As Americans pause this morning to mark Martin Luther King Day, it’s worth remembering how far this country has come since he was assassinated on April 4, 1968 — and how far there still is to go.

We have come a long way. In 2001, 17.9% of American blacks between the ages of 25 and 29 had a bachelor’s degree or more; in 1971, only 6.7% did. The gap in educational attainment between blacks and whites is narrowing — in 2001, 33% of American whites between 25 and 29 had a bachelor’s degree or higher, while in 1971, 18.9% did. With the narrowing of the educational gap has come a narrowing of the income gap. The average income for American blacks in 2001 was $14,953, up from $6,823 in 1968. The 1968 figure is adjusted for inflation, so the two figures are directly comparable. For American whites, 2001 average income was $24,127, up from $12,454 in 1968, according to the U.S. Census. In other words, black income and educational attainment have more than doubled over the past 30 years, while white income and educational attainment have less than doubled.

Less precisely measurable, but no less significant, are the successes of individual blacks. Colin Powell is secretary of state; Condoleezza Rice is national security adviser. The chairman and chief executive of AOL Time Warner is Richard Parsons and the chief executive of Merrill Lynch is Stan O’Neal. They are but the most famous individuals in a galaxy of African-Americans and other minorities who are emerging as role models and inspiriters of blacks and whites throughout the land. And we also have a different mindset in the country than we did a generation ago. Today, an all-too-Freudian slip on race by a powerful politician can bring about his downfall without a defense even in his own party.

Still, we have a long way to go in achieving the vision Martin Luther King Jr. articulated in his his 1963 speech, when he spoke of his dream — “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” The distance we still have to travel is underscored by the Supreme Court case over affirmative action at the University of Michigan and its law school, where students clearly were judged by the color of their skin.

Advocates of programs such as Michigan’s insist they are necessary to compensate for an even more pernicious problem — the fact that black children in America are too often trapped in government-run schools that don’t teach them how to read and write well enough. Students in America’s private schools in 1999-2000 were 77.4% non-Hispanic whites, according to the federal Department of Education. By contrast, in America’s 100 largest government-run school districts, which include big cities like New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., only 31.4% of students in the 2000-2001 school year were non-Hispanic whites.

But others, including this newspaper, are increasingly concerned that the very institution of racial preferences like those that obtain in Michigan may end up, in a strategic sense, hurting the cause they ostensibly are designed to help. Standing in the way of school choice, higher achievement, and integration are Senator Kennedy and the teachers unions opposing school vouchers, a movement that has long since emerged as a civil rights struggle of its own. Opponents of vouchers are keeping the poor children of color today from getting what the white students whose parents can afford private school tuition can buy — a decent education.

On this holiday in recent years, we have also found ourselves thinking of King’s stand in foreign affairs. He broke with some of his advisers, after all, to oppose America’s involvement in the war in Indochina. Yet we are not so sure that he would find himself as comfortable in the anti-war movement of today. It is riddled with anti-Semites and haters of the Jewish state. King, in contrast, was an active opponent of anti-Semitism. He was a leader on the issue. We would like to think that he would comprehend the situation today.

Though he was an apostle of non-violence, he was not a moderate in the struggle for freedom, either at home or abroad. In his letter from the jail in Birmingham, he wrote: “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s main stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate … who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice … who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.'” As America ponders the timetable for action to help the people of Iraq and North Korea liberate themselves, modern-day “moderates” who counsel waiting might ponder King’s words. “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever,” he wrote. “The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.”