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 The visit by the president and first lady Michelle Obama to a
Washington school was among a raft of speeches, tributes and parades
on the 30th anniversary of the U.S. holiday commemorating King.
Bernice King, daughter of the Nobel Peace Prize winner, told a
standing room-only crowd at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta,
where her father had preached, that blacks faced the erosion of
voting rights, environmental injustice and rising gun deaths.
"What would my father say?" asked King, who was frequently
interrupted by deafening applause. "He'd say, 'What is taking you
all so long?'"
She added, "Now is the time to be resilient, now is the time to be
determined."
Coinciding with the King holiday, African-American director Spike
Lee and actress Jada Pinkett Smith said they would boycott the
Academy Awards ceremony because black actors had been shut out of
Oscar nominations for a second straight year.
 In Washington, the Obamas took part in a community service event at
Leckie Elementary School, which has a large proportion of students
from military families. The event included preparing a garden bed
and packing bags with books, the White House said.
In Columbia, South Carolina, Democratic presidential candidates
Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley addressed a King
rally at the state capitol a day after their party debate in
Charleston. Clinton told the crowd that deaths of blacks at the
hands of police was a civil rights issue. Sanders, a Vermont
senator, said that King at the time of his assassination in 1968 was
fighting for U.S. economic equality.
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"What would he say about a nation where 29 million people don't have
health insurance?" he said.
The statehouse commemoration was the first that did not have the
Confederate battle flag flying on the grounds.
In San Jose, California, a "Celebration Train" will make a 54-mile
(86-km) trek to San Francisco to commemorate King's historic 1965
march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, for civil rights.
Religious leaders in Cleveland plan a rally at the Cuyahoga County
prosecutor's office to protest police handling of the death of Tamir
Rice, 12. A Cleveland police officer shot him in 2014 and a grand
jury has declined to indict the officer.
(Additional reporting by Harriet McLeod in Charleston, South
Carolina, Kim Palmer in Cleveland, and Ian Simpson in Washington;
Editing by Chris Reese and Sandra Maler)
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