December 29, 2001: A wreath marks the spot where Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in Memphis. The building of the Lorraine Motel was incorporated into the National Civil Rights Museum.
Our trip to the 2001 Independence Bowl, like so many vacations both with family and by myself, had a big dose of history involved. My brother was doing a History Day project on the Little Rock Nine, but that wasn’t needed as a hook to visit two key sites in the civil rights movement: Little Rock Central High School and then the National Civil Rights Museum. The museum’s path takes you near the place Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, its significance amplified by everything you’ve seen and heard in the time before.
Then in 2009, in my second and so-far last trip to DC, we went to the Lincoln Memorial at night. Along with a small cluster of students, I listened to the “I Have a Dream” speech — standing at the spot where King gave it. That, too, was very powerful.
I don’t think it’s possible to hear the end of the last speech he gave, the day before he died, without getting chills.