Not an Icon, a Man

We've let him down on poverty and war

(NEWSER) - Forty-two years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the nation has let him down on two important fronts:

• Poverty: "All these decades later, little has changed when it comes to economic equality," write Bill Moyers and Michael Winship in Salon . "If anything, the recent economic meltdown and recession have made the injustice of poverty even more profound." The nation's "individualist, greed-driven free-market ideology" is killing working families and poor communities. They "need and deserve help."

Friend of Rosa Parks and organizer of 1955 Ala. Bus Boycott

(NEWSER) - Johnnie Rebecca Carr, an early leader in the civil rights movement and compatriot of Rosa Parks, has died of a stroke at age 97, the Montgomery Advertiser reports. Carr helped organize the Montgomery Improvement Association in 1955 after Parks made her famous stand on a city bus. The group's yearlong boycott caught the nation's attention. She later served as the group's president and was active with it until her death. More»

Thousands attend dedication of Martin Luther King Jr Monument

(NEWSER) - Forty-three years after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by an assassin's bullets, the nation's first black president today led an all-star tribute to the civil rights activist who "stirred our conscience" and made our Union "more perfect." "I know we will overcome," proclaimed President Obama at the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Monument. The giant granite statue stands just to the southeast of where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech, notes the AP . More»

That influential summer inspired him to become a minister

(NEWSER) - A young Martin Luther King Jr. might have gone on to any number of careers, but for one inspiring summer in Connecticut. He was there as a teenager, earning money for college by working on a tobacco farm, and he was shocked by the lack of segregation he found. “After we passed Washington there was no discrimination at all,” he wrote to his father in 1944. “The white people here are very nice. We go to any place we want to and sit any where we want to." In a letter written days later to his mother, he noted, "I never thought that a person of my race could eat anywhere but we ate in one of the finest restaurants in Hartford." More»

In his last months, Martin Luther King saw poverty as the next struggle

(NEWSER) - The Root takes the occasion of Martin Luther King Day to observe that Dr. King's focus in the last months of his life was an effort to broaden and convert the civil rights struggle into a campaign to end poverty among all Americans, not just those suffering racial discrimination. It was a risky and unpopular move for the minister, and one with particular resonance 43 years later, with an African-American president in the White House, but 16% of African Americans unemployed. For more photos of Dr. King, click here. More»