The picture above was taken from the King Center. The Center, currently under the family’s stewardship, was originally founded in 1968 by Coretta Scott King shortly after her husband’s assasination. The late Reverand Martin Luther King Jr now lies in a tomb surrounded by a reflecting pool. The red brick building closest to King’s tombstone, is the Ebenezer Baptist Church where Reverands King Sr and Jr preached. Today, the building mainly houses Ebenezer’s administration while church goers from all over the city congregate in the new sanctuary accross Auburn Avenue. Below, Sunday church goers are seen leaving the new building of Ebenezer Baptist Church.

Coretta Scott King, who passed away earlier this year, now lies in a tomb close to her husband’s. Many come to pay their respects and snap pictures of loved ones sitting by Mrs King’s resting place. In the picture above (right), one can also see the Martin Luther King Historic Site visitor’s center. It too is situated accross Auburn Avenue, adjacent, in fact, to the new Ebenezer Church. Accross the Site’s visitor’s center, stands the StoryCorps Airstream trailer! (In the picture above it is just above the head of a man dressed in black, standing on the side walk with a camera he is about to use to capture images of Coretta Scott King’s tombstone).

Martin Luther King Jr was born one block away from where he first preached with his father and from where he now lies in a tomb. The picture above was taken from the front porch of his birth home. King grew up in a neighborhood where Blacks had been forced to retreat after White mobs massacred members of the community in 1906. Black institutions and businesses that emerged after Emancipation were able to thrive despite the setback. In fact, during the interwar period, early civil rights leader and Atlanta resident, John Wesley Dobbs, used to say that Auburn Avenue was the richest Black street in the country and consequently dubbed it “Sweet Auburn”.

With integration however, came disinvestment and the neighborhood’s “sweetness” wore off. Since the 1990s there has been an effort to revitalize “Sweet Auburn”. One example of that is the restauration of the late 19th century houses seen above.

CECILE: I’m John Cecile Daniels. I go by Cecile. I’m 75 years of age and today’s date is March the 5th 2006. We’re in Atlanta. We’ll be talking with my wife of 53 years, on our life basically.

ELSIE: My name is Elsie Todd Daniels. I’m 73. I’ll soon be 74. [Ö]

CECILE: Elsie, of course we’ve been married 53 years. We know each other quite well but for this, I’d like for you to go into somewhat detail of circumstances around your birth.

ELSIE: I was born on a beautiful spring day in April. Apple trees blooming in the little valley, a very isolated valley in the North Georgia MountainsÖ Beautiful stream… Catch fish… All that there. I was the 4th child. My mother had 6 children in 8 years. The log cabin had no electricity. We had no car. We had a family truck that we used on the farm quite a bit, but we did a lot of walking [Ö].

CECILE: I was born on the other end of the state, the southern end of the state. Actually, it was a border county to Florida. You was in a border county to North Crolina. [Ö]. I was born at hime which was not unusual in those days. You were in a remote area, no townÖ

ELSIE: Ö[for] 25 milesÖ

CECILE: Öand I lived on the edge of a small town in South Georgia.

The couple met on the telephone while he was serving time for rape, robbery and kidnapping. “How did I seem to you?” Clarence asks, sitting across from Yvonne in our Storybooth. “Well your mouth was filthy! Profanity, oh my God!” she recalls. Then, she explains, God showed her there was a purpose to their meeting: She was to save his soul. Clarence pushed her away at first, angry and bitter at having been convicted for crimes he did not commit. During 7 years of letter writing and candid conversations, Clarence and Yvonne gradually fell in love. Shortly after Clarence Harrison was finally exonerated and freed, Yvonne became Mrs. Harrison. On their wedding day, she felt like “Cinderella at a ball”.

StoryCorps’ East Mobile Booth just opened its doors to people living in the Atlanta area. Today, facilitator Jonah Engle helped Calah Singleton interview her mother Camara Phyllis Jones. Along with co-facilitator Nadja Middleton, he will be welcoming participants here until the end of March. The trailer is parked opposite the entrance to the visitor’s center of the Martin Luther King Jr National Historic Site. Apparently, people from all walks of life and of all ages visit this site. Following a tour of the MLK site, some students and teachers from the Casa Montesori added to their afternoon program a surprise tour of the StoryBooth. The kids were particularly excited about choosing a few StoryCorps pins to take as souvenirs!