Morning conversation about MLK

The other day, as he was getting ready for school and I was getting ready for work, Josh stopped for a second and said, "I don't have to go to school on Monday because it's Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Birthday."

I told him that I don't have to go to work, either. He was very excited about this initially, however a look of concern quickly fell over him. Josh explained that Dr. King would not be getting older on his birthday. "Do you know why?" he asked. "It's because somebody shot him."

I asked Josh if he knew why Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot. He said that he did. He explained to me that Dr. King had been shot "because somebody did not like what he was doing." Josh even explained to me the details of the shooting, including that the gun was "a big one, a rifle" and that there were three people with Dr. King as he was shot who then pointed out to the police where the shot had come from.

Getting away from the gory details and back to the part that I felt was important, I asked Josh what it was that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been doing that someone would dislike so much that they would shot him. Josh replied, "I don't know that part."

I could get off on some kind of a rant here about the emphasis in our society on the details of violence or some kind of failure in school to teach the subject matter such that children like my son could understand, but important matters such as social justice and racial equality should probably be dealt with by parents at home. So ant rant that I might go off on would probably be self-incriminating, so I'll avoid that. Let's just say that Josh and I had a good conversation after that, and I do not believe that he will answer with "I don't know that part", again.