Dr. King Honored At His Home Church

More than 2,000 people, including Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, former President Bill Clinton, and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, crowded Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Monday to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s commitment to peace and equality and note the importance of his legacy in this election year.

King's birthday is Jan. 15, but the federal holiday bearing his name is observed on the third Monday in January. It has been a national holiday since 1986, but his birthday has been observed at Ebenezer Baptist — where King preached from 1960 until 1968 — every year since his assassination in Memphis, Tenn., at age 39 on April 4, 1968.

The diversity of the presidential race that includes a Mormon, a Black man, a woman, and a Baptist preacher, is definitely in line with Dr. King’s vision.

"Martin aimed high, acted with faith, and dreamed miracles that inspired a nation. Mayor Franklin said. "King's legacy gives light to our hopes, permission to our aspirations and relevance to our dreams."

"He freed us all to fight the civil rights battle, to fight the poverty battle, to fight all these battles and do it together," Clinton said. "He made a place at the table for all of us."

Mayor Franklin, who recently endorsed Democratic hopeful Senator Barack Obama, said, "We are at the cusp of turning the impossible into reality. Yes, this is reality, not a fantasy, or a fairy tale." Bill Clinton has been criticized in the Black community for describing aspects of Senator Obama's candidacy as "a fairy tale." The largely Black crowd erupted in applause at the mayor’s comments.

The war in Iraq also drew a mention. "We would be remiss if we did not commemorate Martin Luther King Jr., a champion of peace in a time of war," said Isaac Newton Farris Jr., a nephew of King and president of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Farris urged diplomacy, economic incentives and other nonviolent efforts "as an alternative to military intervention to end the war in Iraq," drawing applause from the crowd.