The three presidential candidates, locked in a campaign defined by race and gender, yesterday praised Martin Luther King’s lasting and transformational effect on the nation while marking the 40th anniversary of his assassination.
Republican Sen. John McCain apologized for his one-time opposition to a holiday honoring the slain civil rights leader while Democratic hopefuls Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama each said they would not be where they are today without King’s work.
“Because of him, after 219 years and 43 presidents who have all been white men, this generation will grow up taking for granted that a woman or an African-American could be president of the United States,” Mrs. Clinton said, speaking at the church where King delivered his final sermon on the day before his death.
Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain were in Memphis paying tribute to King, while Mr. Obama spoke in Indiana, the state where Robert F. Kennedy had delivered the news of the civil rights leader’s murder in a campaign speech.
Mr. Obama said the civil rights leader recognized “no matter what the color of our skin, no matter what faith we practice, no matter how much money we have … we all have a stake in one another, we are our brother’s keeper, we are our sister’s keeper, and either we go up together, or we go down together.”
Mr. McCain, of Arizona, received some boos in Memphis, but also was cheered when admitting he was “slow … to give greatness its due.”
“I was wrong and eventually realized that, in time to give full support for a state holiday in Arizona,” he said.
Mr. McCain said the civil rights leader’s legacy has become even more important over time and recalled that he heard news of King’s assassination from his captors while a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.
“The enemy had correctly calculated that the news from Memphis would deeply wound morale, and leave us worried and afraid for our country,” he said. “Doubtless it boosted our captors’ morale, confirming their belief that America was a lost cause, and that the future belonged to them.”
The Democratic National Committee questioned where Mr. McCain’s heart was, pointing out he voted against creating a federal holiday in the 1980s, and in the 1990s voted to defund the Martin Luther King Federal Holiday Commission.
Mr. Obama, seeking to become the first black president, said in Fort Wayne, Ind., King’s death “left a wound on the soul of our nation that has yet to fully heal.”
Mr. Obama noted that when he was killed, King was standing up for striking sanitation workers.
“While those sanitation workers eventually got their union contract, the struggle for economic justice remains an unfinished part of the King legacy. Because the dream is still out of reach for too many Americans,” he said.
Mrs. Clinton used her speech at Memphis’ Mason Temple to propose a Cabinet-level “poverty czar” who would be “solely and fully” devoted to ending poverty.
It’s a position advocated by the King family and perhaps tailor-made for John Edwards, a former Democratic primary rival who stressed the eradication of poverty during his campaign. Both Democrats have sought his endorsement, and have promised him to make poverty a focus of their presidency should they win.
• Stephen Dinan contributed to this article, which is based in part on wire service reports.
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