Happy Birthday!

Sunday was Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, but yesterday was the day all throughout the U.S. we celebrate him. Martin Luther King Jr. Day is always on the third Monday of January. My mom’s communication class this week was talking about great commutative speakers and one motivating speaker was Martin Luther King Jr. My mom let my sister and me come to class. But first we stopped at a store (the store was really a post office with food) and got candy bars as a treat for Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. We were pretending it was birthday cake. In class we learned more about how black people were treated harshly because of their skin color during Martin Luther King Jr.’s time. Martin Luther King Jr. was born into a house full of great communicators. His father and grandfather both were priests and he followed in their footsteps. M.L.K. Jr. had a strong belief that all people should have equal rights. M.L.K. Jr. admired Mahatma Gandhi, an Indian leader, because of his way of approaching a protest. Gandhi protested for equal rights for those in South Africa and India. Gandhi believed in the saying, “An eye for an eye leaves both people blind.” In other words if the people approached the problem with violence it would cause more violence. M.L.K. Jr. liked the idea so he started peaceful protests. These protests might just be walking up and down a street saying, “We want rights!” Still it made a difference. M.L.K. Jr. had many wonderful speeches and quotes. My favorite quote he had was something like If America is to stay a first class nation; it can’t have second class citizens. Even after peaceful protests some police came back at them with bats and guns. Thousands of blacks were arrested for sitting in a white area or going in a white bathroom. In 1964 M.L.K. Jr. was awarded the Noble Peace Prize. Only four years later he was shot at a motel he was staying at. Even after that it was a while before everywhere blacks and whites were completely thought as equal. My mom wrote four words on the board. They were Conviction, Clarity, Cadence, and Connectivity and we talked about how these things tie together to make a great communicator.