Hundreds remember Martin Luther King Jr.

Nearly a hundred people gathered on the steps of the State Capitol Building on a gray, rainy Friday afternoon to honor the memory of Martin Luther King Jr., who was shot to death in Memphis, April 4, 1968. It was one of numerous events all around the city over the course of the weekend commemorating King"s memory.

During the Friday gathering, King"s nephew, Derek King, delivered a thundering speech condemning the nation"s current path.

"Terror? What"s terror?" he asked. "Terror is when we"re shot in the back by police, that"s terror! It"s amazing to me that we"ve got 25 million people going to be hungry every night in this country; we"ve got 16,000 homeless people in this very city; but we"ve got enough money to build bombs Ö I don"t support the carnage that"s going on right now in Iraq. We say we"re going to rebuild Iraq? Well, we haven"t even rebuilt America yet!"

Though he spoke loudly against the Bush Administration, King reserved his most fiery rhetoric for the religious community, whom he said was standing by idly in a time when they needed to speak out.

"Where"s Billy Graham at? I haven"t heard from Billy Graham in a long time. These religious people say, "We"ll go in after the war and bless it." Bless what? Bless the bombed-out land? Bless the mothers and their dead children? How can you stand in the pulpit and say God loves us and he doesn"t love anybody else? How can these so-called religious people turn on their televisions and see the carnage?"

When King and numerous other speakers were finished, the crowd - many of them carrying signs with Martin Luther King quotes such as "It doesn"t matter what you say, it matters what you do" and "Peace is not the absence of conflict; it is the presence of justice" - marched back to the Urban League, braving the rain while singing gospel hymns.

It was an event very much in the spirit of Martin Luther King, not only in form, but also in substance. Derek King spoke while flanked by the peace flag and "Jobs For Justice" signs, and speakers discussed poverty, racism, injustice and war in equal measure - a reflection of Martin Luther King"s belief, late in his life, that many great injustices draw from a common well.