M came home from school last week wearing a “Peace Begins with Me!” medallion.   When I asked her about it, she said it was for Martin Luther King day, because “Martin Luther King was a man of peace!”

Then she sang a little song to the tune of Mary Had  a Little Lamb:

“Dr. King once dreamed of peace,  dreamed of peace, dreamed of peace.  Dr.  King once dreamed of peace, sweet peace for you and me

Living free in har-mo-ny, har-mo-ny, har-mo-ny,  living free in har-mo-ny, we thank you Dr. King!”

While I apprecate that there are not a lot of catchy songs with the worlds “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” in them, this song strikes me as kind of …. weird.  Not to mention inaccurate.

I grilled M on what exactly they had learned about MKL at school and her response was something like  “Well, I think there was a war and Dr. King wanted peace.  So he worked for peace and now the war is over.”

Huh?

Not one mention of racism, poverty,  slavery or protest anywhere to be seen.

Now, I will give the school a little credit for trying.  Even this cryptic celebration of MLK and MLK day is more than I ever had in school.  (As a matter of fact, I don’t know that I ever managed to even get as far as the civil war and certainly NEVER did we study anything after 1900 in my history classes.  But pilgrims, I could tell you all about the pilgrims!)   But why bother talking about MLK day if you aren’t going to talk about the real issues?  How can you talk about MLK without talking about the history of racism and race relations in the US?

Dr. Martin Luther King was not a man of peace.

He was a man of conscience.  He was a man who fought for what he believed in.  He was a man who believed in equality and dignity.   He was a man who protested.  Certainly he believed in nonviolent protest, but this was a man who was at war.  He (and his colleges) fought long and hard for justice and equality for people of color and the poor.

I think it does a disservice to our children to boil such an important person and moment in history down to a pat little song  or catchy words like “man of peace”.

So this weekend, we have been talking to M about Martin Luther King Jr. and his place in history.  We have been talking about race relations then and now.  We are talking about this moment in history when a man who has ancestors from Africa and from Europe is going to be the president of our country.

Already, M understands more than I knew about these topics at twice her age.  Hopefully, if we keep talking honestly with them,  our children will come to know that we are not “at peace”.   I want them to know  we all have to keep fighting Dr. King’s fight.

Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten.  A society is always eager to cover misdeeds with a cloak of forgetfulness, but no society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present. America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most element of greatness — justice.

- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.   Where Do We Go from Here : Chaos or Community