Animated Video Tells King Story In Kid-Friendly Way

For most of his adult life, Dexter King has heard how much he looks and sounds like his father, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

He was only 7 when his father was assassinated in 1968, but somehow he has developed his style and tone of voice. And he has picked up where his dad left off, currently serving as the head of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta.

Now, he is his father - at least in cartoon form. He’s the voice of the adult version of his dad in an animated film that hit video stores last week, released in time for today’s celebration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.

And for Dexter King, it’s awe-inspiring.

“It was a little scary playing my dad, and it was a little emotional,” he says. “But I just tried to be myself.

“I didn’t really want to mimic him, just honor him.”

The video, “Our Friend, Martin,” is an hourlong program that shows a multicultural group of schoolchildren working on group projects about King. On a field trip to a museum dedicated to him, they discover a wristwatch that takes them back in time and enables them to meet King as a young boy, a teenager, a young adult and an activist.

The video was four years in the making, Dexter King says, and includes the voice talents of several big-name Hollywood types, including Samuel L. Jackson, Danny Glover, Angela Bassett, Whoopi Goldberg, Levar Burton, Ashley Judd, John Travolta, Susan Sarandon, Oprah Winfrey, Ed Asner and James Earl Jones.

“If I saw all of those names associated with a project, I’d certainly look further,” Dexter King says, laughing, then getting serious. “But more than that, the cause itself is so important that I think it’ll sell itself.

“With any great project, you have to have a great message. We do.”

The video, which mixes animation with real-life footage, is the first that the King family has endorsed and been actively involved in. For years, the family has wanted to put together a film for children that is both hip and educational, says Coretta Scott King, widow of the civil rights leader.

“We felt that it would make a real impact on the young people, which is where we want to focus a lot on,” she says. “It’s much harder to challenge younger people than it is older people.

“The kids have no idea of how things were in the past.”

Dexter King hopes this video does the trick. TV specials and documentaries done in the past about his father in the past didn’t appeal to young children.

“It’s not always the message; it’s the messenger,” he says. “And it’s important to have my father’s message heard through different mediums.

“And a lot of films about my dad were done in a fashion that wasn’t exciting to children.

“This film is very accessible to kids.”