Martin Luther King Day

Lining up along First Avenue today.

Marching up Broad Street last year.

As I have for many consecutive MLK days, at 11 this morning I joined two or three hundred fellow admirers of Martin Luther King to parade and sing and chant for five blocks up Broad Street from the Etowah River to the City Auditorium. On this day, last year I wrote a couple of posts:

Walking for Peace, Justice, and Brotherhood

A Meaningful Mile

Today our crowd was a little larger, I think, than in the past -- maybe because of the unseasonably warm weather. I soon had to roll up my long sleeves. There was never a thought of a jacket. We sang "We Shall Overcome", Kumbayah", and "Ain't Nobody Gonna Turn Me Around". Right past the once segregated, now long closed, lunch counters. Right past the long-closed department stores with their dual water fountains & restrooms.
Under the stony gaze of a granite Rebel soldier who guards Rome from atop Myrtle Hill. Up the wide street where proud and optimistic sons of Rome paraded before heading North to defend our homes from Yankees and where Sherman and his men defeated Rome's bedraggled home guard, in preparation for that final fiery dash across the state to Savannah.

There surely were some folks squirming in their resting places in the soil of Myrtle Hill - the leaders under the grand stones near the summit, the many Confederate and few Union soldiers under uniform stones on the far side, and the common folk, black and white, some under unmarked, rough stones -- One hopes they all "understand it" in the "bye and bye".