Black, white and Asian children sat side-by-side, enjoying doughnuts on a day off from the schools they attend together, while civil rights pioneer Lord
Nickens talked of growing up in an era when that couldn't happen.

"I remember this place when we couldn't come in," he said of the Boys and Girls Club building on Burck Street, where more than 50 people gathered Monday to honor the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. "We couldn't come in the front door and we couldn't come in the back door."

The room grew silent as the audience hung on his every word.

King became a world figure because "he wanted to see that every human being on the earth had the same privileges," Nickens said. The civil rights leader dreamed of a day when no one was shunned "because of color of skin or texture of hair."   more »