Our Friend, Martin

Yesterday afternoon I subbed in a second grade classroom. Since Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day (and a school holiday) the last thing on the schedule for the day was a showing of the movie, Our Friend, Martin. It was about an hour long. Nothing like showing a movie on a Friday afternoon. I've shown movies before where kids are fidgetty by 20 minutes into the movie so I was worried about something a whole hour long.

But this movie was really good. It is a cartoon with a bit of an air of It's a Wonderful Life to it. Using the magical device of time travel, modern youth are transported back in time into various times in MLK's life. Actual newsreel footage is interspersed into the story. It was really well done and (best, in my opinion) it held the attention of 21 second graders! As you could imagine any film about MLK would be, it was difficult to watch in parts. At one point, the youth go back and bring Martin forward in time to show him how things have changed. However, because they remove him from the time continuum, the changes he made never happened. They are shocked to return to their own time and find segregation on buses, at drinking fountains, in schools, etc. still rampant and white and ethnic kids do not hang out together. They don't want Martin to go back because they know his fate, but they realize that what he did for society as a whole was too important. I was thankful we had the lights turned off because I was very teary-eyed in the back of the classroom. As I looked around the classroom of 100% caucasian kids in a school that is probably 98% caucasian, it seemed so important to me to show this film and I can see why the teacher had chosen it.