King's legacy

THE ISSUE

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. His presence can still be felt in the evolving nature of race relations in the United States.

What would the Rev. Martin Luther King make of America today? No one can say with certainty, but there is no doubt he would find much to rejoice about and much to be worry about.

When King's life was ended by an assassin's bullet in Memphis 40 years ago today, the United States was in turmoil. The unpopular war in Vietnam was escalating and casualties were mounting, the modern civil rights movement that King had played a major role in launching with the Montgomery bus boycott was making significant headway but meeting violent resistance, and major U.S. cities were experiencing deadly, destructive riots. The 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Acts - legislation he helped convince Congress to pass - had eliminated the legal barriers that blocked African Americans from taking part in deciding the course of their country and being treated as full citizens. But there was still a long way to go. And there is still a long journey ahead.

In early April 1968, very few African Americans held public office in the United States - especially in the South. Few police and fire departments hired black officers, and government offices in most of the country were staffed almost entirely by whites.

In early April 2008, African Americans hold elected public office throughout the country - especially in the South. Police and fire departments have black employees, as do government offices. African Americans are teachers, school principals and superintendents. African Americans hold and have held presidential cabinet posts and ambassadorships. And a man whose father was an African and whose mother was a white Kansas native - Sen. Barack Obama - could become the next president of the United States. On the day Martin Luther King died, Obama's rise to the U.S. Senate and campaign for the presidency would not have been possible. That's significant progress in a comparatively short time considering many blacks still couldn't vote during the 1960s.

But King almost certainly would be troubled by the high drop-out rates among African American youths and the alarming crime and incarceration rates for black males. It seems certain, too, that he would be working to improve the economic lot of many African Americans and the poor, who are not yet taking full part in the American dream of economic self-reliance.

King was in Memphis 40 year ago today to join striking black sanitation workers who were not receiving the same treatment as their white counterparts. He knew that the civil rights struggle - a struggle that transcends race on many fronts - had to shift its focus to the economic disparities faced by the poor.