Americans mark 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination

www.chinaview.cn 2008-04-05 10:14:35

WASHINGTON, April 4 (Xinhua) --

Hundreds of thousands of people, including presidential candidates and civil rights leaders, were rallied on Friday by an unrealized dream for a country of racial equality to mark the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination.

His calls for justice, equality and democracy were heard through the day in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was shot dead at a balcony in a motel on April 4, 1968 at 39 years old.

Thousands of people, black and white, including members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, marched miles in the rain to the Lorraine Motel with a wreath hanging on the balcony where King was last seen alive.

During a speech in front of the balcony, Republican presidential candidate John McCain apologized to the public for his vote against the Martin Luther King's Day in Congress, saying the slain civil right leader should "be honored for as long as the creed of America is honored."

Later the day, his Democratic counterpart, Hillary Rodham Clinton, appeared in a Memphis church where King delivered his final sermon on April 3, 1968. Hillary shared with audience her feeling at hearing King's death, and said the struggle for the racial equality is far from being achieved.

In Atlanta, Georgia, King's birthplace, his children Bernice and Martin Luther King laid a wreath at their parents' grave in the national historic site, where there was a special exhibition of pictures taken in the last days and hours of King's life.

The first African-American presidential candidate who has serious shot at the White House, Barack Obama, started his campaign rally in Indiana with a moment's silence for King.

"Through his faith and courage and wisdom, Dr. Martin Luther King moved an entire nation," he said.

In District of Columbia where he delivered the famous "I have a dream" speech in 1963, the Congress held a tribute on Thursday in the Capitol's Saturday Hall.

Nowadays, King's dream words were lingering across the states and in people's mind as an unfulfilled legacy.

President George W. Bush admitted in a Friday statement "we have made progress on Dr. King's dream, yet the struggle is not over."

Despite the facts that African-Americans, who account for nearly 14 percent of the total population, have seen their social economic status improved, education and employment expanded as well as political officials increased, it is hard to say that the United States has become a nation where people "will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

According to official statistics, about a quarter of black families are still struggling under the poverty line, and unemployment rate of the black nearly doubles that of the white. Due to lower living standard and inadequate health care, the black people’s longevity is about five to seven years shorter than the white on average.

A Gallup poll released last year showed that only 30 percent of the black felt satisfied with the way they were treated in America.

Another poll by MSNBC and Zogby released recently found that 90 percent of African-Americans say they have experienced racial discrimination.

"We have among blacks, more unemployment, 2.5 million African-Americans in jail," civil rights leader Jesse Jackson told CNN. "We have an unfounded moral imperative to invest in healing the structural inequality."

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