‘Racism is still with us’: celebration of King’s 1963 speech shadowed by racist attack

Martin Luther King's family decried the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, the overturning of Roe and gun violence in the US

On the eve of the 60th anniversary of Martin Luther King's legendary I Have a Dream speech, his son and granddaughter have decried continuing racial violence and hatred in the US, lamenting that the civil rights leader's call for equality and justice has yet to be fulfilled.

Speaking a day after a vast crowd gathered in the nation's capital in an echo of the 28 August 1963 march on Washington at which King made his famous remarks, his eldest son, Martin Luther King III, warned of a resurgence of hate crimes. Violence against minorities was unconscionable" and unacceptable", he said.