Group To Push Affirmative Action Son Of Martin Luther King Jr. Leads Effort To Counter Attacks

The son of Martin Luther King Jr. on Saturday announced a new national group to counter the growing push to end affirmative action across the country.

“We have come a long way since the era of segregated lunch counters and drinking fountains,” the 39-year-old Martin Luther King III said during a speech delivered not far from a memorial dedicated to his father at the Yerba Buena Center.

“Yet despite this progress, I am certain my father would agree that the struggle to ensure equal opportunity for all Americans is far from over,” King continued.

King said he’s helping form a coalition - Americans United for Affirmative Action - to fight attempts in a number of states and in Congress to end affirmative action programs. Of particular concern, he said, is another new group called the American Civil Rights Institute, whose stated mission is to end race and gender-based preferences across the country.

The Institute was formed this year by Ward Connerly, who also is black and who one of the key proponents of California’s successful Proposition 209.

That measure forbids governmental hiring and other actions that are based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin.

Connerly’s decision to unveil the institute on Jan. 15 - the 68th birthday of the slain civil-rights leader - has deeply irked a number of black leaders, who say the timing has besmirched the memory of a man who never would have supported ending affirmative action.