When Dr. King was murdered, I had no idea who he was. But as soon as I heard his words on television that night when I was 9 years old, I was dumbstruck, awestruck by their power.

I had an exciting, interesting childhood, to be sure, with all of the challenges that ghetto life provides - but had loving parents.

All of us should be much more humble and contrite when we point the finger at somebody else, because four more fingers are pointing back at us.

We are not all the same; we don't think alike; and we have the right to openly express those differences in ways that, hopefully, will contribute to our community's welfare.

I was very struck when Min. Farrakhan said if Jesus and Muhammad were here today, they'd be embracing each other. That's a tremendous message that needs to be heard more broadly.

The consequences of whiteness are particularly lethal right now. And the ignorance about it, especially on the part of white people themselves, makes them unavoidably complicit in a system that has to be unmasked, unveiled, undressed in order to be reformed or destroyed.

I think that not only do saints make poor role models, they are incapable in one sense of identifying radically with those of us who are mere mortals. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s mortality says to us that here's a figure who got up every day of his life facing tremendous odds and yet overcame them.