The motel that housed civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. on his only trip to Charlottesville has been razed after spending several years in ruins after a gutting fire.

richmond.com
The Charlottesville motel that housed MLK has been razed, but it may rise again
The motel that housed civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. on his only trip to Charlottesville has been razed after spending several years

TOP STORY EDITOR'S PICK
LOCAL HISTORY

The Charlottesville motel that housed MLK has been razed, but it may rise again

HAWES SPENCER The Daily Progress 48 min ago

The motel that housed civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. on his only trip to Charlottesville has been razed after spending several years in ruins after a gutting fire. After a monthlong demolition process that provided some spectacle at the foot of Carr’s Hill on Emmet Street, crews removed the rubble last week.

For one of the men who invited King to Charlottesville, the news evokes sorrow but not surprise. ... “I’m certainly sad, but things change,” Wesley Harris, now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told The Daily Progress.



The ruins of the Excel Inn & Suites in Charlottesville as they appeared mid-demolition in late April.
HAWES SPENCER, THE DAILY PROGRESS

Harris and the late University of Virginia professor Paul Gaston invited the future icon of American history to UVa Grounds to speak on March 25, 1963. Just two weeks before King was arrested in Birmingham for peacefully defying a ban on segregation protests, King spoke in Old Cabell Hall Auditorium.

{snip}



Martin Luther King Jr. is shown speaking at Old Cabell Hall at the University of Virginia in 1963 in this clipping from the Charlottesville-Albemarle Tribune.
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA COMMUNICATIONS

{snip}

In recent years, the motel has operated under several names, including the Budget Inn and the Excel Inn & Suites. However, the hospitality was halted on the afternoon of May 4, 2017, when a mysterious fire gutted the building.



A May 4, 2017, left Excel Inn & Suites motel in Charlottesville in ruins.
HAWES SPENCER, THE DAILY PROGRESS

Until this month’s demolition, the skeletal rubble has loomed over Emmet Street, a blot on the place that UVa officials have called the university’s “front door.”

{snip}

Hawes Spencer
hspencer@dailyprogress.com
(434) 960-9343