Martin Luther King would have celebrated his 79^th birthday on January 15. However, 40 years ago on April 4, 1968 he was assassinated and America lost its most renowned civil rights leader. It is a pity that although America has come a long way since that fateful day, and although he was responsible for many of the rights that Black people in America now take for granted, his name is caught up in the bitterness of the 2008 Democratic presidential campaign.

King became involved in the struggle for the civil rights of Black Americans in 1955, when as the pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, and a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) he led the first major Negro non-violent demonstration. This was the bus boycott against segregation on buses in America that required Blacks to sit in the back of busses, and given national attention when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. That demonstration lasted 382 days, ending on December 21, 1956 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation on buses was unconstitutional.

The days of the boycott were not easy days for King, who was arrested, threatened, came under surveillance from the FBI, and even had his house bomb. However, he emerged as America’s foremost Black leader. In 1957, after being elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he took on the quest for improvements in the civil rights of Black Americans in earnest, leading marches, giving major speeches, negotiating with presidents and high officials which resulted in President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton, one of the leading contenders for the Democratic nomination for the November 8 presidential elections, made the comment that “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Presumably, Mrs. Clinton was trying to make a case for her experience over fellow Democratic contender Barack Obama, also stating that “It took a president to get it (the Civil Rights Act) done.” But, why would Hillary Clinton imply that King made no real progress in the civil rights movement until President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, considering that she and her husband President Bill Clinton are favorable among the Black population? Not only did she minimize the efforts of King, but of other Civil Rights leaders like Harriet Tubman, Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X and Medgar Evars who were also assassinated for their efforts.

Clinton’s comments have given rise to a racial controversy that Dr. King would not have tolerated and has caused several blacks, including black leaders like Congressman James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the highest ranking African-American in the U.S. Congress, to question the Clintons’ so-called allegiance to Black America. Clyburn has stated that he is rethinking his neutral stance in next week’s South Carolina Democratic presidential primary out of disappointment at comments by both Bill and Hillary Clinton that he saw as diminishing the historic role of Civil Rights activists.

This disappointment has become so pervasive that some Blacks have begun to seriously re-consider the reference to Bill Clinton as America’s “First Black president,” – a title bestowed on him by author Toni Morrison when she attempted to defend him in an essay.

Later in 2001, the former president was in fact honored as the nation’s first black president by the all Democratic Congressional Black Caucus at its Annual Awards Dinner, with the chairperson of the caucus, Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas telling the audience that Clinton "took so many initiatives he made us think for a while we had elected the first black president” to which Democratic Representative Maxine Waters of California responded that she had no idea “what that means.”

In fact, many Blacks share the same view, because other than appointing several Blacks to his Cabinet and leading positions in his administration, and attempting to reform Welfare, it can be argued that Bill Clinton has not really done much more specifically to improve the lives of Black people. Even he himself admitted that he should have done something to assist the people of Rwanda during the genocide. He also did little to assist the Caribbean in securing the vital Banana trade between the Caribbean and the United States.

However, it is Clinton’s statement that aspects of Obama’s campaign “is a fairytale” and his wife’s questionable lack of understanding of the pivotal role that Martin Luther King played in the history of Black America that now annoy Blacks across America. As we celebrate Dr. King’s birthday, the Clintons must be reminded that it is because of the initiative of Martin Luther King, and other Civil Rights leaders that there is a powerful Black voting bloc that helped to put Bill Clinton in the White House and that Hillary now desperately needs if she is to have a shot at it.