Yolanda King

Within the theater lies the power to stimulate and alter the hearts and minds of both the privileged and those who have too long been denied.

We've not reached the promised land. We're still wandering around, bumping into each other in the wilderness of ignorance and hate. That is why the King holiday is so important.

I will never grow up. Everyone wants to tell me how to live my life.

My mother supported me from the beginning and never said you should be an activist or civil rights leader or minister.

A feeling of self worth is the best accomplishment we can foster in our prisons.

And you don't have to be a preacher to carry on. That's why I've gone into the theater, with my mother's blessings, and someday I may write, produce and act in my own story of daddy's life. There are so many sides to his story. I hope that someday I could get that opportunity.

Til I was about eight or nine, I had no awareness he was anybody special. Since all our friends were in the movement, I thought what Daddy did was natural. Everybody went to jail, right? Then, one day some kids at school called my daddy a jailbird, and it upset me. That was the beginning of my awareness.

You see, for the most part it was a normal upbringing. Sure, there was the Nobel Peace award; sure, there were people coming to our house who I knew were famous. But we grew up in a very modest part of the community. Our last home was in what had been one of the worst ghettos in Atlanta.

Given my belief that there is a divine purpose for my father's life on this planet, given the way I was raised, it's real hard to get angry. I get that from my daddy.

As soon as people heard me speak, they would compare me to my father. My siblings had the same kind of pressure.

I found myself trying to be all things to all people. I felt a tremendous sense of responsibility and the pressure of expectation.

I have chosen to continue to promote 'we're one, the oneness of us,' and shine the spotlight, as my father did.

We must celebrate difference until difference doesn't make a difference in the way we treat each other.

Do you know what I think of when I remember him? I think: He was such a kid. He taught me how to swim when I was 4 and how to ride a bike. So when I think of Martin Luther King, I think of laughter. I think of the play and the fun.

I try to understand people who do violence. I try to understand what they are feeling and experiencing.

I was watching the news that day when the bulletin came on that my father had been shot. I prayed. I asked God, 'Please don't let my daddy die.'

I struggled with a lot of the legacy for a long time, probably actually into my 30s before I really made peace with it.

My father was bigger than life, an entity and everyone expected us, as his offspring, to be saintettes, these little carbon copies.

To really involve yourself in transforming yourself. That's the work that I'm really focused on through my company, Higher Ground Productions, is really helping people to really find a place of personal empowerment as well as inner peace.