US chief hails Martin Luther King

President Barack Obama saluted Dr Martin Luther King yesterday as a man who “stirred our conscience” and made the union “more perfect,” rejoicing in the dedication of a monument in memorial to the slain civil rights leader’s life and work. “I know we will overcome,” Mr Obama proclaimed, standing under the 30-foot granite monument to Dr King on Washington’s National Mall. “I know this,” the president said, “because of the man towering over us.”

Mr Obama and his wife, Michelle, and vice-president Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, joined a host of US civil rights figures for the dedication.

The memorial is the first to a black man on the national mall.

“He had faith in us,” said Mr Obama, who was six when Dr King was assassinated in 1968. “That is why he belongs on this mall: because he saw what we might become.”