Dr. Martib Luther King Jr.: Pledging to carry on his mission, thousands mark 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death - by Jenny Jarvie

In an echo of King's visit to Memphis in 1968, scores of men on Wednesday carried black-and-white signs identical to ones carried that year by striking sanitation workers: "I AM A MAN."

Many who rallied outside the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local Union 1733 headquarters on Beale Street early Wednesday were sanitation workers whose strike for better working conditions inspired King to come to Memphis.

King was fatally wounded on April 4, 1968, as he stood on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel, which is now part of the National Civil Rights Museum. Jesse Jackson, the 76-year-old civil rights activist who is one of the last living witnesses of King's assassination, stood on the balcony Wednesday.

"The balcony does not have the last word," he said. "We would not let one bullet kill a movement."

At the King Center in Atlanta, Bernice King, the slain civil rights leader's youngest daughter, said, "Now more than ever before, we need his teachings, his principles, his steps of nonviolence."

The King Center presented its highest award, the C Peace Prize, to social activist and lawyer Bryan Stevenson and Benjamin Ferencz, a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials of Nazis after World War II.

PHOTOS: A nation remembers Martin Luther King Jr. »

Among those who remembered King on Wednesday was Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who spoke in Indianapolis, where Sen. Robert F. Kennedy announced news of King's death during a presidential campaign rally. "I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight," Kennedy told the crowd that evening.

Read more: Pledging to carry on his mission, thousands mark 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death

US Civil Rights movement: Martin Luther King Jr.: His life's defining moments

Dr. Martin Luther King: a shining light of the US Civil Rights Movement

Today is Martin Luther King day, which is a national holiday in the USA.

Dr. Martin Luther King, a Baptist Preacher, was not only a social activist but is also the widely respected Afro-American Leader  of the Afro-American Civil Rights movement.

King was the chief spokesperson for nonviolent activism in the Civil Rights Movement, which successfully protested racial discrimination in federal and state law. The campaign for a federal holiday in King's honor began soon after his assassination in 1968. President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983, and it was first observed three years later. At first, some states resisted observing the holiday as such, giving it alternative names or combining it with other holidays. It was officially observed in all 50 states for the first time in 2000.

He was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968 by James Ear who was arrested on June 8, 1968, in London at Heathrow Airport, extradited to the United States, and charged with the crimem and was sentenced to 99 years in the Tennessee State Penitentiary.

Note EU-Digest: A great man, who had the right dream for America, which unfortunately is still a job in progress.

For a pictorial review click here: Martin Luther King Jr.: His life's defining moments