CHICAGO/NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Americans honored Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday with a traditional day of service as well as a new wave of economic injustice protests by Occupy Wall Street.
On the first King holiday since the now-global Occupy movement was launched in New York City in September, the reignited debate over inequality drew several dozen protesters to march in below-freezing temperatures from the African Burial Ground to the Federal Reserve in downtown Manhattan.
Schoolchildren played "We Shall Overcome" on violins, and crowd members drew parallels between the Occupy movement and King's Poor People's Campaign, which he was organizing as the next phase in the civil rights movement before he was murdered in 1968.
"What Occupy Wall Street is trying to do is exactly what (King) was trying to -- focus on economic injustice and to inform and educate the American public," said Norman Siegel, former director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
"I think (King) would be very pleased because Occupy Wall Street is the children of Dr King's dream," Siegel said at the 18th century burial ground of slaves, now part of the National Park Service.
Protesters in the Occupy movement complain that billions of dollars in bailouts were given to banks while many Americans still suffer with joblessness and housing foreclosures. They say minorities were disproportionately affected by predatory lending practices.
The Occupy movement slowed of late, as officials cleared encampments in major U.S. cities, and winter weather and protest fatigue set in as well.
But it has influenced the national political conversation, with President Barack Obama echoing some of its themes in calling for a "fair shot" and "fair share" for all.
Tara Herlocher, a nurse from Manhattan, brought her 8-year-old son Drew to the New York rally featuring his violin-playing classmates.
"Their school talks about social movements and equality and issues like that, so seeing it in action at Occupy Wall Street brings it home for them," Herlocher said.
This year's King holiday also comes as officials in more than a dozen states implement new laws requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls. Critics say the restriction violates the Voting Rights Act of 1965 -- one of the key accomplishments of the movement King led.
Across the nation, hundreds of formal events were staged for the holiday, which became a federal holiday in 1986.
Occupy the Dream, a coalition of African American church groups affiliated with Occupy Wall Street, called for a national day of action outside offices of the Federal Reserve in 16 cities, including Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis and San Francisco.
Because of the federal holiday, post offices, government buildings and most public schools remained closed.
Community and civil rights leaders urged Americans to make Monday a day on, not a day off, and to honor King's crusade for nonviolence and racial brotherhood by doing volunteer work.
King, a Baptist pastor who advocated for nonviolence, racial brotherhood and equal rights and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, was assassinated in 1968 as he stood outside his motel room in Memphis, where he had gone to support striking sanitation workers.
The convicted assassin, a segregationist and drifter named James Earl Ray, confessed to the killing but later recanted. He died in prison in 1998.
(Additional reporting by Ellen Wulfhorst and Karen Brooks, editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Barbara Goldberg)
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