Civil rights icon Martin Luther King honored with church service in hometown, march in Ala.

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Civil rights icon King remembered in hometown

ATLANTA — Worshippers were warned Monday not to “sanitize” the legacy of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Atlanta church where he preached, while others were going to march in Alabama and President Barack Obama planned a White House discussion on civil rights.

Princeton University scholar Cornel West delivered a passionate keynote address at Ebenezer Baptist Church, commemorating King’s 81st birthday and marking the 25th federal observance of the holiday.

West urged his audience in the church where King preached from 1960 until his assassination in 1968 to remember King’s call to help others and not simply enshrine his legacy in “some distant museum.” King should be remembered as a vital person whose powerful message was once even considered dangerous by the FBI, he said.

“I don’t want to sanitize Martin Luther King Jr.,” said West, who teaches in Princeton’s Center for African American Studies and is the author of “Race Matters” and 19 other books.

He later added, “I don’t know about you, but I don’t even mention his name without shivering and shuddering.”

In Washington, D.C., Obama honored King’s legacy of service by serving meals to the needy. Later Monday, Obama was scheduled to discuss the civil rights movement with a group of black elders and their grandchildren and speak at a King Day concert at the Kennedy Center.

A march is also planned in Montgomery, Ala., where King gained renown leading a bus boycott in protest of segregation during the 1950s.

King, the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner, is the only black American whose birthday is a national holiday.