Regardless of the circumstances or the parties involved, it's a good thing when people have occasion to talk about the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

This weekend has been rightfully set aside to honor the achievements of the great civil rights leader, who was born in Atlanta and who died much too young when he was shot while standing on a motel balcony in Memphis. But his courage and inspiring words should be a subject of discussion in classrooms and other public forums throughout the year.

Those following the Democratic presidential race were treated to such a dialogue a week ago between Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois. They are considered the leading contenders for their party's nomination and emotions were at a fever pitch in the wake of the New Hampshire primary, when the dust-up occurred.

Clinton, attempting the make the point that experience counts, had noted that as influential as King had been in bringing attention to the second-class status still accorded African-Americans, especially in the South, in the early 1960s, it took a veteran Washington insider, President Lyndon Johnson, to win passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Obama's camp attempted to spin the senator's remarks as a slight of Dr. King, no doubt hoping to gain some political advantage. But the controversy proved short-lived and both candidates agreed no slight to King was intended and Johnson does deserve credit for pushing civil-rights reform through a reluctant Congress.

The fact is, King has a record of accomplishment and a legacy of inspiration that will never be erased. His words ring strongly still throughout a country that was transformed by his activist mission, which began with his successful campaign to desegregate the Montgomery, Ala., bus lines in the mid-1950s.

It was the actions of men like Newburyport's William Lloyd Garrison and President Abraham Lincoln that erased the scourge of slavery from America in the middle of the 19th century, but a century later, prejudice still reigned in too many corners of this country. King decided to do something about it.

Children born in this century likely have a hard time believing that within their grandparents' lifetimes, black Americans were relegated to the back of the bus in some places and barred from attending the same schools as their white counterparts. The more enlightened world in which we live today owes much to the work and words of Dr. King. It won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 but cost him his life four years later, when he was gunned down by an openly racist ex-convict by the name of James Earl Ray.

No one, least of all King himself, would maintain that bringing an end to the discriminatory practices and ideas that had prevailed in some parts of the country since the Civil War could be accomplished by one man. But the Baptist preacher had a unique gift in the power of his oratory, which he used to great effect as he railed against the injustice of a country where, 100 years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, "the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land."

Four decades after his death, Dr. King's great legacy remains undiminished.