King's dream unites disparate voices

Nearly 40 years after his death, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is such a unifying figure that yesterday's breakfast celebrating his life offered the unlikely image of Governor Mitt Romney and his presumptive Democratic challenger, Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly, holding hands and singing "We Shall Overcome."

At events around the Boston area celebrating what would have marked King's 76th birthday, politicians, religious leaders, community activists, and academics spoke of the slain civil rights activist's legacy. Their speeches touched on continuing struggles for equality -- voter disenfranchisement, the need for universal healthcare, and access to quality education. Choruses of "Lift Every Voice and Sing," the black national anthem, rang from venues in the South End to Faneuil Hall and the new South Boston convention center.

Roughly 1,200 people, including local business leaders and politicians, attended the 35th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Breakfast at the convention center. Harvard University law professor Lani Guinier was the keynote speaker, but elected officials dominated the dais, as Senator John F. Kerry, Romney, Mayor Thomas M. Menino, and Reilly tied King's legacy to their own political priorities.

Romney, recalling that his father marched with King in Detroit while he was governor of Michigan, said the minister "awoke the nation" to injustice.

"When I was growing up, white America thought that everyone, black and white, was quite content with the way things were," Romney said. "Dr. King lifted the sleep from America's eyes, so that we might finally see things as they really are."

Romney suggested that if King were alive today he would focus on education, one of the issues Romney hopes to tackle in the new legislative session. Unlike many Democrats on Beacon Hill, Romney doesn't believe that a lack of money is the root of the problems facing struggling school districts. Instead, he intends to push for longer school days and merit pay for teachers, among other measures.

Reilly talked about how he is determined to defend Lynn's voluntary desegregation plan, which is being challenged in court. Menino talked about affordable housing and celebrated a Boston "that is more diverse than it's ever been in its history." And Kerry elicited a standing ovation with his charge that long lines caused by "the uneven distribution of voting machines" and the purging of registration lists disenfranchised thousands of voters during last year's presidential election.

Unlike Romney, Kerry emphasized the role of money in education, decrying a "separate and unequal" system in which teachers in poor schools have to dig into their own pockets for classroom supplies.

Guinier, a specialist in the area of voting rights, called for a Constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote for all citizens, including those who are incarcerated. The 15th and 19th amendments to the Constitution prohibit the United States or any state from denying the right to vote on the basis of race and sex, respectively, but Guinier contended that those amendments do not affirmatively guarantee that right.

At the Jorge Hernandez Cultural Center in the South End, more than 150 middle school students and their families gathered for an annual ceremony to mark the start of four months of community service.

Kayla Gomes, an eighth-grader at Cape Cod's Barnstable Middle School in Hyannis, woke up at 5:45 a.m. to arrive at the city's Young Heroes opening ceremony. She will dedicate the majority of her Saturdays to waking up early and commuting for nearly two hours to participate in the country's oldest and largest Young Heroes service learning program.

"Martin Luther King took a big stand for us to have a better world so I think it's important for us to do our part," Gomes said. "I respect him for keeping the peace and bringing everyone together."

Menino delivered the pledge of service to the ethnically diverse corps of young volunteers from communities that include Hyde Park, West Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, Chelsea, Metheun, and Lynn.

After the ceremony, the children got to work -- either painting a mural for a park at the neighboring Villa Victoria housing project or sewing fleece blankets for the homeless.

Across town at Faneuil Hall, activist and lawyer Anita Hill recalled watching King deliver his famous 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech as an 8-year-old in rural Oklahoma. The youngest of 13 children, she listened and watched King's grainy figure on a small-screen TV that picked up only two channels.

Back then, Hill said, when only 7 percent of African-Americans were registered to vote, a dream of equality was a radical idea that few dared to follow. Now, Hill said, she wants to focus on political equality and she wonders where the public outrage was after what she called "election obstruction tactics" in Ohio and Florida.

Inspired by King's legacy, she said she wants future generations to retain confidence in the political process and to hold on to the belief that vigorous debate makes democracy flourish.

"The stakes today are just as high as they were 40 years ago," Hill said. "The conversation does not start in Washington. With your energy, it can start in Boston -- lots of great ideas have started in Boston, even revolutionary ones."

At the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Dorchester, clips from "Eyes on the Prize" framed a discussion on civil rights. The award-winning 14-part documentary showed King's evolution, starting when he was a 26-year-old preacher new to Montgomery, Ala., where he was called upon to lead the bus boycott.

At Boston University's Photonics Center, 100 African-American Christian women and 100 Jewish women gathered to study passages from the Old and New Testaments.

The daylong interfaith conference sprang from a small group of Jewish and African-American Christian women who meet monthly, said Nancy Kaufman, one of the organizers.

"Martin Luther King stood for all the values and principals that we all hold deeply, and we felt the symbolism of having this women's event on his birthday," Kaufman said. "The voices of women need to rise up, and they did today. We came together across race and religion and connected with one another on a deeper level to build relationships that will help us make our greater Boston community a more meaningful place to live and work."