Program Success January 2009 | Page 3

PROGRAM SUCCESS – JANUARY 2009 PAGE 3 MARTIN LUTHER KING He led a mass struggle for racial equality that doomed segregation and changed America forever By JACK E. WHITE Guest Columnist It is a testament to the greatness of Martin Luther King Jr. that nearly every major city in the U.S. has a street or school named after him. It is a measure of how sorely his achievements are misunderstood that most of them are located in black neighborhoods. Three decades after King was gunned down on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tenn., he is still regarded mainly as the black leader of a movement for black equality. That assessment, while accurate, is far too restrictive. For all King did to free blacks from the yoke of segregation, whites may owe him the greatest debt, for liberating them from the burden of America’s centuriesold hypocrisy about race. It is only because of King and the movement that he led that the U.S. can claim to be the leader of the “free world” without inviting smirks of disdain and disbelief. Had he and the blacks and whites who marched beside him failed, vast regions of the U.S. would have remained morally indistinguishable from South Africa King announces on April 25, 1967, that he would not be a candidate for the president of the United States. see MARTIN LUTHER KING page 30