By Lee A. Daniels

This is the week America celebrates in special fashion the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr.

And this year, more than any other since his birthday became a national holiday, the marking of the struggle he led and our appreciation of him underscores the extremes of the black experience in America.

On the one hand, we also celebrate this month the first anniversary of one of the shining moments in American history — the inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States.

On the other, the earthquake that has devastated Haiti, with its many echoes of the disaster of Hurricane Katrina four and a half years ago, underscores that black people in many places within and outside America’s borders face a desperate predicament.

What would Martin say now?

Would he look at President Obama and remind us it’s not an accident of history that one can virtually draw a straight line from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where he delivered the iconic “I Have A Dream” speech to the portico of the west front of the U.S. Capitol, where the nation’s first black president took the oath of office?

Would he say that, yes, there have been some substantial payments made and put to good use on the “promissory note insofar as (America’s) c citizens of color are concerned” he so eloquently referred to in the Dream Speech?

He would declare, I’m sure, as he did then, that black Americans and their allies among other Americans “refuse(d) to believe the bank of justice is bankrupt … (and) that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.”

He was right – the advances black Americans have made since e are proof of that.

But we should remember that the Apostle of Nonviolence also said in the same speech that those who seek justice and equality of opportunity equality “will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

So, armed with his faith and the belief, as he said elsewhere, that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” that Martin Luther King, Jr. returned to the front lines.

Undeterred by his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, he plowed ahead with his decision in 1965 to “take the movement northward” to Chicago despite heavy criticism from erstwhile northern white supporters and numerous black politicians. He persisted in 1967 in his public and increasingly sharp criticism of American involvement in the War in Vietnam despite assertions from mainstream liberals and some other civil rights leaders that foreign affairs was none of his moral business. And, against the advice of many, he spent the last year of his life planning a multi-racial Poor People’s March on Washington for economic justice and supporting black sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee who were striking for better pay and working conditions

The choices Martin Luther King, Jr. made in the last years of his life, after the world’s establishment showered him with honors, define for all time the measure of the man – his commitment to aid the most dispossessed among us, his commitment to justice, no matter what personal danger it entailed. Martin Luther King, Jr. would see Barack Obama’s election for the great advance that it represents; but this week he’d be on the streets of Port-au-Prince, seeking to comfort the afflicted.

Reverend Hosea Williams, one of his close aides, later called King “the militant of the century.” Williams was speaking of the twentieth century; but I’d say the appellation applies to this one as well.

Lee A. Daniels is Director of Communications for the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, and Editor-in-Chief of TheDefendersOnline.