Day for a King

It's a good thing for our karma that the national holiday in honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. hasn't yet become a national shopping day. And though you may be tempted to use the day off to take care of those holiday returns, why not use the time to celebrate King? Here are some ways to commemorate the man and his life.

Listen Go to the Web site of Stanford University’s Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute to download King's most famous speeches, such as "I Have a Dream" from the March on Washington in 1963 or "I've Been to the Mountaintop," delivered on April 3, 1968, the day before he was assassinated at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tenn.

Visit Pay your respects at the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Ala. Dedicated in 1989 to remember to those who, like King, lost their lives in the fight for freedom, the memorial was designed by Maya Lin, architect of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., and is just blocks from the church where King served as pastor. Admission is free.

Explore Take a virtual tour, featuring 360-degree views of each room, of 501 Auburn Avenue in Atlanta, the house King was born in on Jan. 15, 1929.

View a photographic history of segregation in America, then and now, at Newsweek.com.

See the Nobel Prize Web site for an excellent biography and bibliography of King. Trivia: King was the youngest man and only the second American to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and he donated all his winnings ($54,123) to the civil rights movement.

Teachers and parents can go to the King Institute for lesson plans on King, the Montgomery bus boycott and the civil rights movement. Available for free, the site also features a good interactive timeline and downloadable historical documents.

Read Older teenagers and adults can sink into "At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68" by Taylor Branch. The third volume of Branch's highly regarded biography of King traces the murder of Malcolm X and covers America's increasingly violent mood at the end of the '60s, culminating in the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and King. For kids, try "My Dream of Martin Luther King" by Faith Ringgold—it's suitable for kids ages 4-8 (both available at www.amazon.com).