More than 1,000 roadways worldwide honor Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a reflection of his enduring impact across cultures
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, the city council in Mainz, Germany, named a street for the slain civil rights leader—doing in just a few days what King’s birthplace of Atlanta took eight years to do. Memphis, Tennessee, the place where King was killed, also named a city street after him—but not until more than 40 years after his death.
At least 955 streets in the U.S. bear King’s name. Many run through lower income areas. But the stereotype of them all as bleak thoroughfares in decaying neighborhoods is overblown. A study of hundreds of such streets by University of Tennessee geographer Derek Alderman found little overall difference in business activity there and on the nation’s Main Streets.
King and his father were originally named Michael. But the elder King, also a Baptist preacher, was so taken with Protestant reformer Martin Luther during a 1934 trip to Berlin that he changed his name and that of his firstborn, then age five. Dr. M.L. King Jr. Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee Renamed in 2012 Running within blocks of the motel where King was assassinated and past Clayborn Temple, where he began his final march, Memphis’s MLK Avenue ends alongside a machine shop slated for redevelopment.“This is a city where his blood cries from the streets,” Boyd said. About two miles long, Dr. M.L. King Jr. Avenue is one of the last streets on which King marched.
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