With the help of his wife, Andrea Waters King, and their 15-year-old daughter, Yolanda, Martin Luther King III has created a collection of customs for this season.
They revisit Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s stirring speech at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom every August. Even while the Kings are more personally connected to the civil rights icon's legacy than most other families are, they nevertheless use the March anniversaries as a teaching opportunity.
We want to teach our kid about this period of history, just like any other family, Arndrea said. Then, "we also attempt to link it to movements or individuals who are active in the present."
The Kings' Drum Major Institute and the National Action Network organized the gathering. At the same location where as many as 2,50,000 people assembled in 1963 for what is today regarded as one of the largest and most significant racial justice and equality marches in US history, a number of Black civil rights leaders and a multiracial, interfaith coalition of supporters will mobilize attendees.
The late civil rights leader's eldest son, Martin Luther King III, and his sister, Bernice King, both paid a visit to their father's memorial in Washington on Friday.
Bernice gazed up at the stone statue and said, "I see a man still standing in authority and saying, 'We've still got to get this right.'"
In the 1960s, the first march, which had their father as its focal point, laid the foundation for the passage of federal civil rights and voting rights laws.
Affirmative action in college admissions and abortion rights were recently overturned by the Supreme Court, and there are growing threats of political violence and hatred against people of color, Jews, and the LGBTQ community. The organizers of this year's commemoration hope to recapture the energy of the original March on Washington.
In an interview with The Associated Press before Saturday, Martin Luther King III said, "What we know is, when people stand up, the difference can be made." "This is not a customary remembrance.
