ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, December 30, 1994                   TAG: 9412300134
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ATLANTA                                LENGTH: Short

KING TOURS STUCK ON STREET

Barred from taking visitors through Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthplace and tomb, the National Park Service confined itself to conducting street tours Thursday of his childhood neighborhood.

Visitors arriving at Atlanta's No. 1 tourist attraction discovered that a feud between King's family and the Park Service had halted the usual tours inside the house where the civil-rights leader was born.

Instead, park rangers told tourists about the two-story, cream-colored frame house from the sidewalk. They also offered a slide show about the home.

``We have a job to do. ... We'll sit on the sidewalk and do it if we have to,'' said Troy Lissimore, who heads the Park Service staff that conducts the tours.

The Park Service was banished from the family property - including the house and the King Center, which includes King's crypt - on Wednesday in a dispute over how to carry on the King legacy.

The dispute centers on a Park Service plan to build an $11.8 million visitors center across the street from the King Center in time for the 1996 Olympics.

The King family wants to build an interactive museum focusing on King's life at the same site. The Park Service acquired the site from the city. 


 by CNB