Last week, I was hanging out with some of my favorite people: Kids, all 10 or 11. The only people in my life who are never mad at me. It was a birthday party. Speaking of birthdays, one casually asked the others what they would be doing with their day off from school Monday for Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. Only she didn’t say his name. She said the initials – out of order.

The reporter in me had to know, so I asked these kids, who make up a swath of beautiful skin tones: “Who was MLK Jr.?” There was some faint recognition. None of them knew anything definitively.

That got me wondering when I first became aware of the great civil-rights leader whose contributions we collectively now celebrate every Jan. 15 – whether we know why or not. There’s so much talk these days about what should and should not be taught in schools. But my grade-school nuns in Arvada certainly did not shield us from difficult topics like Vietnam or civil rights or Watergate. I distinctly recall knowing about bombings at West High School.

Still, I had to know. When did it start … really knowing what was happening in the larger world?    

Back home, I unpacked the shoebox that contains copies of The Moore Newspaper, which, sadly, has gone the way of hundreds of folded newspapers. This one lasted only the summer of 1974. As the masthead vainly trumpeted, the “writer, editor, printer, staff, publisher and typist” was John Moore. (I was 10, going on Cronkite.)

Every day that summer, I typed up the day’s news onto a single, lined piece of school paper. I typed up as many copies as I had 10-cent subscribers (a figure that exploded with the mid-summer discovery of carbon paper – all the way to nine).

Daily features included “Interesting TV Programs,” neighborhood foosball scores and a word jumble. Alongside serious roundups of national and world news culled from that day’s Denver Post, which my seven siblings and I fought over each day with elbows and fists.

The first copy I pulled out of the box was Issue 28, dated July 8, 1974. On that night’s “Medical Center,” I promised readers, “a knife-happy lady goes under surgery.” The section on U.S. News led with John D. Ehrlichman denying having approved the Watergate break-in. What comes next, I will copy verbatim, bad typing and all:

“As you probably know Mrs. Martin Luthar King Sr. was shot Monday as she was playing the organ during a mass while her 20 year old grandson said the mass. The murderer was a non-catholic, and he claimed to police after he was caught that god told him that anyone a christian is his enemy and his god told him to destroy all enemys. So he walked in the church in Atlanta Georgia and waved his gun all around shooting. Apparently he shot Mrs. Martin Luthar King.”

I am glad I knew at age 10 that we live in a world where a woman might be shot in church for her religious beliefs. That the Liberal Democratic Party was taking power in the Japanese Parliament. That the French government was testing nuclear devices off the coast of Australia. And that “McHale’s Navy” would be on at 5:30 p.m.

I was troubled enough by the birthday girl’s near-total ignorance of MLK to reach out this week to a few of the Black leaders in our performing-arts community I now routinely cover as part of my job. I asked what turns out to be not such a simple question:

“What does MLK’s birthday mean to you in 2024? And what would you like young people to know about who he was and what he represented?”

The first person in Denver you want to pose that question to is Cleo Parker Robinson, legendary founder of Cleo Parker Robinson Dance. Growing up in an interracial family in segregated Denver in 1958, it was not uncommon for the Parkers to be followed by police as they rode in the family station wagon. Cleo grew up at the old Bonfils Theatre, where she watched as some people objected to her Black father even being allowed to work as a janitor at the fancy theater that is today the flagship Tattered Cover Bookstore. But thanks to producer Henry Lowenstein’s convictions, Cleo later saw her father, Jonathan Parker, play the starring role in “A Raisin on the Sun” at that very theater.

“I want young people to know that Martin Luther King was a global leader,” Robinson said. “That he believed in humanity. That he believed in practicing peace – at home, in our community, in our city, state and world. That he was concerned about war anywhere. That he fought for civil rights for all people. That he did not judge a person by the color of their skin, their language or their religion. That he accepted all human beings as deserving the right to a good life.”  

Like Robinson, Curious Theatre Artistic Director Jada Suzanne Dixon is the daughter of a legendary figure in Denver history. Her father was Deputy Mayor Bill Roberts, just the second African American elected to Denver City Council and considered a visionary for pushing for the construction of Denver International Airport.

Dixon remembers her father being involved in the conversations about the iconic MLK statue that is located, significantly, where Denver’s massive MLK Day events begin each Jan. 15. The hand-wringing was over how to pay for it.

“I remember standing next to my father and seeing a draft image of the sculpture in the park and knowing that there was something big on the horizon,” she now remembers fondly. “That is to say: The annual honoring of MLK’s birthday honors his legacy and positive impact – and it asks us to collectively reaffirm our commitment to social justice and equity.”

Robinson would like young people to know what MLK knew: “That your words are sometimes the most powerful things you have,” she said.

“Many of the things he said were principles we all should live by. And the greatest thing that he believed in was peace. As an American, as a Black man born in the South, no matter what he had been through – he was able to talk about how we lift each other up. About how the ability to love one another is one of the greatest gifts we have.”

Children can emulate Dr. King, she added, by living their lives while standing for something – anything – with strength and integrity. “Stand up for something that is righteous,” she said. “Stand up for something that is good for others – not just for yourself.”

Robinson is particularly proud that, after a decade of futility, state representative Wilma Webb successfully passed the legislation that made MLK’s birthday a state holiday in 1984. Wellington Webb, Denver’s first Black Mayor, calls his wife “the mother of Colorado MLK Day.” She worked directly with Coretta Scott King in planning the first Denver Marade in 1986.

That same year, Robinson and her dance company were invited by the King family to the kickoff of Dr. King’s birthday celebration in Atlanta. There were attendees from all over the world, including Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela.

“I danced ‘Mary Don’t You Weep,’ ‘Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child’ and ‘Holy Moses’ for Dr. King’s family,” Robinson said, demonstrating for the world “how the arts loudly speak the values Dr. King embraced. We influenced South Africa with the principles of the civil-rights movement. All of us have the right to civil rights – and we are fighting for them today.”

The Denver Marade, she said, is a continuing reminder that every person comes with a gift. “And that every person has the right to vote.”

Something every 10-year-old girl ought to know.