When James Burgess came back to the United States in 1968 after serving in Korea, he was stunned at the state of civil unrest in the nation. “I came back and everyone was talking about rioting,” he said. “I thought we were fighting a war in Vietnam and Korea, but I found out we were fighting one here, too.”

Burgess, president of the Anderson chapter of the NAACP, remembers King as the one man who was able to overcome the division in the country during the time of the civil rights movement. “He was a unifier,” he said. “He united the people — blacks, whites, Jews, gentiles. That’s what he did.”

According to Burgess, the message of nonviolence and peace that King preached was one that he related to as a young man in America. “Leaders like Malcolm X were spreading their messages at the same time King was spreading his,” he said. “Either you could go to the radical left, or you could go to the center. By being a Christian, King more or less offered the chance to speak up and speak out in a way that made sense.”

Minnefield agreed. She said King would be pleased at the way some people are using peaceful means for changes.

“So many of my black brothers and sisters fight it through words,” she said. “They don’t have to bear arms.”

The Rev. Ray Wright, president of the local Martin Luther King Jr. Commission, was working at a furniture store in Kansas City, Mo., the day King died. He had to walk home after work through a predominantly white area.

“I wondered, ‘How in the world I’m gonna get home,’” he remembered. “There was nowhere for me to go. Everything was closed.” But he made it.

He said King’s message makes sense today.

“It’s a continuing dream,” he said. “It’s something you can’t drop. It’s trying to reach all you can reach and all you can give for those that are continuing to struggle.”

Additionally, Burgess noted that the messages of people like Illinois Sen. Barack Obama have continued the legacy of King. “It’s residual. It’s a cause and effect,” he said. “Just like King was able to stir the youth of the nation and bring them to action, people like Obama are able to do that, too.”

Minnefield thinks that if King came back he’d say that black Americans have made progress. “But there’s still a long way to go. Back then the (Ku Klux) Klan wore white sheets. Nowadays the Klan is in business suits and sitting in corporate offices.”

Powell agreed.

“You cannot place people in little boxes and tell them who they are,” she said. “But there are people today who still think they can (hold others back). They’re everywhere.”

Powell and Minnefield said work and education will help black Americans achieve King’s dream.

Wright sees King’s legacy in the work people do.