rights movement, many of which are still standing today.
One of the most influential was Sale Hall Chapel on the Morehouse College campus.
"We have a photo of Doctor King sitting right here preparing for the conversation," said Dr. Harold V. Bennett, the Martin Luther King Jr. Endowed Chair in Philosophy and Religion at Morehouse College. "Whatever the lecture was that day, whatever the topic was, we have a photo of this intellectual, spiritual giant getting ready for whatever the brothers were about to get introduced to that day."
Bennett says King spent countless hours in the chapel listening to lectures by his mentor, Dr. Benjamin E. Mays, who served as president of the college for more than two decades. Historians at Morehouse say the only class ever taught by King was held in Sale Hall Chapel and that his approach to civil rights was deeply shaped during his undergraduate years there, when he earned his bachelor's degree.
"This was a place where he felt a sense of release," Bennett said. "Freedom to think about what was going on, the plight of oppressed folk, and to understand that you don't have to separate theory from praxis. All of it goes together."
After returning to Atlanta following the Montgomery Bus Boycott, historians say King relied on a network of trusted locations across the city to plan strategy and organize, often moving between them for safety.
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"There was a sense of safety and security in venues that were in the heart of the Black community," said Dr. Clarissa Myrick-Harris White, Ph.D., a professor of Africana Studies at Morehouse College. "They needed to have a variety of places to meet. Safety was one of the reasons they could not meet in the same locations every time."