Yet our popular memory still bears King's imprimatur alone. (We might add the mythic, tired-old-woman—never committed activist—Rosa Parks.) So who are the non-celebrated?

They include the black citizens of Montgomery , Alabama, who walked or carpooled to work every day for a year, during the 1955-56 boycott of buses for which Dr. King is remembered as the man with the plan. In fact, it was Jo Ann Gibson Robinson and the Women's Political Council who had conceived of such a boycott long before King was called in to lead it.

They are also the citizens of Albany (Georgia), Philadelphia (Mississippi), and scores of cities and rural towns who risked their lives to register to vote; who refused to participate in their local economies; who refused to fight back when they received a blow to the skull from a policeman's club or baseball bat; who would not allow their daily personal wants to inhibit their enduring commitment to the larger struggle for black equality.

Now among these extraordinary actions by "ordinary" folks, numerous bold, articulate, and brilliant leaders did emerge—other great organizers and orators we've forgotten in showering the laurels on Dr. King. Where are the classroom posters and television specials for Jo Ann Gibson Robinson and the women of the WPC? Or for Ella Baker, who bridged the two key activist camps as executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and founding organizer of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)? Or for Amelia Boynton, who wrote led voting drives and other civil rights activities in Alabama decades before the "civil rights movement," and thus paved the way for the famous King-led march in Selma ?

And what about long time Congressman John Lewis, former SNCC leader, whose radical ideals and challenge to Dr. King and the SCLC's at times go-slow attitude did much to shape the entire movement, especially in rural Mississippi where lives were threatened daily? Young students in history class would gain much from reading Lewis' more militant, forgotten speech from the 1963 March on Washington alongside King's more optimistic, remembered one.

There's also no question Fannie Lou Hamer deserves far more public remembrance than she's received. Both sharecropper and outspoken organizer of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, at the 1964 Atlantic City Democratic Convention Hamer refused to compromise with a racist Democratic Party and to accept gradualism.

Needless to say, there are hundreds and hundreds of non-celebrated people—black and white. Some of them, such as Ella Baker, have recently received greater attention from historians writing for a popular audience. But many more have not—while the books on King keep coming.

The irony about public commemorations is the permission they give to collective amnesia. In the case of Dr. King, our proud recollection of his moving, "I've got a Dream" speech has all but clouded over our reflecting on his equally impassioned words on war, even though for King his struggle against social and political injustice and his vehement criticism of the Vietnam war were all part of the same dream.

King was explicit about the connection between the "war in Vietnam " and the war against racism and poverty he "and others" were waging in America , when in 1967 he delivered his "Beyond Vietnam" speech at the Riverside Church in Harlem . Focusing on the costs of that war to blacks, Dr. King explained that:

A few years ago, there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor – both black and white... Then came the buildup in Vietnam ... I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube.

He then assailed the unchecked military industrial complex that continues to influence American foreign policy today:

When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triples of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies...

The "true revolution" King dreamed of had three goals in view – wiping out racism, "the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth," and war, and we do that vision an injustice if we forget (or diminish) his vehement anti-militarism simply because we still don't have the guts "to say of war: This way of settling differences is not just."

Mainstream commentators, and many Americans, have long called on King's legacy to argue for equality—and rightly so. Let us now do the same to argue for peace.

It is more critical than ever to heed King's words, anti-racist as well as anti-war. But as important, we must keep in mind that even the greatest individuals cannot change society alone. The problem is that American culture has always taught us, through movies and television shows, textbooks and children's stories, that they can; that individuals, rather than movements of collective action, are the makers of history.

It's often said that "we need another Dr. King." But while most people would certainly welcome such a person, unless we do a better job remembering and teaching future generations that ordinary citizens, not just Kings, Gandhis, or Mandelas, change the world, we'll be waiting forever for him or her to arrive.

Lisa Kapp teaches U.S. history and media history at Saint Ann's School in Brooklyn, New York
Robert Goldberg is a former history teacher at Saint Ann's School and currently in the graduate program in history at University of Pennsylvania. His publications Include:
"Why Americans Believe Only American Deaths Count in Iraq," History News Network, July 2004
"Maybe They Should Hand out a Nobel Prize for War," History News Network, September 2005

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