A tour of MLK's historic Atlanta home

I will now sign the proclamation making January 15th 2018 the Martin Luther King jr. federal holiday amidst the controversy in full of the last 24 hours president Trump now officially makes the King holiday a federal holiday joining President Trump vice president Mike Pence housing secretary ben Carson in the Reverend Isaac Newton Ferris jr. a nephew of dr. King the president also designated dr. King's birthplace church and final resting spot as a National Historic Park and just in time for the federal holiday the birth home of dr. King is open once again the home had been closed for repairs in last year the first floor was reopened to the public now starting on Monday visitors can check out the entire home and 11alive was there to get a private tour and we are standing at the porch on the porch of dr. King's house this is where he was born on january 15 1929 and why don't we go on inside we are now in the power of dr. King's birth if you look at the piano there's a little chip on it and that is where when dr. King was a little boy he didn't like playing the piano so he would take a hammer and he hammered down on the piano we're very excited that the second floor of the birth home is now available for the public to see it was closed for some time because it repairs if you come on up stairs I'll show you and this is the birth home room this is the room that dr. King would have been born if you see the little drawer that the it would have put the baby in and they would have gotten a crib cradle you know I think it's always important that people be able to experience especially singing while hearing the story of his birth I mean I don't know when people come here especially young people come whether they correlate birth home to literally mean like hospital that this is the place where he was physically born and they discovered that once they're here and you know that to me is always an interesting story because I was born in a hospital this would have been the room that dr. King slept in when he was a boy he and his brother ad and dr. King loved baseball but behind me is the bedroom of dr. Christine King Ferris if you look in the bedroom you'll find a doll she would talk about how her brothers would take her doll and chop the heads off and play baseball with it we are now in the dining room of the house and this is my favorite room so I feel like in this dining table is how dr. King became a civil-rights this great civil rights leader by as a boy sitting at the dining the dessert at the table and having this a great support system of everybody in the family believing in civil rights when visitors come here and not just visitors from within the United States but international visitors they come here with an expectation that maybe they'll get a tour of the birth home but they get so much more and they all say that this is much more than they expected the National Park Service says they expect people to be lined up very early on Monday morning along a burn Avenue waiting for a chance an opportunity to see inside the home we have a full list of King holiday events including road closures scheduled for some of those events they're all for you at 11alive calm

Channel: 11Alive

Views: 124,438

Keywords: News, Local

Id: unBlrcpI9xk

Length: 3min 40sec (220 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 12 2018