ATLANTA — The father of Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered as a prominent Atlanta preacher and civil rights leader. But as a young man from a poor sharecropping family in rural Georgia, he is said to have walked north to Atlanta barefoot so he didn’t wear out his only pair of shoes.His legacy is now being honored through a community center built to help other low-income people find a path out of poverty. Known as "Daddy King," the Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. became pastor of Atlanta’s influential Ebenezer Baptist Church and a leader of early efforts to challenge the Georgia’s Jim Crow laws.
New center to exemplify social legacy of MLK Sr.