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The civil rights legend has almost become "St. Martin" to schoolchildren, a larger-than-life figure whose sole achievement was delivering a speech about a dream, Winbush said. "It's like we boiled him down to four words - 'I have a dream' - the same way we've boiled Malcolm X down to 'by any means necessary,'" he said. "I think the students are in danger of getting an image of Dr. King … ascending into heaven." That image is inconsistent with how King was viewed before his death in 1968, Winbush said. "Dr. King was a peacemaker but the vast majority of people in this country, black and white, viewed him as a troublemaker because he told this country, 'Let's live up to what's in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.' I hope that students and teachers go beyond those four words and realize that he lived after the 'I Have a Dream' speech," he said.

This all started with Rodney King. More to the point, it started with a plumber named George Holliday. Had he not been video recording from his balcony, that night in 1991 might have been business as usual for L.A. police who struck King, a harmless drunk, 50 times with their batons, breaking his leg, his cheekbone and his skull. Had Holliday not captured video proof to the contrary, they might have gotten away with some lame excuse: oops, he slipped on the stairs. But thanks to Holliday's camera, we all knew better. Twenty years latter, cameras have become ubiquitous. They have captured entertainer meltdowns, crashes, tasings, deaths and a seemingly endless carnival of police misbehavior: questionable beatings, controversial shootings and unprovoked violence by those we hire to protect and to serve. Perhaps not surprisingly, many police now identify cameras as the enemy.

The opening of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial in Washington, D.C., comes at a time when it's hard to tell just how close we are to King's "dream." To help us appraise that, Robert Siegel speaks with Julian Bond, a veteran civil rights activist and former chairman of the NAACP.

"With his "I have a dream" speech, Martin Luther King threw out a challenge to America. How has it been met, 50 years on?"

"As we educators enter Black History Month, it's easy to focus our energy on Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr.-and typically sanitized versions of their radical activism. It's tempting to try to make talking about race as "easy" as possible. However, doing that does a disservice to our students, because then they can't enter conversations about the world around them-whether it's a news story or a music video-with the full story. Delving deeper into untold histories and modern pop culture results in interdisciplinary possibilities that result in and more thoughtful and well-informed discussions about race in America. After our initial discussions about the video and performance (and some quick history lessons about Katrina, New Orleans, segregated swimming pools, and the Black Panthers), I asked students in all of my classes-Composition I, Composition II, Diversity in the Media, and Intro to Film Studies-to complete the following assignment. The results were universally thoughtful and analytical, without the discomfort and anger that was in their voices the day after the Super Bowl performance."

Amnesty International is calling on Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah to stop the execution of a Lebanese man sentenced to death for "sorcery."The international rights group condemned the verdict and demanded the immediate release of Ali Hussain Sibat, former host of a popular call-in show in which he would predict the future and give out advice to his audience.

Fascinating article about how the "I Had a Dream" speech came to be.