Ahead of you spreads the plaza of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historical Park, its eternal flame burning above the crypt where Martin and Coretta Scott King now rest together. The King Center was founded in 1968 by Coretta Scott King in the months after her husband's assassination in Memphis, making it one of the earliest civil rights memorials in the country. The center houses archives, exhibits, and King's Nobel Peace Prize medal, awarded in 1964 when he became the youngest person ever to receive it.
The eternal flame, burning continuously since 1968, was lit as a symbol that the struggle for justice does not end. Standing here, it is worth remembering that when King was killed on April 4, 1968, he was organizing a Poor People's Campaign — a broad economic justice movement that had expanded far beyond race. The full arc of his work was not simply the March on Washington but a lifelong confrontation with American inequality in all its forms.
Linger here, then walk west along Auburn Avenue toward the historic district.