After Visiting Ebenezer Baptist Church

June 22, 2017/Nedra Deadwyler
We all have our own personal experience, even when we are in a group.  There is value in what the mind thinks and more importantly what the heart feels.  On recent tours participants shared photos and a poem.  In the next few blog posts will share these tour artifacts and something of the tour to contextualize the response.

Richard Kent came on a tour with Civil Bikes in May.  His daughter, Margaret, had just completed graduate school and was now ready to move away from Atlanta to begin a new job. We had all met the previous year during a bike tour I had hosted for Dr. Pucher during Georgia State University’s Bike Summit.  It was a ride all over exploring the landscape to see infrastructure, landscape design, sustainable renovations that are appearing all over Atlanta.  She remembered and wanted a tour with us to be her final hur-rah in Atlanta.  I was both honored and happy at the request.

We made a stop at Ebenezer Baptist Church, a request by Richard to which was happy to comply.  Below is his response to sitting in the church listening to a recording of Dr. King’s speech.

 

After Visiting Ebenezer Baptist Church 

 

Because you didn’t sneeze,

you went on to meet your fate

in Memphis, Tennessee.

The motel’s drab balcony

awaited you, the spring

evening air innocent

to hate’s rabid sickness  

hollowing another’s heart.

~ Richard K. Kent

rick.kent@fandm.edu

 

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