Chicago elementary students honor MLK, share his lessons in oratory competition

Alanna Atwood, a fifth grader at Wendell Smith Elementary, thinks Martin Luther King would tell us today to use our words before resorting to violence.

“We shouldn’t be using any weapons or anything because weapons can cause a lot of things, it can cause injuries and more things like that, and we don’t want that in the world,” Alanna said.

The 11-year-old delivered that message to a crowd of more than 150 at the Drake Hotel on Friday in an oratory competition honoring the civil rights...