How to Talk to Kids About Dr. King
Photo Illustration: Humanizing History Visuals. Photo: National Park Service, CC BY 2.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Welcome to Humanizing History™! Every month, we feature a central theme. Each week, we dive into different areas of focus.
For this Humanizing History™ Special Send we are taking a momentary pause from this month’s theme to share a special newsletter about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in anticipation of the upcoming U.S. federal holiday.
What are Special Sends? Sometimes, we’ll craft a “Special Send” in regard to holidays, heritage months, and other timely considerations.
Today’s edition of Humanizing History™ is around 1700 words, an estimated 6½ -minute read.
The Why for This Week’s Special Send
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is a name that nearly everyone in the United States is familiar with, and one our children will likely learn and hear at school, if they haven’t already.
To commemorate Dr. King’s life and contributions, there is an upcoming federal holiday. This year, it falls on Monday, January 20th.
A lot of us, however, aren’t taught that it took a tireless, 15-year campaign — led by numerous people such as Coretta Scott King, Stevie Wonder, and President Jimmy Carter — to get the day approved by the federal government, and another 17 years for the federal holiday to be recognized in all 50 states.
People honor the day in different ways. The late Congressmember John Lewis suggests that the best way to honor the legacy and life’s work of Dr. King is to engage in service, to see it as “A Day On, and Not a Day Off.”
Many of us recognize that Dr. King’s life mattered, but many adults aren’t sure how to tell his story to children. Maybe we don’t know enough about history, or can’t find the words that feel right to us.
For this Special Send, we are going to make age-appropriate, facts-based, humanizing recommendations for how educators and caregivers may approach this topic. Keep in mind that what we are sharing are some ways to tell his story, but they are not the only ways.
“An Ordinary Kid, Who Did Extraordinary Things”
Many people have seen photographs of Dr. King, but have you seen photographs of him as a young boy, as an adolescent, or as a young man? It’s a wonderful way to make his story accessible, to adults and especially to children.
When speaking with children, consider launching a discussion about Dr. King by showing them photographs of him as a young child and younger man. Do they recognize him? Who is he? What were his interests? Who would he grow up to be? What inspired him?
Consider sharing a bit about his early life. Born on January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, Martin was the son and grandson of Baptists Ministers. As mentioned in this article, when he was a child, Martin had a similar life to many of his peers: he hated doing the dishes, loved ice cream, and enjoyed pranking his siblings.
According to Marty Smith, a park ranger at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, who leads tours of the six-bedroom home where King grew up. “He was an ordinary kid, just later on in life he did extraordinary things.”
This may surprise you, but one subject Martin struggled with in school was Speech class. “‘While training to become a minister, he received a C in public speaking — proving,’ [Park Ranger] Smith said, that ‘if you keep on working, you can become one of the best ever.’” In fact, Martin ended up skipping two grades in high school, entering Morehouse College at 15 years old!
How did Martin go from an “ordinary” child who would grow up to do “extraordinary” things?
Dr. King Was Not Alone, the Influence of Coretta Scott King and The Long Civil Rights Movement
Martin was not alone. He was raised by a “middle-class” family, and married Coretta Scott, who was an activist for Civil Rights before Martin.
Coretta was a skillful musician and vocalist, she graduated valedictorian, and went on to earn degrees in music and music education. Having faced racial discrimination herself, before meeting Martin, she was involved in local chapters of the NAACP while in college.
In a 1965 interview, when asked if he educated his wife about civil rights, Dr. King said, “I think at many points she educated me.”
While the 1950s and 1960s are often labeled as “The Civil Rights Era,” it may also be noted that there was a Long Civil Rights Movement — some say the movement began in the 1930s or 1940s, some say the movement began as soon as the seeds of racism were planted centuries before.
Throughout U.S. history, as long as there was racial discrimination — such as laws and policies that granted or denied equal access to rights simply due to race, as we reviewed in our most recent newsletter — people have advocated for humanizing change.
While we won’t highlight centuries of advocacy in this particular newsletter send, we will provide a context to better understand how Dr. King went from an “ordinary person” to a person who did “extraordinary” things.
When Dr. King joined the battle for Civil Rights, he entered a community that had laid a foundation for nonviolent, civil disobedience.
For example, in 1947, Bayard Rustin, and more than a dozen other women and men, organized “The Journey of Reconciliation.” It was a nonviolent protest, led by a multiracial coalition of people who set out to challenge the legality of racial segregation by taking buses across state lines. It’s often considered to be the first “Freedom Ride,” as there would be many more organized bus rides in the 1960s.
