Thirty-four years after his death, King is just a myth to many young Americans

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Posted 5:28AM on Monday, January 21, 2002

ATLANTA - Four-year-old Jahlazha Johnson knows a little bit about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. She's been watching tapes of the civil rights leader and learning about the movement. "He died," said Jahlazha, who was visiting the King Center with an Atlanta preschool program. "He went to jail. He helped everybody so they could be the same." Jahlazha knows more than the average child, educators warn as the nation observes the federal holiday in honor of the civil rights leader. Thirty-four years after King was assassinated, many children -- whose parents are even too young to remember King -- see him as more of a mythological figure than a man, they say. Educators and King's widow say schools need to do a better job of teaching children about the Nobel Peace Prize winner and the struggle for civil rights. Marion McCarthy, a retired elementary school principal from Macon, said to many children, King Day just means a three-day weekend. "They need to know just what sacrifices our people made so they could be free," McCarthy said. Demetrius Watson, a fifth-grader from Norcross, said he knows that King was "very smart and very attractive" and also a great speechmaker. But he said he hasn't learned much more. "They just tell what he did and that he was a civil rights leader," Watson said. "And how he saved blacks from prejudice people." Coretta Scott King, King's widow, said her husband's teachings can be included in almost any subjects from kindergarten to 12th grade. But many schools don't do that -- only highlighting excerpts from King's "I Have a Dream" speech and teaching about the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Children need to learn King's principles, such as his use of nonviolence to achieve civil rights reform along with his message of hope, she said. "Martin's message was a very hopeful one," Coretta Scott King said in an interview last week with The Associated Press. "One of the things that he did was to generate hope for people. Whenever he spoke to the people he was able to lift them up -- lift them up to a higher place." That message is especially needed now, she said. A sluggish economy exacerbated by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has caused millions of people to lose their jobs. As she did last year, King is asking people to use Monday as a day of service, including mentoring children, cleaning up neighborhoods and helping feed the homeless. "I think when we have a number of activities and things that are tributes to him, it seems to renew, reinvigorate, re-inspire people to continue in that struggle," she said. "And I think people are needing something after the Sept. 11 attacks." Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP, said old and young people don't always understand the civil rights movement and don't know how to use King's teachings to make a difference. "One problem with many King celebrations is that they are passive," said Bond, a former student of King's at Morehouse College in Atlanta. "People gather, hear a speech from someone like me. They applaud and everybody leaves feeling good. But you've got to do more than that." Bond said dozens of social organizations need help this year, ranging from the Girl Scouts to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. "One person acting by herself can cause mountains to move," he said. "And almost the opposite, but a complementary lesson, is that thousands of people acting together can move mountains, too." On the Net: The King Center: http://thekingcenter.com http://www.civilrightsmuseum.org