Dr. King's achievements taken for granted today

Martin Luther King Day is given only passing acknowledgement in racially homogeneous Southwest Nebraska and Northwest Kansas, but it shouldn't be that way.

The late civil rights leader risked his life in an effort to achieve changes that people of all ethnic backgrounds take for granted today.

Renamed by his father after the famous German reformer, Martin Luther, King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, at the age of 25 in 1954.

The next year, on the same day Rosa Parks was arrest, King led the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted about a year. He was arrested, his home was bombed and was abused and threatened, but on Dec. 20, 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed he was right; segregation on public buses was unconstitutional.

Be became the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, organizing peaceful protests to promote voter registration and economic equality for blacks.

As his fame and influence grew, he organized the March on Washington, drawing more than 200,000 people into a march down Constitution and Independence Avenue in 1963, where he delivered his landmark "I Have a Dream" speech.

He received the greatest honors of his life in 1963, being named Time Magazine's Man of the Year, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, responding "I conclude that this award which I receive on behalf of (the Civil Rights Movement) is a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time." At 35, he was the youngest man to have received the prize,a nd used the money to advance the movement.

Anyone who chooses to attack the status quo is in for opposition, of course, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was no exception.

Branded a radical or communist, he was once sent an anonymous letter from the FBI including tapes of his extramarital liaisons and suggesting that he should commit suicide.

Undeterred, he expanded protests to include the war in Vietnam and was planning a Poor People's Campaign occupation of Washington D.C. when he was gunned down April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee.

Like so many controversial figures, he received his greatest acclaim after his death, awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Congressional Gold Medal, a national holiday and a memorial statue on the National Mall.

King, who would have been 85 last week, would be the first to admit that many needed changes remain to be achieved.

Human rights activists, however, would do well to emulate his nonviolent determination.