A civil rights activist and Logan County met and marched with Dr. King.

Charles Neblett was a founding member of the Freedom Singers who used music as a nonviolent form of protest.

Our Laura Rodgers tells us more about Neblett life and his work.

I went to a one room graduate school.

Charles Neblett was raised in a small town in Tennessee by activist parents.

My mother told us that we're nobody any better than us.

And that's when segregation was rapid in the forties.

He would later be moved to action by the brutal killing of Emmett Till.

It's almost, Harper said.

I've ever seen in my life.

I was.

Sick.

It lit a spark within Neblett as he saw himself and the young boy.

Go and do something about it.

I was going to live Black Day because that was me.

Neblett would go on to lead desegregation efforts as a student at Southern Illinois University and joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the early 1960s.

A lot of the singing going on in that movement, and it had to be because of that singing people wouldn't have the courage to do the things that they did.

Though he initially rejected phone calls to join the Freedom Singers.

I had more important things to do.

Neblett would change his mind, and some may say the course of history.

The song was so important because what we did, we sang songs that things were saying down south like Ain't No, But let nobody turn around.

Woke up as more of my mind stayed on freedom.

He says the songs were a motivator and an organizing tool.

They would lead him to cross paths with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Well, Dr. King.

He was one hell of a preacher, but he couldn't sing.

So we would meet Dr. King.

He was a high standard and he had something like the Don't.

Glad to see you.

He said, Can I sing with you?

The Freedom Singers traveled all over the country and performed at the March on Washington in 1963 and 2011.

They weren't back in the nation's capital to perform at the White House.

I felt like we were at home.

That's how nice it was.

And he came through and talked to us like we were anybody else.

It was this remarkable.

We performed we got Barack Obama and his wife and everybody else was there to stand up, to sing and to take those freedoms out.

Diagnosed with stage four prostate cancer.

Now, Bledsoe also advocates for health equity.

As black men in the U.S. are more likely to develop and die from the disease.

They found out too late.

And the point is, if you catch it early, it's a big chance you can beat it.

Neblett encouraging the black community to get screened early and often.

On this Martin Luther King Jr Day, he echoes Dr. King's message of love, equality and justice.

Little children hear the truth and the power of change that people like Dr. King made.

And being a vehicle of change in their own communities.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm Laura Rogers.