Holiday Marked by Pleas for Peace

Atlanta — Civil rights leaders and politicians around the nation observed Martin Luther King Day yesterday, many of them invoking King's name in arguing against war with Iraq and urging the Supreme Court to uphold affirmative action in college admissions.

King's widow, Coretta Scott King, addressed a crowd of about 1,000 at King's former pulpit, Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

She called on world leaders to settle their differences peacefully.

"We commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. as a great champion of peace who warned us that war was a poor chisel for carving out a peaceful tomorrow," she said. "We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means. Martin said: 'True peace is not just the absence of tension, it is the presence of justice.' "

The civil rights leader would have turned 74 Wednesday. He was assassinated in 1968.

One of the largest King Day events was in Denver, where more than 30,000 people paid tribute to King and protested military action against Iraq.

Marchers in Boston sang gospel songs and carried flags and banners. "We're here because Martin Luther King was a man of God," said Caring Hands Silva, a leader of the Natick Praying Indians, descendants of a tribe that converted to Christianity in 1651. "What he represents is peace and brotherhood and love for all mankind."

In York, Pa., five white supremacists marched in opposition to King Day and in memory of a white police officer killed during the city's 1969 race riots.

Speaking from the same pulpit in Montgomery, Ala., where King helped launch the civil rights movement with his leadership of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley was inaugurated with a promise to end racial division.

"Alabama needs to be the state that brings it to a culmination," Riley said. "Alabama is going to lead this nation in uniting the races once and for all."

Riley later attended, without speaking, a ceremony paying tribute to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, whose birthday was Jan. 19.