THE DREAM DEMANDS MORE

Have AI answer Dr. King's call for economic justice

- BY ROBERT F. SMITH

IN 1963, ON THE STEPS OF THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL IN Washington, D.C., Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed, "We've come to our nation's capital to cash a check ... a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds." While many remember King's dream for civil rights, he was also focused on addressing economic inequities, spotlighted by the name of the event that day: the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

Just two weeks before he was assassinated, King sharpened that focus: "What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter," he asked, "if he doesn't earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee?"