501 Auburn Ave: A Dream Begins

Lyrics

Five-oh-one Auburn Avenue.
January fifteenth, 1920-nine.
The air is cold.
The world is quiet.
A two-story house, Queen Anne frame.
Built by a grandfather's hand, A.D. Williams.
Not a palace, not a monument yet.
Just a duplex on a busy street.
Shared wall, shared roof.
Sweet Auburn humming right outside the door.
Banks and theaters, barbershops and dreams.
And inside, the floorboards wait.
And in an upstairs bedroom, on a four-poster bed,
A first breath is taken.
A name is given. Michael King, Junior.
The world doesn't know it yet.
But a promise was made in that quiet room.
On a cold Atlanta morning.
Five-oh-one Auburn Avenue.
The sound of the parlor piano...
That's his mother, Alberta, her fingers finding the notes.
The low murmur of Daddy King's voice from the study,
practicing a Sunday sermon.
The smell of coal smoke and winter damp.
The sounds of Christine laughing, and little A.D. crying.
Twelve years of life inside these walls,
a short walk from the pews of Ebenezer.
And in an upstairs bedroom, on a four-poster bed,
A first breath was taken.
A name was given. Michael King, Junior.
The world didn't know it yet.
But a promise was made in that quiet room.
On a cold Atlanta morning.
Five-oh-one Auburn Avenue.
The name will change. Michael becomes Martin.
The boy who played on this porch
will one day walk from Selma to Montgomery.
The voice that learned to pray in this parlor
will one day stand on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
It all started here.
The creak of these stairs.
The view from this window.
The family moved in '41.
To a brick house on Boulevard.
But the dream stayed here.
It soaked into the wood.
It lives in the dust motes dancing in the light.
Five-oh-one Auburn.