Celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

     If Negroes could vote, there would be no Jim Clarks, there would be no oppressive poverty against Negroes.  Our children would not be crippled by segregated  schools, and the whole community might live together in harmony.


    This is our intention: to declare war on the evils of demagoguery.  The entire community will join in this protest, and we will not relent until there is a change in the voting process and the establishment of democracy.  


     Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from his Selma jail cell a year after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of
     1964 and six days after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize (The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.,
     edited by Clayborne Carson, Warner Books, 1998, p. 275).


On Friday I read to Antonia's Kindergarten class.  I asked if anyone knew why they weren't going to school on Monday.  There were some good guesses, New Year's Day and Valentine's Day, but not even my daughter was aware that there would be no school in honor of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  I asked the children if there were any African American children in the class.  A number of hands went up, including my daughter's.  I asked all the children if they could imagine being in school without their friends whether white or black, and reminded them that because it wasn't that long ago that black children and white children couldn't go to school together.  Confused stares blanketed the room.

I asked if any of the children had read My Friend Martin?  A few hands went up.  I had tried to get the book from the library but thankfully it was goneperhaps being read in another classroom or bedroom.

It is a very good book that personalizes Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and makes him accessible to young children.  Though perhaps at times it can make him too accessible.  I remember reading this to my son Jacob when he was five.  At the end of the story, after Dr. King, Jr. was shot, Jacob began to sob uncontrollably.  That of course was not my intention for my daughter's class.

In lieu of My Friend Martin, I brought the following books.

Before reading We All Went on Safari I explained that Antonia's distant relatives more than likely were brought to America against their will on a slave ship from Africa and that is why she is African American.  I explained that my ancestors came from Germany and that I'm German-American and how someone who's ancestors came from Mexico would be considered Mexican-American.

I read We All Went on Safari and we learned how to count to ten in Swahili:  moja, mbili, tatu, nne, tano, sita, saba, nane, tisa, kumi.  We also read Jimmy and Savannah Buffet's The Jolly Mon because it is a fun story.  Luckily for the class, time ran out before I had a chance to sing the song from which the book was inspired.

I asked my son, Jacob, what they discussed in his 5th grade class about Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and he to my disappointment said nothing.  Our community is  marginally diverse (thanks in part to the university in town), rather liberal minded and populated by people of good will.  It was hard to find a McCain sign in the sea of Hope and Change banners strewn across the city.   I don't know why my children did not get a chance to celebrate this important holiday along with their classmates.

A friend on mine who's kindegarten son goes to a different East Lansing school shared with me that after seeing the movie version of My Friend Martin on Friday, he asked her whether the person who killed Dr. King was white skinned or dark skinned.  He is a white skinned older brother of a dark skinned sister.  Questions like this one are very thought provoking and I wish the students in my children's classes were similarly inspired.

On this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day we have much to celebrate. Construction has started on the long delayed Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the Mall.  Barack Obama is our president.  I've noticed that my daughter's school is much more diverse than when Jacob went there.  Unfortunately often positive signs of  progress can lull us into a complacency and a feeling that the work is done.  This far from the truth.

While you most likely will have heard this some place else today, and hopefully you have, I can't help but end on the last few phrases of Dr. King's I Have a Dream speech which incidentally was first delivered in Cobo Hall, Detroit, Michigan (thanks David Allen Grier, Barack Like Me:  The Chocolate-Covered Truth and of course to Clayborn Carson):

     Let freedom ring from every  hill and molehill of Mississippi, from every mountainside, let freedom, ring!


     And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last, free at last.  Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.


     Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr. (Carson, 1998, p. 227)

Note:  The photo back drop on Black Children White Parents was taken by Jacob of a poster he has in his room.