Associated Press
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — The Alabama home once occupied by the Rev. A.D. King, the brother of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., is being added to the government’s list of places that help tell the story of the civil rights movement.
Interior Secretary David L. Bernhardt visited Birmingham on Thursday as the one-time parsonage west of downtown was designated as part of the African American Civil Rights Network, al.com reported.
Martin Luther King Jr. often stayed at the home of his brother, who led the First Baptist Church of Ensley, during his visits to Birmingham in the early 1960s.
A.D. King, wife Naomi King, and their four children were at the parsonage on the night of May 11, 1963, when a bomb exploded in the street outside and another blast went off in hedges at the front of the red-brick house.
A.D. King died the year after his brother was assassinated in 1968. The Birmingham Historical Society placed a historical plaque in 2006 at the house, which is privately owned, along with 60 churches that hosted civil rights meetings.
Naomi King, who attended the ceremony, said the federal designation “means the world to me.”
“People are people and love has no color,” she said.
The network was created in 2017. Sites on it include the route of the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march; Central High School, which was integrated in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957; the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.; and Martin Luther King’s burial site in Atlanta.
