THIS week — Monday and today — marks significant anniversaries for two powerful American men, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr and Mr Barack Obama, current president of the United States of America.

Monday was a public holiday in the USA celebrating the example and work of outstanding civil rights leader, Mr King, while today is the first anniversary of the inauguration of the first African-American president of the US, Mr Obama.

The significance of Dr King’s work is global and the goals for which he fought — human rights, justice, freedom and peace — are still to be fully realised. As he said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Regrettably, the election of a black president does not mean that the struggle for civil rights is over in the US. The recent experience of Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr being brutally arrested on his front porch leaves no one in doubt that there is still the practice of racism. Not even President Obama could elicit an apology from the unrepentant police officer and the Cambridge Police Department when he should have been dismissed.

The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1968, removing the legal impediments to voting by black Americans. Ironic that if Universal Adult Suffrage is used as a measure, then Jamaica is an older democracy than the US. Only 40 years ago was there formal legal segregation in education, housing, employment and nearly every aspect of life in the US.

Dr King was the leader of a movement which transformed America and forced it to live up to the credo that all men are created equal and have certain inalienable rights. He suffered numerous imprisonment and acts of violence, eventually paying with his life and proving that there is a price for doing the right thing.

Today, there is still residual prejudice and lingering racism so deep in the consciousness that those infected are not even aware of it. Last week, Democratic Party Majority Leader in the US Senate, Senator Harry Reid apologised for describing President Obama as “light-skinned” with “no Negro dialect”.

Like the rest of the world, we hope that Mr Obama will make the difference, that he will help America see that the colour of a man’s skin is not the true measure of the man.

President Obama has brought unprecedented hope to mankind for a better, more tolerant world. His Nobel Peace Prize is the clearest sign yet of this hope. His rapprochement with the Muslim world has caused a global sigh of relief.

We are pleased to note the leadership role he has taken on earthquake-devastated Haiti, a dark place that reminds of the cruelty of man to man and decades of blinding poverty as punishment for having the temerity to throw off slavery.

People whose life and work are of importance to the whole world should be commemorated by a “World Day”. People like Dr King and Mr Mahatma Gandhi merit such treatment. In time, we hope, Mr Obama will be among such rarefied constellation.

The purpose of such a memorial is not only to praise and express appreciation, but to remember and recommit to the struggle for human rights and a better world.

When Martin Luther King said in his now-famous speech that he had seen the “Promised Land” and that we as a people will get there, he was looking far into the future, because 40 years later we still cannot truthfully say: “Free at last! Free at Last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”