What Martin Luther King, Jr. means to a six-year-old

Since my boys have off of school on Monday, the discussion came up tonight as to why.

Colin: "Because of Martin Luther King."

Cameron: "Junior."

Colin: "Yeah. Martin Luther King, Jr."

(This was funny to me in an of itself, because Colin--the oldest, of course--is always the one with the vast knowledge in our home--Cameron rarely gets to 'one up' him.  However, it continued.

Cameron: "Mrs. Winkler told me all about who Martin was."

(Insert stifled giggle from me here. Cameron continues, with quite a bit of emphasis, since all eyes were on him.)

"He was a black man. And he preached. He preached aaaaaaaallllllll over because back then, there were bad men. They were white and they hid behind bushes. When little black kids came along the bad white men would take them away from their mommies and daddies and the white men would make the kids go live at their farms and cut down their corn. They were called snaves."

(I am rolling by this point...internally, of course.)

"The police told Martin not to preach anymore. But he just had to. He had to preach that those white men weren't doing what they were supposed to be doing! He just had to. So they arrested him and took him to jail. Then a bad, bad man shot him and now we have Martin Luther King--(looking pointedly at Colin) Junior-- day."

I think, for a six year old, he relayed a pretty good bit of understanding of what Mr. King did for civil rights. And I think he treated Colin to a bit of information in the process.

Win win.

*grin*