The children’s choir at at New Zion Baptist Church sings at the annual children’s birthday celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Sunday in Chattanooga.Today’s Local MLK Events• Mark Making, a local organization that produces public art projects led by professional artists, will unveil a mural at 1 p.m. in honor of King. The mural, at the corner of Glass Street and Dodson Avenue, is called “FACE to FACE” and is intended to bring Chattanoogans face to face with East Chattanooga youth and the issues they confront.• The Unity Group will host a parade at 4 p.m. that will start at the Tivoli Theatre and end at Olivet Baptist Church on M.L. King Boulevard.• Girls Preparatory School encourages students to use technology to educate themselves about King and the civil rights movement by using their iPads, laptops and iPhones to access pages on the GPS website that include video and descriptions of different events that occurred during the movement.
Online:Learn more about the National Civil Rights Museum at www.civilrightsmuseum.org/
NASHVILLE – As the nation reflects on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., an audiotape of an interview with the civil rights leader discovered in a Tennessee attic sheds new light on a famous phone call John F. Kennedy made to King’s wife more than 50 years ago.
Historians generally agree that Kennedy’s phone call to Coretta Scott King expressing concern over her husband’s arrest in October 1960 — and Robert Kennedy’s work behind the scenes to get King released — helped JFK win the White House that fall.
King himself, while appreciative, wasn’t as quick to credit the Kennedys alone with getting him out of jail, according to a previously unreleased portion of the interview with the civil rights leader days after Kennedy’s election.