In 2013, Y’s and my friend M from Japan visited us in Atlanta. He had asked us to show him historically important places around Atlanta while he was there. Paramount among those stops was Martin Luther King, Jr’s birth home, his burial site at The King Center, and Ebenezer Baptist Church. While I had read about those places before, I had not yet visited them before M’s arrival.
The experience was multilayered for me: being in those hallowed spaces, sharing those spaces with my wife and friend, and discussing those places based on our knowledge, experiences, and different cultural backgrounds. I’m glad that we were all together in that place at that time. I carry it forward as a warm memory as well as a reminder of why I do the work that I do.
And I’m reminded that history is all about space and time. There feels like a kind of physics at work with it. Not like Hari Seldon’s psychohistory, but something paralleling Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. Time passes differently for different observers, or more precisely, culture changes at different rates for different observers. Standing along Auburn Ave that day, I thought that culture supporting equality and liberty for all wasn’t happening at the same rate for everyone everywhere. The rates were different. There was a kind of cultural dilation it seemed. Could there be a fall and dark age to follow? Could Asimov have caught a glimpse of what lay ahead in Foundation after all?
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birth Home
The King Center
Ebenezer Baptist Church
