M.L. King HS runners experience a true piece of American history
while traveling to compete at the Great American Cross-Country Festival

Martin Luther King HS runners on the steps of
Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Dr. King preached

By Brad Peters, Cross-Country Coach, Martin Luther King HS, Riverside, CA
     (MONTGOMERY, AL) -- Martin Luther King High in Riverside traveled for four days last week to compete in the Great American Cross Country Festival in Alabama. Given our school's namesake, we also sought to take a look and visit the landmarks in civil rights history there in Alabama that Martin Luther King, Jr., made famous. Indeed, it was a Great American Cross Country Trip!

In front of the Montgomery Civil Rights Memorial

     With the meet being held in a suburb of Birmingham, on Friday the 32 athletes and their coaches were able to drive down to Montgomery, the state capital. It is there in Montgomery of course, that Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus. We visited the phenomenal Rosa Parks Museum and Library, a modern building constructed on the corner where she was arrested. The museum is incredibly interactive and a visual tour de force. The kids loved it, most specifically the dramatic recreation of the scene on the bus that December evening in 1955.
     About 10 blocks from there, up Dexter Avenue and almost at the foot of the domed capitol building, is the little red-brick church from which Martin Luther King Jr., got his start. Dexter Avenue Baptist Church became the headquarters of the bus boycott that followed Parks' arrest. Our team posed for a photo on the steps of the church, an amazing moment for kids from King High, as we stood in the place where King began to change America.

Kelley Ingram Park in Birmingham, site of violent clashes between police and kids

     On Sunday morning, we headed into downtown Birmingham to visit the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, a very good museum to the overall struggle for civil rights. Housed within it are the actual bars and doors that penned King in as he wrote his famous Letter From A Birmingham Jail. We also visited Kelley Ingram Park, just across the street from the institute. There in that park are bronze memorials constructed to commemorate the violence that was inflicted on protesters, many of them children, by the racist city leaders. A moment of serendipity arrived in the form of a man who happened upon us and with grace and eloquence spoke of those moments in '63 when he was there as a 16 year old boy. His story was very moving. Across the street from the park is the 16th Street Baptist Church, which was bombed in 1963 on a Sunday morning, killing four kids.
     It was a powerful experience which truly impacted the kids who went. The relationship we have with the name Martin Luther King helped bring to a higher level of significance the places we took in, and we are encouraged that 32 kids from King now know and appreciate Dr. King in a much greater way.

Runners are a blur as they race across the park at the Great American XC Festival!

 

Message board! Message board!