Monday, January 16, amid fresh calls from President George W. Bush and others to continue his struggle for justice and equality.
"At the dawn of this new century, America can be proud of the progress we have made toward equality, but we all must recognize we have more to do," Bush said during a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday celebration at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
"The reason to honor Martin Luther King is to remember his strength of character and his leadership, but also to remember the remaining work." At the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Reverend King Jr. preached during the 1960s, dignitaries recalled his message of non-violence and his commitment to justice.
But Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin urged people in Reverend King’s hometown to live his legacy of persistent and tireless action every day of the year.
A LEGACY
"We have an obligation because we are the keeper of the King legacy in Atlanta, a legacy of fighting for social and economic justice, a legacy of desegregating public facilities, a legacy of marching with the poor and neglected, a legacy of demanding peace against senseless war," she added.
King himself once famously said he had a dream of peace. "My four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream for them…," he said 42 years ago.
However relations between his four children have remained tense as they at odds over how best to carry their father’s name and his legacy forward. At the centre of the dispute is the sprawling Martin Luther King Junior centre in Atlanta, Georgia.
POPULAR SITE
One of the south’s most popular tourist sites, the complex includes the house where the slain civil rights leader was born in 1929, a library that contains his original speeches, and his gravesite. The memorial is in a state of disrepair and has been losing money for years.
The center’s board, chaired by Doctor King’s younger son, Dexter Scott King, is now considering selling the complex to the National Park Service for $11-million. However the proposal is being fiercely contested by two of King’s other children, eldest son Martin Luther King the third and his sister, Bernice.
They say the board would be selling one of black America’s most irreplaceable assets, but others such as New York University Education Professor Pedro Noguera believe it is an asset that should not be monopolized by the King family. The row comes amid more difficult times for the family as King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, suffered a major stroke in August.
TOWERING FIGURE
"Despite all these distractions, King remains a towering figure in US politics 20 years after a national holiday was first introduced to mark his birthday," commented The Times newspaper in London.
Over the weekend, Ray Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans, invoked Reverend King’s name as he called for his city to unite after the carnage of Hurricane Katrina. “He would want us to get together. He would want us to start over,” he reportedly said.
Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in April 4, 1968, as he was in Memphis to march with and speak out on behalf of that city’s sanitation workers, who were reportedly badly mistreated and underpaid. (With reports from Washington, Atlanta and BosNewsLife Research).
