"Dr. [Martin Luther] King had the vision that we should seek to be thermostats and not just thermometers," said Marc Morial, president and CEO of the National Urban League and a former mayor of New Orleans.

He was on campus Feb. 8 to give a commemorative lecture, "The King Legacy Confronts Katrina," in Sage Chapel. "Thermostats set the temperature," he continued. "A thermometer simply measures the temperature. In this, at the beginning of the 21st century, Dr. King's most important mission would be for us to function and to serve as thermostats and not thermometers."

Morial called King "a great strategist, a planner, a thinker and an organizer. Today we would call him a strategic thinker." He added that King also was "a great orator and philosopher." In discussing the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, Morial noted, "In dealing with contemporary social and economic issues, it requires more than oratory to bring about progressive social and economic change. It takes strategy and more than just one person. Sister Rosa was the spark that ignited the freedom movement, but the masses were the powder that set off the flame and the fight."

How does King's legacy relate to today's issues? "Whether as a thermostat or a strategist, we ask ourselves how King's legacy confronts today's problems, such as Hurricane Katrina," Morial noted. "Dr. King's legacy in the 21st century requires us to pick up the baton where Dr. King left it."

Before his assassination, King was planning a campaign in Washington, D.C., to bring attention to economic disparities and economic rights. "We've got to go back in this generation and pick up that baton and carry it into the 21st century. There are more people living in poverty today than there were in 2001," Morial said. "The government's response to Katrina must be judged by the standards of 9/11. Katrina displaced almost a million people who want to go back to their homes, but some of them have nothing to go back to. I say that the best minds, the best talents and the best thinking available ought to be part of the plan for rehabilitating the Gulf Coast for the benefit of the people and that no expense should be spared."

Morial added that King would have wanted today's generation to embark on a new conversation about poverty and economic disparity. "A great prosperous country must have aspirations for its people," he said. "We should have a goal for this nation where no American lives in poverty. For those that cannot work, we have a safety net for them."

Morial concluded that all people should directly participate in rebuilding the Gulf Coast. In addressing all students, he said: "The baton is being handed to you. With that baton, you have to run with it, not walk. With that baton, you have to be a thinker and a scholar. Be a person of action or a strategist, intelligent and articulate, but be one who is about doing something and making change occur."

At the event, Morial and Rev. Kenneth I. Clarke Sr., director of Cornell United Religious Work, also paid tribute to the life and work of Coretta Scott King, King's widow, who died Jan. 30.

Theresa D'Andrea is a student intern writer for the Cornell News Service.