'I have a dream' home

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) -- The home where Martin Luther King changed from Montgomery pastor to national civil rights leader has been restored to its 1950s appearance, providing another tourist site in a city that describes itself as the "Birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement."
The white wooden-frame house near downtown was the parsonage for Dexter Avenue Baptist Church for nearly 80 years, but King was its most famous resident, rising to national prominence after black seamstress Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man. Her arrest launched a yearlong boycott of Montgomery's bus system, led by the young King and his soaring oratory, that resulted in a court ruling integrating Montgomery's segregated buses.
Restoration decision
After the parsonage sat empty for nearly a decade in the 1990s, church members decided to restore the way it looked when King lived there, including much of the furniture that was in the parsonage when he called it home from September 1954 to February 1960. Members talked with King's widow, Coretta, to make sure they got it right.
With its celery-colored walls, chenille bedspreads, portable record player and metal kitchen table, it matches the period perfectly.
"We wanted to provide for Dr. King as a husband, minister and father because we feel like that is a piece of history that needs to be put in place," said Thomas McPherson, vice president of the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Foundation.
Offers tours
The home, newly opened to the public last week offers tours Monday through Saturday, complementing the tours that are already offered a few blocks away at the church King served, now called the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church.
King was still new to Montgomery when Parks was arrested Dec. 1, 1955. The current Dexter Avenue minister, the Rev. Michael Thurman, said King hadn't developed any enemies or any debts in Montgomery, which made him a natural to lead the Montgomery Improvement Association, the organizers of the bus boycott.
As a protest against segregated buses and policies that required blacks to go to the rear of the bus or give whites their seats, thousands of blacks refused to ride the buses, walking or car-pooling instead. Largely empty buses traveled Montgomery's streets until the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Montgomery's segregated bus laws on Nov. 13, 1956.
"He was just the pastor until that happened. That is what put him in the limelight," said Vera Harris, a neighbor of King's who continues to reside three doors down from the parsonage.
She remembers King as a quiet man. "The only time he spoke loudly was in his sermons," she said.
Dangerous undertaking
Leading the bus boycott put King's life at risk. On Jan. 31, 1956, a bomb exploded on the front porch of the home, knocking out two front windows. His wife and daughter, inside the house, were uninjured.
King was leading a mass meeting at First Baptist Church several blocks away when the bomb went off. Avis Dunbar, tourism manager for the King home, was a 5-year-old girl living a couple of blocks away, and she still remembers the night vividly.
"I felt the ground shaking," she said.
King rushed home. A huge crowd quickly gathered, some intent on getting revenge. But King quickly settled down the crowd and sent everyone home, further establishing his reputation for nonviolence.
The night left Dunbar with a fear that lingered throughout her childhood. But there were also fond memories of King as pastor and neighbor that she wants to convey through tours at the house.
"We want to talk about Rev. King as a pastor and how he lived his domestic life. Everybody in the neighborhood knew him. He was a nice man," she said.
The cost
Restoring the house and opening it to the public cost $450,000, with money coming from federal, state and local funds, and donations from church members and the community.
Harris is excited about what is happening on her street.
"After Rev. King passed, I thought that was the end of it. I didn't think they'd ever produce anything on Jackson Street," she said.
The King home joins a growing list of black heritage attractions in Montgomery, including the Rosa Parks Museum and the Civil Rights Memorial, which honors people slain during the civil rights movement.
Alabama's tourism agency once sought tourists by billing the state capital as "The Cradle of the Confederacy," where Jefferson Davis took the oath as president of the Confederate States.
But the agency realized the potential of a different lure 20 years ago when, during the last administration of King's old nemesis, Gov. George C. Wallace, it put out a brochure to promote Alabama's civil rights history.
Since then, nearly 1 million have been distributed.
Lee Sentell, state tourism director, said black heritage and civil rights attractions are becoming an important part of Alabama's $6.8 billion travel industry.
More museums
In a few years, Montgomery will add museums recognizing the Freedom Riders, who integrated interstate buses before being beaten in Montgomery in 1961, and the Selma-to-Montgomery March, which led to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that opened Southern voting booths to blacks.
"It creates a compelling destination not just for African-Americans, but for all people interested in American history," Sentell said.
King, who won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., in 1968.
His birthday -- Jan. 15 -- is a national holiday, and his "I have a dream" speech, delivered during the 1963 March on Washington for civil rights, is one of the most famous orations in modern U.S. history.
It is studied by school children nationwide and replayed on tape so often that King's distinctively deep and quavering tones and his sonorous, passionate delivery are instantly recognizable to most Americans -- even those too young to have heard the original.
Still amazing
Yet seeing tour buses filled with people soaking up civil rights history still amazes Johnnie Carr, who succeeded King as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association and still heads the group at 92.
"When we first started, we weren't thinking about history. We were thinking about the conditions and the discrimination," she said. "We didn't think about preserving things."