Dr. Martin Luther King Junior had a dream, and that dream was for people to respect one another and to unite with one another as a community. On Monday, Rapid City residents heard from Mayor Sam Kooiker and Pastor Lorenzo Kelly about their personal experiences with prejudice. Pastor Carr of the Faith Temple Church says he hopes residents grasp what it really means to be a community on this holiday celebrating the late Dr. King.

Carr says, "We call it a Martin Luther King Day community celebration because we really feel as Dr. Martin Luther King taught that it's a community, it's to bring the community together. Not necessarily one man, but bringing everybody together to celebrate freedom and the Civil Rights movement."

Pastor Carr says he hopes this message will spark a change in the way people think.

Carr says, "Well one of the things that we hope, I think it's the same thing that he hoped, is the message of honoring the dream and the dream that we would have not necessarily but just that the races would come together and that we would respect each other for just being human beings. So it's to provoke thought, to provoke awareness, and hopefully in the end of that we all come together and just live as a peaceful society."

Pastor Carr says we're all on this planet together, explaining it's not like we can leave and go to the moon. So we might as well just get along with each other.

Carr says, "In the famous words of Rodney King. 'Can't we all get along?' I think that's really what the Civil Rights movement was all about is people getting along. No matter what our skin color is, our hair texture, the color of our eyes, our ethnicity. We can all get along."

Pastor Carr says he hopes the Rapid City community embraces the message of Dr. King, and he says recent events in the community are a good reminder why.

Carr says, "I read an article in the paper about one of the council members making a racist comment and so while we've come a long way, that lets us know that we still need this day to remind us of those things and that we still have a little ways to go."

Pastor Carr says this year's Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was especially memorable because it coincided with the inauguration of President Obama's second term, something he says Dr. King would have been proud of.

Darren Leeds