ATLANTA — The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s last home on Atlanta’s Sunset Avenue is now part of the National Park Service and will - at some point - be open to visitors.
The National Park Foundation, National Park Service and members of the King family announced Thursday that the four-bedroom, Vine City home will become part of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park.
Bernice King, CEO of the King Center and youngest daughter of the King family, said she hopes people will now gain “greater insight into my father holistically.”
The family moved into the home in 1965. King was assassinated April 4, 1968.
Sunset Avenue is where Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King raised their four children. It was a place where other civil rights leaders gathered and held strategy sessions.
It was also where the Kings became a normal family. They shared meals around the table. They played. They celebrated holidays and special occasions.
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Bernice King, 55, said the home provided refuge for her father, who was on the road a lot.
The last person to live at the home was her mother, who moved to a condo on Peachtree Road in 2004.
The family, though, continued to own the home.
Over the years, it was tough emotionally to consider parting with the home, but it's something Bernice King's mother had talked about doing to preserve it for others to share and visit.
“It was a struggle coming to grips of not having the home anymore the way that we had it,” Bernice King said.
Park officials said it could be at least a year before the public can view the home where King and his family lived. There’s work to be done on the structure to make the home ready for the large volume of visitors who want to experience the personal side of the civil rights leader.
The National Park Foundation purchased the home Jan. 8, via private philanthropy, from the estate of Coretta Scott King and immediately transferred it to the National Park Service.
This follows the National Park Foundation’s purchase and transfer of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birth home on Auburn Ave. in late 2018. That home has been open to visitors for decades.
After his assassination on April 4, 1968, Coretta Scott King and their children continued to live in the Sunset Ave. home.
This article was written by Shelia Poole and Ernie Suggs, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.