Monday Musings – 15 January

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.    Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963

I often ride my bicycle past the unpretentious house on Auburn Avenue where Martin Luther King, Sr (‘Daddy King’) raised his three children. And I occasionally ride by the house of one of Daddy King’s contemporaries up on Briarcliff Road. The Briarcliff mansion was part of the 42-acre estate of Asa ‘Buddie’ Candler, Jr., the fabulously wealthy son of one of the founders of the Coca Cola company. Candler dabbled in real estate, but he was primarily known as an eccentric socialite with a big, boisterous personality.

King and Candler could hardly be more different, but they did have one thing in common with each other—and with me. They both loved animals. The millionaire surrounded his mansion with his own private zoo in the 1930s while Daddy King’s favorite chore as a boy, according to his autobiography, was brushing the family mule on cold winter mornings before he went to school.

The legacy of the two men—one famous and one humble; one rich and one poor; a flashy zoo man and a simple mule lover—is reflected in their homes. The Briarcliff mansion is boarded-up, vacant, and decaying. The two-story, frame Queen Anne style house at 501 Auburn Avenue is a National Historic Monument. It is the 1929 birthplace of Daddy King’s son and namesake, Martin Luther King, Jr.—the man whose peaceful fight for racial justice transformed a nation and whose eloquent “I have a dream” speech still inspires me today.