Last year, shortly before the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday, my four-year-old daughter's preschool teacher asked me to speak to her class about Dr. King. She wanted the children to learn about the civil rights icon in advance of the school's annual MLK Day Assembly. I thought, how nice. also thought ain't no way in hell I'm doing

that. Four-year-olds make me nervous. You never know what they're thinking or what they

might ask. Now don't get me wrong, preschoolers need to learn about Dr. King. They just don't need

learn about him from me. My reluctance must have been obvious because a Layla's teacher tried to

ease my anxiety. She explained how the children already knew that Dr. King had died, except they thought that he had been killed by a dragon.

You know, because kings fight dragons and sometimes those dragons win.

Well, that little tidbit of information was supposed to help.

You can start anywhere, she said.

But I was thinking, wait, now I have to explain away

dragons too. Of course, I agreed to do it anyway. My approach was simple. I talked about Dr. King

growing up. I explained what life was like for young Martin in the segregated South,

the things he could not do simply because he was black.

And I asked the students, if they thought separate and unequal was fair.

They didn't.

So I explained how racial discrimination made young Martin feel and about how his feelings of hurt motivated him to act.

Then I told them about the 1963 Birmingham campaign and how children played a role in toppling Jim Crow in America's most segregated city.

I told them all about the black children who marched, and the preschoolers wanted to know

if they got tired.

I explained how many of those children went to jail, and the kids wanted to know if they

got scared.

And when they learned about the police sicking dogs on them,

they asked, why did they want to hurt those children?

...