STILL DREAMING

On the 40th anniversary of his assassination, Rev. Martin Luther King is to be honored as a champion of peace in the city where he died. The whole nation flinched" when King was killed by a rifle shot on April 4, 1968.

King advised his followers to keep working for equal rights for all citizens, "to keep on moving," no matter what obstacles they faced, presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John McCain were scheduled to take part in the anniversary day events that were to include a "recommitment march" through Memphis and the laying of wreaths at the site of King's assassination. Sen. Barack Obama will be campaigning in Indiana.



King was cut down on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel while helping organize a strike by Memphis sanitation workers, some of the poorest of the city's working poor.

His son, Martin Luther King III, wrote in an opinion piece published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday that the nation is still plagued by poverty. He urged presidential candidates to vow to appoint a cabinet-level officer who would help the poor.

The National Civil Rights Museum opened in 1991 at the former motel, which now holds most of the exhibits tracing the history of America's struggle for equal rights. The museum also encompasses the flophouse across the street from which confessed killer James Earl Ray admitted firing the fatal shot. Ray died in prison in 1998.

King was a champion of nonviolent protest for social change, and his writings and speeches still stir older followers and new ones alike.

Other tributes were being held around the country. In Congress, House and Senate leaders and lawmakers who once worked with the civil rights leader marked the anniversary with a tribute Thursday in the Capitol's Statuary Hall.

In Indianapolis, Ethel Kennedy was scheduled to make brief remarks during a ceremony Friday evening at what is now Martin Luther King Jr. Park. Her late husband Robert Kennedy gave a passionate speech there the night of King's assassination that was credited with quelling violence in the city.

In Atlanta, the Martin Luther King Jr. Historic Site was commemorating the anniversary with the opening Friday of a special exhibit chronicling the final days and hours before King's death, as well as his funeral procession through his hometown five days later.

The centerpiece of the exhibit is the wagon that was drawn by two mules as it carried King's casket from his funeral at Ebenezer Baptist Church to Morehouse College, his alma mater.

Christine King Farris was sewing an Easter dress for her daughter in their Atlanta home one rainy April evening when the nightly news was interrupted by a special report.

The newscaster announced that Farris' younger brother, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., had been shot in Memphis, Tennessee. Another update came minutes later: King was in critical condition.

"It was a horrible moment," Farris said of that night in 1968. "I tried to call my sister-in-law; the lines were busy. I tried to call my parents; the lines were busy. I couldn't get anybody."

While boarding a plane for Memphis, Farris learned that her brother was dead. It was the beginning of a string of family tragedies. Her only surviving sibling, younger brother A.D., drowned the next summer. Her mother, Alberta, was shot dead five years later while playing the "Lord's Prayer" on an organ in church on Sunday morning.

Farris, 80, said in her office at Spelman College, surrounded by photographs of her famous brother and other civil rights leaders she once knew.

This year, the civil rights community will gather in Memphis on April 4 to mark the 40th anniversary of King's assassination, but Farris will not join them. She is talking publicly about the death of her younger brother for the first time, but a return to Memphis is not part of her agenda.

"I can't go," she said. "I've not been there since the time we went to gather my brother. My memory of Memphis is not a pleasant one. It's one that I cannot erase."

Farris is remembering her brother in another way. She is writing a memoir about her life with him called "Through It All."

When April 4, 1968, did come, Farris says, others stepped in to help her shoulder her grief. Sen. Robert Kennedy dispatched a plane to Atlanta to take her and King's widow to Memphis.
Her voice remains level as she talks about the plane ride. Then her eyes start to mist.

She says she never left the plane when it arrived. She watched her brother A.D. come on the plane with the Rev. Andrew Young and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, two of King's closest aides.

"They were crying like babies," she said.

Yet she and her son shrug off any suggestion that her family, like the Kennedy clan, is somehow marked for tragedy. "God never puts on us what we can't bear," she said.

Forty years after her brother's untimely death, Farris will return to Memphis, but only through her memories.

"I thought about all that I've been through and all these memories and sometimes it gets tough," she said. "By being the lone survivor, if I don't do this, a part of history will be left out."