Tens of thousands of conservative activists rallied Saturday in the nation's capital on the anniversary and at the same site of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech. Civil rights leaders are protesting the event.

Rally organizer Glenn Beck, who speaks to a faithful audience nightly on conservative Fox News television and daily on talk radio, insists it's just a coincidence that his "Restoring Honor" rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial is overlapping with the 47th anniversary of King's speech.

Two months before nationwide Congressional elections, which could cost Obama's Democrats their majority in the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate as well, Beck's rally becomes only the latest symptom of rampant political partisanship that is splitting the country and drowning out voices of moderation.

Beck, pacing back and forth on the marble steps, said he was humbled by the size of the crowd, which stretched along the Washington Mall's long reflecting pool nearly all the way to the Washington Monument.

"Something beyond imagination is happening," he said. "America today begins to turn back to God."

"For too long, this country has wandered in darkness," said Beck, adding it was now time to "concentrate on the good things in America, the things we have accomplished and the things we can do tomorrow."

Beck is known for his extreme views and statements. He has described President Barack Obama, the first black U.S. president, as a racist.

Beck was joined by Sarah Palin, a conservative favorite and potential 2012 presidential candidate.

Neither Beck nor Palin made overtly political comments.

Palin, greeted by chants of "USA, USA, USA" from many in the crowd, told the gathering, "It is so humbling to get to be here with you today, patriots. You who are motivated and engaged ... and knowing never to retreat."

Palin honored military members in her speech. She likened the rally participants to the civil rights activists who came to the National Mall to hear King's historic speech. She said the same spirit that helped civil rights activists overcome oppression, discrimination and violence would help this group as well.

"We are worried about what we face. Sometimes, our challenges seem insurmountable," Palin said.

"Look around you. You're not alone," Palin told participants.

The crowd _ organizers had a permit for 300,000 _ was vast, with people standing shoulder to shoulder across large expanses of the Mall. The National Park Service stopped doing crowd counts in 1997 after the agency was accused of underestimating numbers for the 1995 Million Man March.

Civil rights leaders protested the event and scheduled a 3-mile (5-kilometer) plus march from a high school to the site of a planned King memorial near the Tidal Basin and not far from Beck's gathering.

Beck and other organizers say the aim is to pay tribute to America's military personnel and others "who embody our nation's founding principles of integrity, truth and honor." The broadcaster toured the site Friday as supporters cheered.

The Rev. Al Sharpton called the demonstration an anti-government rally advocating states' rights. And Sharpton said that goes against the message in King's speech, in which the civil rights leader appealed to the federal government to ensure equality.

"The structural breakdown of a strong national government, which is what they're calling for, is something that does not serve the interests of the nation and it's something that Dr. King and others fought against," Sharpton said Saturday on C-SPAN.

"It is ironic to me that they come on the day of a speech where Dr. King appealed for a strong government to protect civil rights and they're going to the site of Abraham Lincoln who saved the union against the state rebellion," he said.

King's historic speech came at a critical point in black Americans' struggle for civil rights and equality under the law.

"I have a dream that 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," King told a massive audience that jammed the National Mall below the memorial to Abraham Lincoln on Aug. 28, 1963.

King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, five years later.

Lincoln was the 16th U.S. president, commander in chief of northern federal forces when the Civil War broke out a century and a half ago. During the war, he issued the emancipation proclamation, which outlawed slavery in the southern states, which had seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America.

Beck has given voice to those angry and frustrated with Obama and other Democrats this election year, especially members of the tea party movement _ a loose knit coalition of conservative and libertarian activists who oppose taxes and what they perceive as government intrusion in their lives.

___

Associated Press writers Phillip Eliot, Steven R. Hurst, Brett Zongker and Nafeesa Syeed contributed to this report.