Images of Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park – Atlanta Georgia, taken in September 2016.

In the center of Atlanta, in the shadow of the downtown district, lies the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park. This area tells the story, birth, life and death, of perhaps the greatest civil rights leader of our time; Martin Luther King Jr.

While on my return trip to the city I explored the area with my friend Ashli who I had invited to come along with me to the site a year before, only to run out of time as I prepared to move back to Tucson. This was something I had thought about doing for years, 25 to be exact, so now I was making good on my invitation to Ashli as well as fulfilling a promise to myself to visit a site that was in my own backyard and therefore easily overlooked for so long.

Obviously I know and had studied the history in high school and college but as an 11 year old Dr. King’s assassination was one the first major historical events to stand out in my memory. I do, at the age of 6, remember the assassination of President Kennedy but five years later, in 1968, it was the assassination of Dr. King and two months later of Bobby Kennedy that opened my eyes to the real, unsheltered, world around me.

As we passed Dr. King’s birthplace; walked through the Ebenezer Baptist Church where he preached and stood in front of his tomb it occurred to me that the 1968 versions of Ashli and I might never have been able to interact with each other. You see, Ashli is an African American and I am a White American. At that time it didn’t matter that we were both American, we would have been segregated from each other by the societal values of the day. We’ve come a long way because of the efforts and sacrifices of Dr. King.

Although we have made progress it is clear that we have by no means fully achieved the “Dream” that Dr. King famously spoke of in Washington in 1963, however, in my many years in corporate America I’ve worked alongside men and women of all races, colors, creeds and religions and there are several things I know to be true; there is good and bad in all peoples and I am a better, more understanding person because of the diversity of the individuals that have passed through my life. Dr. King’s paved the way for that to happen and the sooner we all accept the fact that all men, and women, are created equal, the better off we will all be.