Atlanta ? The Coca-Cola Co. announced Monday it is donating $10 million worth of prime downtown land to the city to develop a civil rights museum in the hometown of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Coca-Cola chairman and chief executive Neville Isdell said his company is donating 2 1/2 acres near the Georgia Aquarium and the new World of Coca-Cola, now under construction. Coke previously donated nine acres for the aquarium.

Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who was a leading civil rights activist during the 1960s, said Atlanta is the “capital of the modern-day civil rights movement” and should have a civil rights museum, just like other cities that were prominent in the movement, such as Birmingham and Montgomery in Alabama and Memphis, Tenn.

Lewis said the proposed museum will complement the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, where King and his wife, Coretta, are buried.