David Goldman / AP

The residential portion of the Sweet Auburn Historic District, including the home where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was born at right. Today Auburn Avenue is a shell of its former self, the bustling mix of banks, night clubs, churches, meat markets and funeral homes long gone, replaced with crumbling facades and cracked sidewalks. Hundreds of thousands of people still flock to Auburn Avenue to see King's birth home, the church where he preached and the crypt where he and his wife, Coretta, are buried. But tourists have little reason to linger. While King's legacy has been preserved, Auburn Avenue's business community has never recovered from the exodus of the black community that supported it. This week, the area was placed on the National Register of Historic Places' 11 Most Endangered list for the second time since 1992 in hopes of spurring preservation-oriented development.

David Goldman / AP

Tourists visit the Ebenezer Baptist Church where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached on Auburn Avenue in Atlanta.

David Goldman / AP

A visitor stands before the crypt of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta, along Auburn Avenue.

David Goldman / AP

A man walks under the Interstate 75/85 overpass whose construction cut the Auburn neighborhood in half.

David Goldman / AP

National Park Rangers stand outside the original Atlanta Life Insurance Company building on Auburn Avenue, dating back to 1905.

David Goldman / AP

A man walks down the street after asking club goers for spare change in the Auburn Avenue district.

David Goldman / AP

A man pushes a stroller across Auburn Avenue.

AP reports that the neighborhood is caught between preservation and development:

"If we lose any more historic fabric, Auburn Avenue will probably lose its historic designation. You can't just have a few buildings left," said Mtaminika Youngblood, chairwoman of the Historic District Development Corporation, which has shepherded the restoration of the area for more than two decades.

Generations ago, much of Auburn Avenue's prosperity was born out of necessity, a product of segregation. The downtown thoroughfare anchored a community of homes and businesses that depended on each other.

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A quotation inscribed on the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial will be changed following months of complaints that the statement was edited out of its original context, a spokesman said Friday.

The quotation on the left side of the memorial, which opened in August in a park near the National Mall in Washington, reads: "I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness." 

Advocates have complained since then that the quotation makes King appear self-righteous or arrogant, pointing out that what King actually said in Atlanta on Feb. 4, 1968, was this:

"If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter."

Rachel Manteuffel, a columnist for The Washington Post, wrote in an opinion piece Friday that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar had given the National Park Service 30 days to consult with the King Memorial Foundation and others, including members of King's family, to find a better quotation.

Interior Department press secretary Adam Fetcher confirmed Salazar's order, NBC News' Kelly O'Donnell reported from Washington.

You can read Manteuffel's Post column here

Saul Loeb / AFP - Getty Images

An inscription on the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington misrepresents King's ideas, critics say.

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Thousands of people take part in the Martin Luther King Jr. Day march in San Antonio, Jan. 17, 2011.

You know that adage about how the young and old can never seem to see eye-to-eye?

That could well apply to the state of race relations in America, says a report released Friday by a national advocacy group working to rein in economic inequality.

In its ninth annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day report, titled “State of the Dream 2012: The Emerging Majority,” the Boston-based group United for a Fair Economy says that racial disparities are increasingly becoming influenced by age.

“Increasingly, elderly Americans do not identify with young Americans who are far more racially and ethnically diverse, leading to reductions in future-oriented public investments,” the report says.

According to the report, almost half of today’s U.S. residents under 18 are members of minority groups, while 80 percent of retirees are white. By 2030, the majority of U.S. residents under 18 will be youth of color. And by 2042, blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders and other non-whites will collectively compose the majority of the U.S. population.

“If current trends continue, the racial wealth gap will continue to be massive, as it is now, and as the non-white share of the population grows it will become unbearable for the economy as a whole,” Tim Sullivan, one of the authors of the report, told msnbc.com.

The report says:

“It is alarming that in states where the racial generation gap is widest, such as California where public investments in education, social programs, and transportation made in the 1950s helped to catapult the state into one of the richest in the country, public investments have dwindled, as the elderly do not see themselves reflected in youth of color.”

The report examines the racial economic divide in America since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, and uses the trends of the last 30 years to project 30 years forward to 2042. The conclusion:  The past 30 years of public policy has done little to address racial economic disparities.

“The racial economic divide is a national embarrassment. Eliminating it should be a moral imperative, and as the non-white share of the population grows, it will become an increasingly urgent economic necessity,” United for a Fair Economy said.

Read the full report here

Elusive dream?
Forty-four years after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination and 83 years after his birth, civil-rights advocates agree that the income gap between white and non-whites remains a formidable problem.

Roy Innis, longtime civil rights activist and national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, said America has made great strides toward achieving the social and political components of King’s dream of a colorblind society, with passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the election of Barack Obama as its first black president in 2008. But he says the nation still has a way to go toward eliminating racial economic inequality.

“With social and political components well in hand, it is in the hands of minorities to complete the economic component,” Innis told msnbc.com.

Lecia Brooks, director of outreach for the Southern Poverty Law Center, agrees the country has made enormous progress since King was killed and says people of color hold elective and appointment positions "in far greater numbers than King could have imagined." She called the election of Obama "the single most significant accomplishment America has made toward the Dream."

Yet, "systemic progress continues to elude us," Brooks said.

"In 1967, when King launched the Poor People's Campaign, he said poverty was the second phase of the civil rights movement. Then, about 13 percent of the general population was living in poverty; today that number is over 15 percent with miuch higher poverty raytes for blacks and Latinos," Brooks said in an email to msnbc.com. "No, I don't think we're on the right course to correct race-based economic inequities."

What do you think? Vote in the poll above. Also check out our MLK cartoon slideshow.

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