Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Legacy Celebrated at Energy Department

1/22/2004

From: Jacqueline Johnson of the Energy Department, 202-586-5806

WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 -- The Energy Department's Office of Economic Impact and Diversity recently held its annual program to commemorate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Deputy Secretary of Energy Kyle McSlarrow delivered remarks and introduced this year's keynote speaker, Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, president Emeritus of Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Ga.

Deputy Secretary McSlarrow talked about Dr. King's vision of a nation that could see beyond race and examine its conscience to accept all people as equal. "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. embodied a movement that proclaimed inalienable rights for all people," McSlarrow said. "America has been transformed because of his life. He was a great man, a great American, a man of our time."

Dr. Sullivan told the audience that Dr. King was intensely concerned for the poor, the unemployed, the insufficiently educated and those with no healthcare. During Dr. Sullivan's address, he charged employees to "...find ways to carry out the King legacy and to invest in young people and in our country."

"The work of Dr. King is still before us," Dr. Sullivan said. "We need to busy ourselves with the charge from Dr. King to serve others." In 1965, he witnessed a speech by Dr. King on the Viet Nam War at the First Christ Church in Cambridge, Mass. From that experience, he recognized that Dr. King was an important figure both domestically and internationally.

At the conclusion of the program, Dr. Sullivan was presented the department's Special Recognition Award for participation as the keynote speaker in its 2004 Martin Luther King, Jr. Commemorative Program and for his continuing leadership in medical and humanitarian issues.

Dr. Sullivan is currently the chairman of the President's Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. In 1989, President George H.W. Bush appointed Dr. Sullivan as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, the federal agency responsible for the major health, welfare, food and drug safety, medical research and income security programs serving the American people. He served in this post until 1993.

The program -- first in the annual Special Emphasis Programs sponsored by the Office of Economic Impact and Diversity -- was held at the department's headquarters in Washington, D.C., and simulcast to the Germantown, Md., location.