ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, April 5, 1993                   TAG: 9304050016
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short


KING'S DREAM OF EQUALITY REMEMBERED

Twenty-five years after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s words were silenced by an assassin's bullet, civil rights leaders reminded a racially charged nation Sunday that King dreamed of a land where children will not be judged by the color of their skin.

In the past year, racial tensions have erupted into violence in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta and New York.

"It seems sometimes that we take two steps forward and three back," said Elisa Gilham, 63, a trustee at Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where King was a co-pastor.

King was shot April 4, 1968 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., where he was staying while in town to organize a sanitation workers' strike. James Earl Ray is serving a 99-year prison sentence for the killing.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was with King at the Lorraine, urged congregants at the All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, Calif., on Sunday, to "not just be witnesses to violence, but find a way to do something about it."



by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB