Ah, the serenity of a library on Sunday, that quietest of places on the most quiet of days. So why did Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in downtown D.C. sound so much like a sports bar yesterday? “Oh, yeah, go! Go! Go!” shouted a group of men watching the Eagles vs. Giants game in the library’s upstairs hallway. Read full article > >

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Downtown library shutting its doors on Sundays

The dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial, which was postponed because of Hurricane Irene, will be held next month, said Ed Jackson Jr., the monument’s executive architect. In an interview Sunday evening, Jackson said the ceremony will “absolutely . . . definitely” be Oct. 16, beginning at 11 a.m. Read full article > >

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MLK memorial dedication set for Oct. 16

Bernice King scanned a sea of more than a thousand faces in the great church — black, white, Asian and Latino — and described her life as the youngest daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. She was 5 years old when he was assassinated in 1968. Because he was so often on the road during the civil rights struggle, she said, “I came to know Dr. King more than I knew Daddy.” But after his death and her own call to the ministry, she said from the pulpit on Saturday, “the Daddy I came to know was a servant of a high God, obedient.” Read full article > >

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Martin Luther King Jr. is honored at national prayer service in Washington

The 30-foot granite statue has been cleaned. Dignitaries from around the world are in town. And the stage and 30,000 folding chairs are in place. But it has all been in vain, as the foundation building the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial announced Thursday that the dedication Sunday has been postponed. Officials seemed to have little choice with Hurricane Irene bearing down on the region. Read full article > >

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King memorial dedication postponed

I t is one of the enduring mysteries of American history — so near-providential as to give the most hardened atheist pause — that it should have produced, at every hinge point, great men who matched the moment. A roiling, revolutionary 18th-century British colony gives birth to the greatest cohort of political thinkers ever: Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Hamilton, Washington, Franklin, Jay. The crisis of the 19th century brings forth Lincoln; the 20th, FDR. Equally miraculous is Martin Luther King Jr. Black America’s righteous revolt against a century of post-emancipation oppression could have gone in many bitter and destructive directions. It did not. This was largely the work of one man’s leadership, moral imagination and strategic genius. He turned his own deeply Christian belief that “unearned suffering is redemptive” into a creed of nonviolence that he carved into America’s political consciousness. The result was not just racial liberation but national redemption. Read full article > >

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King, in word and stone

I t is one of the enduring mysteries of American history — so near-providential as to give the most hardened atheist pause — that it should have produced, at every hinge point, great men who matched the moment. A roiling, revolutionary 18th-century British colony gives birth to the greatest cohort of political thinkers ever: Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Hamilton, Washington, Franklin, Jay. The crisis of the 19th century brings forth Lincoln; the 20th, FDR. Equally miraculous is Martin Luther King Jr. Black America’s righteous revolt against a century of post-emancipation oppression could have gone in many bitter and destructive directions. It did not. This was largely the work of one man’s leadership, moral imagination and strategic genius. He turned his own deeply Christian belief that “unearned suffering is redemptive” into a creed of nonviolence that he carved into America’s political consciousness. The result was not just racial liberation but national redemption. Read full article > >

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King, in word and stone

As their father’s legacy is officially enshrined in granite on the Mall, the children of Martin Luther King Jr. have come to pay homage to their daddy. He is the man whose powerful shadow they could never escape, whose message they were expected to further and whose image they feel called to protect. “I try . . . to focus on the blessing of having been in this kind of a family,” Martin Luther King III said Wednesday in an interview at the Willard Hotel in Washington. “This is the only life I’ve ever known.” Read full article > >

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Martin Luther King Jr.’s children reflect on the weight of his legacy

Rapper and actor Common is usually cool as a cucumber, but in 2006 he got a little nervous. He was working with Black Eyed Peas member and in-demand music producer Will.I.Am on a song for a movie soundtrack, and Will had assembled the tracks using liberal samples from Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. “So this was serious, you know? Now I’m collaborating with Dr. King,” Common says. “Ain’t no playing around now. Not only do I have to be good, I can’t let down Martin Luther King.” Read full article > >

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Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream has a place in hip-hop — but it wasn’t always that way

You could be driving down Reston Parkway in Fairfax County, along Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue Southeast in Anacostia or on K Street downtown, and you would get a glimpse of the same thing out your window, what is jokingly referred to as the official bird of commercial real estate. The cranes. They’re back. It isn’t just in one neighborhood or another. Developers are shelling out to build apartments in transit-accessible neighborhoods with gusto , and in the toniest areas a few have financed condominium construction. Others are lucky to be providing space for government agencies. The cranes never really left NoMa, the neighborhood behind Union Station, where construction workers are assembling the very structure that many thought wouldn’t be back so soon: a speculative office building — meaning one built without leases in place — by StonebridgeCarras and Walton Street Capital. Read full article > >

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The cranes are back in Washington. Are the jobs?

After Osama Bin Laden’s death, a fake Martin Luther King quote is doing the rounds. Test yourself on made-up quotations.

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7 questions on fake and real quotes

As quotable American figures go, it’s hard to top the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Mark Twain. So, in the wake of the historic raid that killed terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, it’s not surprising that both had quotes that were all over social media.

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Viral MLK, Mark Twain quotes are wrong

The foundation building Washington’s new national memorial to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is planning four days of events and an Aug. 28 dedication, which could be attended by as many as 250,000 people, the foundation announced Thursday.

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Week of events planned for unveiling of King memorial

Hollywood actor Samuel L Jackson is to make his debut on Broadway this autumn, playing Martin Luther King Jr in a play first staged in London.

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Jackson to play King on Broadway

Paula Stern has vivid memories of the two storms that swept through Memphis on April 4, 1968: a midnight tornado that left part of the city in a shambles and a firestorm that erupted there 18 hours later, after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot.

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Freedom Riders at the Newseum to discuss Civil Rights movement

Federal authorities have indicted, Kevin William Harpham, a former member of a neo-Nazi organization, for attempting to bomb a Martin Luther King Day parade in Spokane, Washington. He was slapped with one count of attempting to use a weapon of mass…

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Neo-Nazi Indicted in Bomb Plot