A typical weekend for a college student includes partying, sleeping until 2 p.m. and begging someone to drive you to IHOP. There is nothing wrong with this schedule, in fact I too have had my incredibly lazy Sundays. This weekend however, I was able to travel down to Atlanta and experience a whole new city and all it had to offer. One of the events my family had planned was to go to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site. My initial thoughts were filled with images of my friends all making memories together in 70 degree weather while I trudged around some boring museum, learning the same textbook material that I have learned in History class since I was young. I was pleasantly surprised.
My Saturday was not filled with Rap music, red Solo cups, or climbing onto roofs with my good friends. Rather, it was filled with great knowledge, and a chance to physically step in the same footsteps as the great MLK once did. I thought I knew everything there was to know about Dr. King. He helped win equality for all people, he gave a famous speech with the words “I have a dream”, and he was assassinated. Okay, so yeah, I basically only knew the basics.
I took the time to actually give history a chance though and I became immersed in his story and everything he stood for. As I walked through his childhood home on Auburn Ave, I felt closer to him then I ever had been when reading about him in a book. I saw the toys and books he grew up with and I witnessed how tough it was the grow up in a strictly African American community in Georgia. I walked on the same front steps that he once ran down to ask his white friends to play. I stood there and it finally hit me how messed up that was. He lived within walking distance of a predominantly white street, yet he could not play with kids his same age. I walked through the church his father preached out and sat in a pew, imaging his father’s words on how God accepts everyone. I thought about how his teachings and the words of the Bible go completely against any type of Racism that occurred during Dr. King’s childhood. I experienced all these things and I learned in a way that I never have been able to in a classroom.
My reason in sharing this experience is not to recount an experience at the MLK historic site, but rather what I took away. History is not boring, nor is learning. Open your mind to all opportunities, including those that don’t include partying. Take a weekend to go and explore. Step into history and follow those same footsteps that our greatest American leaders once took. Allow yourself to learn, after all we learn from the past in order to better our futures.
