CANDICE: Welcome to Cracker Croakers for Monday, January 21, 2019. I'm Candice Bergeron, your hostess with the mostest.

COLTON: And, I'm your other host, Colton Wyatt.

CANDICE: Today our nation pauses to remember the life and times of Mike King, Junior.

COLTON; Mike King, Junior? A, Candice, don't you have your facts a little discombobulated there?

CANDICE: Nope, I have all my ducks lined up in a neat little row. After all, I am dyslexic. But today, we're going to look at a different side of Mike King, Junior than most people remember on this federal holiday.

COLTON: Born on January 15, 1929, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Mike King, Junior is perhaps best remembered as the leader of the Civil Rights Movement. Some of his other claims to fame were the Montgomery bus boycott, the struggle against segregation in places like Albany, Georgia, and being the first President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

CANDICE: Mike King, Junior also spearheaded the March on Washington, D.C. and presented his "I Have A Dream" speech in the process.

COLTON: What Candice hasn't told our audience yet is that Mike King was the name listed on his April 12, 1934-filed birth certificate. Later, he would have a different name that would become famous in the world of activism. His birth certificate wasn't revised to reflect this new identity until July 23, 1957 and he became Martin Luther King, Junior.

CANDICE: The story behind King's name change began in 1934 when his father was the senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church and a prominent citizen in Atlanta, Georgia.

COLTON: The church sent the elder King on a multi-country trip to Tunisia, Egypt, Jerusalem, Rome, Bethlehem, and Berlin, Germany. There, he attended a Baptist World Alliance meeting.

CANDICE: It was on this trip that Germany, in particular, held a profound effect on Mike King, Senior. His journey took him to Berlin one year after Adolf Hitler became the Chancellor and he toured the country where the German monk Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg castle church in 1517 that challenged Catholicism.

COLTON: This singular action led to the Protestant Reformation that split Western Christianity. While on this trip to Berlin, the senior King also witnessed the rise of Nazism.

CANDICE: At that point, the Baptist World Alliance declared their outcry concerning racial animosity, oppression against the Jewish people, colored people, and races in all parts of the world.

COLTON: Upon his return home, the trip also changed Mike King, Senior. Shortly thereafter, he changed his name to Martin Luther King, Senior and his son's name to Martin Luther King, Junior.

CANDICE: Another interesting note about Martin Luther King is that his father worked on a plantation in Stockbridge, Georgia as a sharecropper. He left the plantation after accusing the property owner of cheating his father out of money.

COLTON: Once he arrived in Atlanta, Mike King, Senior remade himself from a modestly educated preacher without a significant church into a Morehouse College graduate, and the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in 1930 following his father-in-law's death.

CANDICE: During this timeframe, he was mainly known as M.L. because in the South of those days many Blacks didn't want to be called by their first names. There is no known record of why Mike King, Senior changed his name to Martin Luther King, Senior.

COLTON: Reportedly, he had an uncle named Martin, and one named Luther, and followed his father's wishes to change his name. Martine Luther King, Junior originally shrank from using the name. It wasn't until after the Montgomery bus boycott he publicly commented about having "earned the name".

CANDICE: On April 3, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee where he'd returned to help the sanitation workers' strike, in what would be his final sermon, one that was delivered at the Bishop Charles Mason Temple, Martin Luther King, Junior revealed why his father changed his name to Martin.

COLTON: Here is what he said and I quote, "If I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, "Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?" I would take my mental flight by Egypt and I would watch God's children in their magnificent trek from the dark dungeons of Egypt through, or rather across the Red Sea, through the wilderness on to the promised land."

CANDICE: King, Senior than spoke of traveling through what he referred to as the "heyday of the Roman Empire, then moving on to the day of the Renaissance. I would even go by the way that the man for whom I'm named had his habitat, and I would watch Martin Luther as he tacks his 95 Theses on the door at the church at Wittenberg."

COLTON: The night following this speech, an infamous shot rang out as Martin Luther King, Junior prepared to go to dinner. The shot was fired by James Earl Ray, who served 29 years in prison for the assassination, and died there from hepatitis.

CANDICE: Martin Luther King, Junior died on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. That about wraps us up for this edition of Cracker Croakers.

COLTON: In that case smarty-pants, I suppose we better say adieu. She's Candice!

CANDICE: And, he's Colton!

CANDICE AND COLTON: And, we invite you to join us again tomorrow for another entertaining edition of Cracker Croakers (Featuring Candice and Colton).