We’re on the flight path towards home today, with an early a.m. departure from Atlanta and a connection in Chicago. Hopefully we’ll bypass the various weather systems and get home on time.
Yesterday we walked from our hotel to the Martin Luther King National Historic Site. Not physically too far, less than a mile and a half, but its a different world. You pass through what was once a prosperous black neighborhood known as “Sweet Auburn,” which lost its glitter decades ago.
When we finally reached the historic site, we visited Ebenezer Baptist Church, then the visitors center across the street.
One of the exhibits featured figures illustrating progress through landmarks of civil rights history. I immediately recognized the man with the crutches as Jim Letherer, who is seen in many classic photographs as he marched with King from Selma to Montgomery in 1965.
After seeing this, we went over to talk to one of the National Park Service staff at the front desk, identified Jim Letherer, and then showed him a photo I took of Letherer among the participants in a 1974 protest by Sonny Kaniho against the policies of the Hawaiian Homes Commission. He was mighty interested.
Don’t you love discovering these connections in our small world?
–> See more photos from our few days in Atlanta.
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Those are wonderful photographs. And I am just amazed that on the spur of the moment you were able to pull up your photo of Jim Letherer and Sonny Kaniho folks to show to the man at the Martin Luther King Historical Site. Whatever happened to Jim, I wonder?
I hope you got to walk a little further down Auburn Avenue to get to MLK’s childhood home.
I just now have seen your photo of the Silver Moon, and it pains me. For many years, that was my barbershop when I lived in Atlanta, and it was thriving then (even though Auburn’s prime years were decades in the past), and it was still thriving on my last visit in 2000. I always sat in the chair that was right there where you see the blue padding (?) with the pipe lying on top of it.
I thought surely it would never close. I can only surmise that the patriarch of the family that ran the shop retired or passed away, and the kids (who were also barbers there) either didn’t want or were unable to continue. In any case, I spent many hours listening to conversations there while waiting my turn, in the classic kind of old-timey black barbershop that may not exist in too many places anymore.
On the wall was a photographic portrait of the man who founded the barbershop in 1904. IIRC, he had a grand moustache, typical of the first years of the century.