100 Cherokee Street, Marietta, Georgia

After

Before

click on each picture to enlarge it

Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated this date 49 years ago.

100 Cherokee Street is a Cobb  County Government business building easily accessible to the public.  You go there when you want to change something on your property taxes, sit in on a commissioner's meeting, and more (I just don't know what).

Before it was owned by the county it was a built by Barnett Bank, which bought The First National Bank and in time change its name.

Before the Barnett Bank/First National Bank it was another banking institution, which I don't recall the name.

The building sits on the corner of Lawrence  and Cherokee  Streets.  Across Cherokee Street is the Strand Theater; across Lawrence Street is another Cobb County Government building which was a judicial building; and cater-cornered is Glove Park.

Before the big white  elephant building it was a racial dividing line.  Into the Marietta Square were mostly white people.  Down Lawrence Street were mostly Afro-Americans, a pool hall, historical slave started Mt Zion Church and a black -owned funeral parlor. 

Afro-American men were always standing around talking and not many feet away at the courthouse white men always doing the same thing.

On April 4, 1968, Anna and were still newlyweds.  We went to see Odetta perform at Bottom of the Barrel in Atlanta on something like 9th or 11th Street.  We went in and was waiting when the manager came out and said Odetta would not be performing because Martin Luther king has been assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

Stunned, We drove back to Cobb County.

Before going home I wanted to drive up through downtown Marietta to see if anything was going on because of the latest news.

We went through the Square from Atlanta Street.  At the corner of Cherokee and Lawrence Streets was a big crowd of young black men talking intensely.   

I was driving slsowly studying them when I ran a red-light, almost hitting a car going through the green-light.  I slammed on my brakes making a loud skidding scream and at the same time held out my arm to block Anna from ramming the dash.  All the young men looked up at me.  I turned left and we got the heck out of there.

We went there to witness history, not to be part of it.