Hometown crowd honours 40th anniversary of Luther King speech

A crowd of 300 linked arms and marched through downtown Atlanta and the neighbourhoods where Martin Luther King Jr grew up to mark the 40th anniversary of the murdered civil rights leader’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Political and community leaders led the march through the city’s historic Sweet Auburn district yesterday to a rally that eventually drew about 400 people at the MLK National Historic Site.

Rep John Lewis, who helped organise the original March on Washington in 1963 where King delivered his oration, reflected on the progress made since then.

“In 1963, I was on the outside protesting, looking in,” Lewis said. “But because of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and because of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, I am now on the inside making laws.

King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, focused on the legacy of her late husband’s words.

“Martin’s call to inter-racial brotherhood and sisterhood has enduring resonance because it speaks so eloquently to the longing for unity that resides in the hearts of all people of goodwill,” she said.

“He painted a dazzling word picture of a multicultural democracy of the America that could be, the America that should be.”

In Washington, King’s son, Martin Luther King III, addressed the National Press Club and updated his late father’s 40-year-old dream for racial equality with a call for universal health care, economic parity for minorities and the elimination of the “state-sponsored terrorism” of capital punishment.

He also lashed out at opponents of affirmative action for trying to “twist” the meaning of the words of his father, who once said he hoped some day children “will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character”.

King said his father often advocated the “preferential hiring of the disadvantaged. To abandon affirmative action is to say there is nothing more to be done about discrimination.”

In Crawford, Texas, President George Bush said in a statement that “through his leadership, courage and determination, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, brought tremendous good to our country.”

While Americans have come a long way, “there is still work to do to realise Dr. King’s dream”, Bush said.