Bayard Rustin, who we’ll highlight in an upcoming Humanizing History™ newsletter, would make an indelible impact on Civil Rights, perhaps most notably as the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington.
Spotlight On the Women of the Montgomery Bus Boycott
A moment that changed Dr. King’s life was when he was invited to join the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
For years, people in Montgomery, Alabama had challenged racial segregation, including the intimidation and violence that Black American bus riders faced, as described in this video.
What’s often overlooked are the women behind the Montgomery Bus Boycott. There were countless women who came together to organize the boycott, which is often considered to be the first successful, large-scale protest against racial segregation in the United States.
Before Rosa Parks, a young woman named Claudette Colvin was forcefully arrested when she refused to give up her seat to a White passenger. Nine months later, in December of 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, a boycott ensued (we’ll highlight Rosa Parks in an upcoming Humanizing History™ newsletter). Jo Ann Robinson, president of the Women’s Political Council and Professor of English at Alabama State College, sprung into action. To announce the boycott, she and her students spread thousands of copies of flyers around town.
To organize a long-term boycott, Black leaders of the city created the Montgomery Improvement Association. And soon, they asked Dr. King, who was 26 years old, to lead it.
For 381 days, the Black residents of Montgomery, Alabama, and White allies, organized their own system of transportation. They started car pools, rode bicycles, and walked on foot. Tens of thousands of people participated.
In December of 1956, the boycott ended, after a Supreme Court decision ruled this example of racial discrimination to be unconstitutional. Even though the boycott ended, Dr. King’s work would continue.
Dr. King devoted the rest of his life to Civil Rights.
In 1957, he and other leaders formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He contributed to the 1963 March on Washington, with his famous speech, “I Have a Dream.” He led the Selma March. He penned numerous texts, such as Letters from Birmingham Jail. In fact, over the course of his life, he would be arrested more than 29 times.
His words, his contributions to Civil Rights influenced the passing of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
And he made the ultimate sacrifice for this work, for us to live in a society that aims to provide access to human rights for all.
How to Talk to Kids About Dr. King
Dr. King led a complex life. When speaking with children, we have a few recommendations.
As mentioned earlier, Dr. King was once a young boy. For young children, consider starting the conversation with him as a young person who grew up and did extraordinary things.
How was he able to do extraordinary things? The following may serve as a helpful guide.
Dr. King believed in equal rights. When he saw something that was unfair, he moved into action to make it more just. An example of unfairness that unfortunately exists is racial discrimination, or racism. In Dr. King’s lifetime, racial segregation was legal, meaning that the government had laws that required people to use separate spaces, such as having water fountains only for White people and separate ones for Black people. Buses were racially segregated, so were neighborhoods and schools. Some may say this idea is based on the color of our skin, but others note that it’s not based on the color of our skin, but is instead based on unjust, racist ideas some people unfortunately have about different colors of skin. (Having affirming lessons or discussions about skin color before this conversation is highly recommended; we have a recent newsletter that highlights humanizing ways to discuss skin color with children.)
For students or children that are old enough to understand history — each child is different, but often history is taught in or around Grade 3 — consider unpacking some of the historical context.
For example, when Dr. King was a young man, he was asked to join an organization of people (name some of them, show their photographs) who were advocating for access to equal rights. To bring national attention to this, Montgomery residents overwhelmingly stopped riding the racially segregated buses so that the laws, which allowed racial segregation, would have to change and become more equal or fair. Thousands of people participated, and, after a year of commitment, the laws and practices started to change.
Consider talking about the power of Dr. King’s words. His words moved a nation.
One of his most famous speeches was “I Have a Dream.” Did you know that Dr. King’s first draft of the speech didn’t have the word “dream” in it? When he was up there at the podium, in front of 250,000 people, he was speaking, but his speech wasn’t as powerful as speeches he had given before. Someone standing behind him, who had heard Dr. King speak in more robust ways before, yelled out, “Tell them about the dream, Martin.” She herself was a famous gospel singer, named Mahalia Jackson. And at the moment, Mahalia’s words gave Martin the torch to go on, to improvise, and to give what is often considered one of the greatest known speeches of all time.
Remind students that Dr. King was not alone. He was once a child with a family. He would grow up to have a family of his own. And he responded to calls for change by contributing his time, his words, and even, unfortunately, his life. The least we can do is remember it, and honor him.
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