Good morning and welcome to Kid News.
I'm Kim.
Today is Monday, January 19th, 2026.
The third Monday in January, which means it's Martin Luther King Jr.
Day in the U.S.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
That's one of the Reverend's most famous speeches, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the March on Washington in August of 1963.
But there's a whole lot that came before and after for this gifted speaker and icon of civil rights.
Martin Luther King Jr was born in Atlanta Georgia, in 1929 and was actually known as Michael for the first four years of his life.
Following a trip to Germany, Michael's dad changed his name to Martin in honor of the Protestant leader, Martin Luther.
Atlanta was segregated or racially divided in those days.
Black families had to sit in the back of movie theaters and restaurants use different restrooms and even when buying shoes were told to go to the rear of the store because they wouldn't be served in the front.
These rules separating white people from black in public were called Jim Crow laws.
Martin was only six when the prejudice really hit home.
According to National Geographic Kids, his white friend's dad would no longer let the boys play together.
MLK's meteoric rise to national prominence began in 1955 when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery Alabama.
Dr King organized a successful 381-day boycott of the city's buses, which helped get the segregation law thrown out.
Most important to the Reverend was that all protests for equality be peaceful.
But even that had its consequences.
In all, he was jailed 29 times, perhaps most famously in 1960, when he joined black college students in a sit-in at a whites-only lunch counter in Atlanta and was sentenced to six months of hard labor.
It was presidential candidate John F. Kennedy who helped win Dr. King's early release.
1963 saw the March on Washington, with a quarter of a million people taking part and getting to witness firsthand his I Have a Dream speech, which is, to this day, one of the most celebrated and most quoted speeches in US history.
When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, We will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, free at last, free at last.
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.
The next year, in July of 1964, Dr King helped pass the landmark Civil Rights Act, which outlawed racial segregation in publicly owned facilities.
By December, he had won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
On April 3rd, 1968, he gave what would be his last address.
I just want to do God's will.
And he's allowed me to go up to the mountains.
And I've looked over and I've seen the promised land.
I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.
One day later the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr was gone, his life cut short by white fugitive James Earl Ray while he stood on the balcony of a hotel in Memphis, Tennessee.
President Lyndon B. Johnson called for a national day of mourning in the following days.
Libraries museums, schools and businesses were closed, and the Academy Awards ceremony and numerous sporting events were postponed.
Today we remember Dr King, his contributions and his sacrifices on behalf of equal rights for all people.
It's a federal holiday always celebrated on the third Monday in January.
We hope you take a moment to honor him today as we are.
And we'll see you back here for more kid news tomorrow morning.
