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Martin Luther King Jr. would have supported same-sex "marriage," a former aide to the slain civil rights leader said last night at an event sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution's Anacostia Museum.     Speaking of King's "Christian commitment to a socially conscious democracy," former Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) activist Jack O'Dell asked, "Why would he exclude people because of their sexual preference?"     The homosexual rights movement is "another dimension of the struggle for human rights," Mr. O'Dell said at an annual observance of King's birth, held at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. He described as "unconscionable" the November...

He Had a Dream August 28, 2003 It’s now 40 years since Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech, the highlight of the 1963 March on Washington. Today the speech is widely regarded as one of the great orations of the twentieth century, but even then I found it embarrassing, and I haven’t changed my mind. In August 1963 I was about to begin my senior year in high school. My political views were fairly liberal; I barely knew what a conservative was. I sympathized broadly with King and the civil rights movement. But I...

(York S.C.-AP) May 14, 2003 - A national civil rights group plans to encourage a boycott if York County's Martin Luther King Junior holiday policy isn't changed. The Charlotte, North Carolina, chapter of the National Action Network plans to march at the York County Courthouse at noon Monday to urge the county to recognize King Day as a full holiday. York, Greenville and Lexington are the only South Carolina counties that don't close offices on King Day, the third Monday of January. The group issued a statement Tuesday by chapter President John C. Barnett. The statement says, if the policy...