"Many of the old forms of discrimination that we supposedly left behind in the Jim Crow era are suddenly legal again once you’ve been branded a felon," says Michelle Alexander, author of "The New Jim Crow."

Watch more of our conversation with author Michelle Alexander about crime, the war on drugs, and the disproportionately high number of African-Americans in prison.

“American politics is broken today, and Dr. King’s message, his life, his values and virtues can offer us a strategy for healing what is broken.”

The president of Morehouse College speaks about Martin Luther King Jr.'s religious maturation and about the need for Americans to have "the moral will to act" in the face of economic disparities between blacks and whites.

We asked some of the first visitors to the MLK Memorial on the National Mall to share their thoughts on its significance and on the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

During the Montgomery bus boycott "it was black Christians teaching white Christians what it meant to be Christian," says a white Lutheran pastor who joined Martin Luther King Jr. and others in a movement to change the world.

Watch much more of our conversation with Rev. Robert Graetz, who calls the Montgomery bus boycott a spiritual movement based on love and nonviolence that transformed the hearts of people across the country.

Martin Luther King Jr and Abraham Lincoln loomed large at Glenn Beck's Restore Honor rally, but both of them had an exceptional sense of caution when they spoke of God in relation to American destiny.

"I think King would make a case for the principles and practices of nonviolence even in settling disputes between nations," says Cheryl Sanders, professor of Christian ethics at Howard University School of Divinity and senior pastor at Third Street Church of God in Washington, DC.

The nonviolent teachings of Mahatma Gandhi freed ciivl rights movement veteran and Georgia congressman John Lewis not to hate, says Lewis, who was part of a recent pilgrimage to India to retrace Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1959 trip there.