6-year-old organizes Martin Luther King march in Camp Verde

Chandler Plante receives more than 60 pledges in support of his MLK event

CAMP VERDE, Ariz. - Chandler Plante is different from most 6-year-olds.

For starters, he likes to wear suits to school - that's suits with a vest and a tie. It began a couple of years ago when he was in Head Start. Pinstripes are a favorite.

When his older brother Collin wants to watch cartoons, Chandler will fight to watch the news.

Given a preference, though, he prefers books to television and biographies to all other books.

And it is from his taste for reading that he has become quite different from his peers, drawing the inspiration to see that those of us who are different from the rest of us, are treated by all of us as though they were just like us.

It is a message his hero, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., taught, and a message Chandler feels is, like his hero, worth taking to the streets. It is a message that, in Chandler's words, is all about "being nice."

"He taught people to be nice to each other. He taught garbage collectors to don't use their hands to fight, use your words. He was arrested for that because some people didn't like what he said. But all he wanted people to do was be nice to each other," he says.

At noon on Martin Luther King Day, Jan. 16, Plante organized a march down Camp Verde's Main Street in his hero's honor. He received more than 60 pledges to support his march.

He recruited children and teachers from Camp Verde Elementary School, kids from his brother's Tae Kwon Do class and dancers from the Yavapai-Apache Nation to join him. He secured the blessing of the mayor and council.

According to his mom Janice, Chandler's mission to teach others to be nice to each other began after reading a biography of Abraham Lincoln.

He then read the story of Ruby Bridges, an African-American child, who at the same age Chandler is now, broke the color barrier and became the first of her race to attend a public school in America's segregated South.

By the time he had read Martin Luther King's biography and spent a day volunteering at Montezuma Well for last year's MLK Day of Service, he had some questions.

"He wanted to know why there was no Martin Luther King Day march in Camp Verde. We didn't know. So he insisted we get one started," Janice said.

His march was not the first un-6-year-old-like thing Chandler has done. When Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot, he walked around Camp Verde with his dad getting friends, businesses and complete strangers to sign a huge get well card he had made, before sending it to her bedside in Houston.

He wrote Ruby Bridges, asking her to come to his school and talk to his classmates about tolerance, but still needs to raise the money to get her here. He has plans to serve at the weekly Bread of Life dinner.

And he wants to be President of the United States when he grows up so he can "fly Air Force One" and teach others to be "nice to each other."

In addition to the march on Jan. 16, wrestling coach Mario Chagolla gave a talk at the town gazebo afterward, on (no surprise) "being nice." And there was a canned food drive and a litter pickup on Finnie Flat road adjacent to Bashas'.