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Just as the movement King led began to win access for black workers to industrial jobs and organized labor, the jobs went off shore and labor declined in power and influence.

Forgotten the modern wave of inaugurations of new black majors was the plight of blue collar blacks' plans to use the market system to revive the ghetto were embraced by a generation of politically connected black entrepreneurs, and their cause gained ascendancy. Black elites joined white elites at the feeding trough.

We've all seen the results - the enforced national nullification of the needs of the needy, the gratuitous gratification of the gross and the greedy, the practice of the politics of impropriety, prevarication, pious platitudes and the triump of self-righteous swinishness.

Once again, King's words, delivered three-and-a half decades ago, speak to us today. He said then, "Differences have been contrived by outsiders who seek to impose disunity by dividing brothers because the color of their skin has a different shade. I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one iwth no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions."2

King lost his life supporting a garbage workers' strike in Memphis; the right to decent work at decent pay remains as basic to human freedom as the right to vote.

King isn't the only soldier missing from the Freedom Fight. He didn't march from Selma to Montgomery by himself; he didn't