National Park Service Now Owns the Home Where Martin Luther King Jr. Was Born

He lived there for 12 years with his parents and grandparents, growing up in a predominantly African-American neighborhood called Sweet Auburn. For decades, King’s childhood home at 501 Auburn Ave. has helped showcase that part of the civil rights leader’s legacy.

Over the years, concerns emerged about the maintenance of the home, which was owned by the nonprofit Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Now the home has a new owner, the National Park Service, which hopes to repair and preserve King’s birthplace.

The National Park Foundation, the charity arm of the park service, bought the home from the King Center for $1.9 million. Money for the purchase came from private gifts by anonymous donors, and the home was turned over to the National Park Service on Nov. 27, Will Shafroth, the foundation president, said Friday. News of the sale surfaced this week.

“We didn’t get to renovate it at the level that it should have been and preserve it at the level it should have been,” said Bernice A. King, King’s daughter and chief executive of the King Center. “I think the time was ripe to do this, and it gives us an opportunity to transfer this to an entity that does an extremely good job at preserving and telling the stories of our history in America.”

The park service has been running tours of the home since 1984, after Congress made it part of a larger national historic site that includes the King Center complex, which is also where King is buried.

“This is a big deal, one of the most important acquisitions,” Shafroth said. He said the park service plans to “improve and enhance” the home, which in 2017 had 584,435 visitors.

In 1941, King and his family moved from the Auburn Avenue home. Bernice King said that buildings in the area, including the original home, were slated for demolition around 1966. But King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, successfully lobbied against their destruction.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.