MARTIN LUTHER KING’S children received the news when a special bulletin interrupted one of their favorite television shows. The CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite told them and the nation: “Dr. Martin Luther King, the apostle of nonviolence in the civil rights movement, has been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee.” Seven-year-old Dexter, ten-year-old Martin, and twelve-year-old Yolanda ran to their mother. Coretta Scott King was on the phone. She raised a finger, signaling for the children to be quiet. “I understand,” she said. The children waited. “I understand,” she said again. Finally, she hung
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