Where did Martin Luther King Jr grow up and live?

📍501 Auburn Avenue NE, Atlanta, GA 30312, USA

1929 – 1948

“I was born on the 15th of January 1929 at 501 Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, Georgia — a two-storey Queen Anne house in the Sweet Auburn neighbourhood, the heart of Atlanta's Black professional community. My father Martin Sr was pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church a few blocks away, and the church and the neighbourhood formed me completely. Sweet Auburn in the 1930s was a world of Black achievement and dignity maintained in the face of systematic segregation. I walked to school past signs telling me which water fountains I could use. The contradictions between the dignity of my family's world and the indignity that the wider society imposed gave me both the subject and the urgency of everything I later said and did.”

👍 LovedThe Sweet Auburn community's combination of professional achievement and spiritual depth. Ebenezer Baptist Church, where my father preached and where I first understood the power of the spoken word. The close family life that gave me security.

👎 DislikedThe daily indignities of segregation that contradicted everything my family's world represented. The early awareness of injustice that made ordinary childhood impossible. The anger that had to be channelled rather than expressed.

Map showing where Martin Luther King Jr lived — 501 Auburn Avenue NE, Atlanta, GA 30312, USA

🗺️ Approximate location today

Street view of Martin Luther King Jr's home at 501 Auburn Avenue NE, Atlanta, GA 30312, USA

📍 Street view today

Sources: Branch, T. Parting the Waters (1988), Simon & Schuster; King, M.L. Stride Toward Freedom (1958), Harper & Row