Martin Luther King III points to Mississippi deaths in call for action

Martin Luther King III and his wife, Andrea Waters King, linked two recent deaths of Black children in Mississippi to a persistent national failure to address racism in daily life. The comments came after authorities in Mississippi ruled that Nolan Wells died of drowning in July, despite not finding water in his throat, lungs, or stomach. Wells graduated from high school in 2025 and was a freshman at a community college located about an hour south of Jackson when he died.

The couple was in Georgia when they received the news. Waters King said the family was preparing their daughter for college at the time. "The news just hit in the pit of your stomach," she said. She noted that the case brought to mind the anguish of Wells' mother and the specific history of the state.

King referenced another recent case involving Kohen Wiley, a one-year-old who was killed by police in June. Authorities recently determined that the use of force in that incident was justified. The shooting occurred during an accusation that a person in the car with Wiley had stolen diapers.

King described the attitude shown by authorities in these cases as chilling. He noted that Black people are sometimes found hanging from trees and questioned what is wrong with a society that allows such events to continue. "These are all our children," he said, adding that the community needs answers regardless of the child's identity.

King argued that children imitate the actions of adults rather than their words. He stated that if society wants a more perfect union, it must pursue that goal through individual everyday actions. "It's just compassion," he said, adding that it can feel harder than learning rocket science.

Waters King recalled how her mother, Martin Luther King Jr.'s mother, had to explain to her son that he was just as good as anyone else. She observed that conversations Black parents were having with their children in 2026 were similar to those held in 1926. She urged families, particularly in the South, to teach children about the Civil Rights Movement and the strength of Black history.

The King family's comments echo themes from historical texts, including a 1967 speech by Martin Luther King Jr. at Stanford University. In that speech, King described two Americas, one filled with prosperity and another marked by daily ugliness that affects little children. He also cited the 1962 book The Other America, which helped provide a vocabulary for discussing race-driven disparity in the United States.

King and Waters King suggested that softening words about racism often leads to softer actions. They emphasized that children follow what adults do. The couple noted that the South was the origin of the Civil Rights Movement and that adults in the region need to demonstrate more for the children who live there.