Jessica Hill / AP

A young woman wears a green and white bow, the colors of Sandy Hook Elementary School, in her hair with the initials of the victims names during an interfaith a sermon at Newtown Congregational Church on Sunday.

A former leader of one of the nation's most prominent liberal Protestant churches told residents still grieving one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history that Martin Luther King Jr.'s words of healing and nonviolence "are needed now more than ever." 

The Rev. James A. Forbes Jr., the first black minister to lead New York's historic Riverside Church, spoke Sunday night at the Newtown Congregational Church in a service honoring King and the elementary school shooting victims. 

About 300 residents filled the church for the community worship service, called For the Healing of Newtown, on the eve of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Forbes delivered a sermon calling for a transformation and healing of communities.

"The saddest face I ever saw on Martin Luther King was at the funeral of the four little girls slain in Birmingham, Ala.," he said. "We ask today, as King did then, 'Lord, what can come out of this that will honor those lost in this tragedy?'" 

Twenty Sandy Hook Elementary School first-graders and six school officials died in the Newtown shooting last month. The gunman who attacked them had killed his mother at home before going to the school and later committed suicide. 

Forbes' message of transformation was delivered to the Newtown community a day before the federal holiday honoring King's legacy and a little more than a month after the Dec. 14 school shooting. 

The senior minister of the Newtown Congregational Church, the Rev. Matt Crebbin, welcomed the congregation and spoke of the long journey ahead. 

"Though we are all interconnected, our destiny lies in our ability to be one, as a community and as a nation," he said. "Tonight we gather to heal and mend hearts." 

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See the civil rights leader in speeches and marches from Alabama to Washington.

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As the congregation sang the hymn, "When Aimless Violence Takes Those We Love," many fought back tears and others simply wept.

Forbes told the congregation his message would be one of hope and healing. 

With great passion, he spoke of his experiences during the civil rights movement and the struggles and challenges along the way. But, he said, one way to get encouragement is to recognize when progress is made. 

"As a community, overcoming a tragedy will take time, but progress will be made," he said. 

Forbes said that King believed in the power of community and faith and the need for good to come from tragedy. He stepped down from the pulpit to be closer to the congregation as he raised his voice to finalize his message. 

"We have seen that violence can strike anywhere," Forbes bellowed. "Yes, King talked about violence, but he also talked about transformation and healing in the wake of violence." 

He then asked people in the church to consider something: "What if history records what happened in Newtown and that leads to a new America?" 

"Maybe if we listen to the Spirit, we as a town will be able to stay out of the depths of despair," he said. "If we listen to the Spirit, there will emerge a beacon of light that can lead an entire nation." 

Crebbin said this was a fitting time for Forbes, who was leader of the Riverside Church on Sept. 11, 2001, but retired in 2007, to visit Newtown, which is about 60 miles northeast of New York City. 

"He's been able to share his insight about grief through his experience with 9/11," Crebbin said. "In the midst of the grieving, we can't try to fix the grief. We need to help with the grieving. It won't be the same life." 

Everyone stood to sing "We Shall Overcome" as the service ended. Forbes, founder of the Healing of the Nations Foundation, walked down into the congregation to take the hands of those sitting across the aisle from each other and connected the crowd into one. 

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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MIAMI -- When Martin Luther King Jr. said he had a dream, this likely wasn't what he meant.

A flier promoting a Miami strip club's "I Have a Dream Bash" featuring MLK holding wads of cash next to scantily clad women has its creator taking plenty of flak.

Miami Beach graphic designer Jeffrey Darnell Paul says he didn't realize the flier, made for The Office strip club at 250 Northeast 183rd Street, would generate the controversy it has.

"I wasn't trying to disrespect anybody ... it wasn't on my mind that it would escalate to something like this," Paul told NBC Miami Monday. "It was just supposed to be a promotional thing, it wasn't about disgracing Martin Luther King, it wasn't about that."

Read the original story on NBCMiami.com

Paul, who owns and runs South Side Graphix, said he makes fliers for the club every Sunday and that he made the King flier about a week ago for the club's promoters.

"It was proposed to me like a birthday bash for Martin Luther King, I put a flier together without thinking about the effects it would have," said Paul, who is also known as DJ Big Boy. "It's something that I really didn't think about."

Paul said the bash, which was supposed to begin at 8 p.m. Sunday and end at 6 a.m. Monday on MLK Day, was canceled after he realized the flier was inappropriate. He said by then, the flier was making the rounds on the Internet and he was getting lots of negative feedback.

"I got plenty of phone calls, plenty of phone calls ... people calling from Chicago, Ohio, California," Paul said. "If I could've, I would have taken it back ahead of time."

"What was I thinking? Promotion," Paul told NBC Miami.

The strip club's management sought to distance themselves from the promotional effort on Monday, however.

“This is the first time seeing it. This is the owner's first time seeing it," The Office manager Jermaine Robinson said. "So we don’t condone this. This is Martin Luther King. We respect what he did. Today is the day for us to honor him.”

Robinson said the flier is "definitely disrespectful, to be honest with you."

Paul said there's no one to blame but himself.

"I apologize about it, I'm taking full responsibility," he said. "I wish it could have gone down a different way but I'm learning from it and trust me, I'm not going down that route again."

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Eric Gay / AP

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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