Civil rights icon King remembered in hometown
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Worshippers were urged Monday not to "sanitize" the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. at the Atlanta church where he preached, while others were going to march in Alabama and President Barack Obama honored King by serving meals to the needy.
Princeton University scholar Cornel West delivered a passionate keynote address at Ebenezer Baptist Church to commemorate King's 81st birthday and mark the 25th federal observance of the holiday. He told the crowd to remember King's call to help others and not simply enshrine his legacy in "some distant museum."
King should be remembered as a vital person whose powerful message was once even considered dangerous by the FBI, West told those gathered at the church where King preached from 1960 until his assassination in 1968.
"I don't want to sanitize Martin Luther King Jr.," said West, who teaches in Princeton's Center for African American Studies and is the author of "Race Matters" and 19 other books.
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He later added, "I don't know about you, but I don't even mention his name without shivering and shuddering."
Speaking days before the anniversary of Obama's inauguration, West also told the mostly black audience to hold Obama's administration accountable even as they celebrate his historic presidency.
"Even with your foot on the brake, there are too many precious brothers and sisters under the bus," West said of Obama. "Where is the talk about poverty? We've got to protect him and respect him, but we've also got to correct him if the legacy of Martin Luther KIng Jr. is going to stay alive."
King's youngest daughter, Bernice King, presided over the ceremony with her aunt, Christine King Farris, the slain civil rights leader's only living sibling. His other children, Martin Luther King III and Dexter King, didn't attend the service.
In Washington, D.C., Obama honored King's legacy by serving lunch at a social services organization. Later Monday, Obama was scheduled to discuss the civil rights movement with a group of black elders and their grandchildren and speak at a King Day concert at the Kennedy Center.
A march is also planned in Montgomery, Ala., where King gained renown leading a bus boycott in protest of segregation during the 1950s.
King, the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner, is the only black American whose birthday is a national holiday.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
