Son tries to keep dream of Martin Luther King alive

Thousands applaud Coretta Scott King as they attend ceremonies on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on Saturday to observe the coming 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s call for equality in his ``I Have a Dream'' speech and the historic March on Washington, which took place on Aug. 28, 1963. PHOTO: AP

Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where his father delivered the historic "I Have a Dream" speech 40 years ago, Martin Luther King III called on a cheering crowd of several thousand to look beyond the nostalgia of the moment and to actively champion the causes his father and other leaders of the civil rights movement fought and died for.

"My father was more than a dreamer," said King, president and chief executive of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, standing behind a lectern covered in African kinte cloth, the grand statue of Abraham Lincoln looming behind him. "The glorious dream my father shared with us that day was not just an exercise in eloquent speechmaking. We need the reminder that Martin Luther King Jr. was first and foremost a minister of action."

The speech was part of an afternoon rally, scheduled as the focal point of a weekend of activities in honor of the original March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, held on Aug. 28, 1963.

The march also kicks off, organizers said, a 15-month voter registration drive leading to next fall's presidential election.

"We need the reminder that Martin Luther King Jr. was first and foremost a minister of action." Martin Luther King III, son of Martin Luther King Jr. PHOTO: REUTERS

In addition to King, speakers at the rally included Coretta Scott King, wife of the slain civil rights leader; the Reverend Jesse Jackson; and Representative John Lewis of Georgia, who was the youngest speaker at the original march and is the only one of the main speakers on the program that day still living.

The original march was organized by a tight band of civil rights, religious and labor organizations. But the lengthy list of speakers over the weekend reflected the diversity of causes ushered in over the past 40 years because of the legal and victories won in the 1960s. Leaders of groups representing gays and Arab-Americans were prominent on the program on Saturday. Their supporters cheered and held aloft signs in the crowd.

"It is hugely important," said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, before the start of the rally, while also noting that Mrs. King has long been a vocal supporter of gay and lesbian causes. "We have been welcomed with full and open arms as full and complete partners in the larger civil rights struggle."

The common theme among the varied speakers was a call for a social justice and a united liberal agenda -- necessary, many said bluntly in their speeches, to defeat George W. Bush next year.

The Reverend Al Sharpton, activist and Democratic presidential candidate, drew rousing cheers when he urged those present to "take down the dream busters." Harking back to King's reference in the original march to the "bad check" America had given to the Negro people, Sharpton said. "Today that check has bounced again, but it's not for insufficient funds."

"The check has been marked `stop payment,'" he said.

Though they were not among the speakers, two more democratic presidential hopefuls, Carol Moseley Braun and former governor Howard Dean of Vermont, were also present. Dean, who arrived in Washington from New Hampshire before heading to Virginia and Wisconsin for campaign rallies, met with King privately before the rally began.

"The Democratic Party in the last election cycle moved away from its base, and that was a mistake," Dean said in an interview. "I felt like if I'm running for president it was important for me to be here today. Dr. King stood for what George Bush is taking away from us, inclusiveness and respect for every American."

Though exuberant, the crowd assembled fell far short in number from the masses that gathered in 1963. On Saturday, the crowd packed the area directly in front of the Lincoln Memorial, but the grassy expanse along each side of the pool held only sparsely distributed clusters of onlookers.

"I feel like numbers count," said Sheila Noyes, 68, a systems administrator for a nonprofit organization in Washington, with a notable sense of disappointment. "But there aren't many people here today."

Ray Hammond, 76, who attended the march in 1963 and who sat at the rally on Saturday in a folding chair shielding his eyes from the sun, attributed the fewer numbers to a lack of respect and understanding among young people for the relevance of the civil rights struggle.

At the original march, Hammond said: "Troops were surrounding us. All of us knew we could be killed. It was true for thousands of people, and we still decided to come. It was a feeling of wonder and apprehension."