The museum would hold, among other exhibits, the papers of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., although the city has not raised enough money to pay for the King papers. No specific plans for the museum have been laid out but Coca-Cola's land gift is the first contribution to the effort.
The land is valued at $8 million to $11 million and is part of a downtown parcel that includes the city's new aquarium and the new World of Coca-Cola museum, which opens next May.
The hope is that tourist traffic will increase with the aquarium, which has had more than three million visitors since it opened November of last year, and other attractions such as the CNN Center and Centennial Olympic Park.
Coca-Cola, which is based in Atlanta, has often led the way here in changing attitudes about race. When Dr. King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, it was Robert Woodruff, then the leader of the company, who made sure that his hometown, where many members of the white establishment still thought of Dr. King as a troublemaker, honored him at a gala dinner for 1,500, as reported in this NYTimes.com article.
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