On Friday we stopped by The King Center in Atlanta, and stood for a moment by the gravesite of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King. The center was closed when we arrived late in the afternoon, but we walked around the grounds of the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site, saw the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, and my eldest daughter and I walked along the Civil Rights Walk of Fame while my wife returned to the car with our youngest. I told them that we were going to see the grave of a hero, one of the ways we hope to 
inspire normal acts of herosim in our kids. She was excited to see “the grave of a hero”, though she perhaps doesn’t fully understand what made him a hero. We’ll see if a bit more sinks in today as we spend a couple of nights in sharecropper’s shacks, see plantations, and discover the roots of the Blues. As my eldest daughter and I returned to the car, we said a prayer of thanks for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and for the work he accomplished — a modern-day prophet calling the nation to do what was right.
Did you tell her that a man (who was a boy when Dr. King gave his I Have A Dream speech) is now the Democratic candidate for president? Which of course won’t make a lot of sense to her … but if she and you can listen to the speech and hear his dream and know that baby step by baby step it’s working throughout the culture like yeast … I never believed it would be true that we’d see a black man running for president. But it is … and one tiny seed of his dream did sprout in good soil. The ravens didn’t get it and it didn’t fall on the rocks. It will be as a mustard seed. And it’s a seed called hope.
Tell her those things about Dr. King … and his dream that he gave to all of us. Please tell her. It’s important to pass them along.