Tomorrow is the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and NPR's Morning Edition is running a series this week related to King's death. This morning's segment, available online: an interview with the Reverend Samuel Billy Kyles, who was present as King gave his "Mountaintop" speech in Memphis the night before his death.

Also available on the NPR website: links to a video segment of that speech and the full text of the speech.

In today's Washington Post: a powerful piece by former Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke, the nation's first African-American senator. Brooke notes that while there has been progress since the early days of the Civil Rights movement, for many poor people in the United States "the future may be as bleak as it was for their counterparts in the 1960s."

"The lack of affordable, safe housing and the absence of jobs or hope for the future have confined even more of our citizens to an eerily familiar world that not so long ago gave rise to cities in flames," writes Brooke. "Until we root out and eradicate the conditions that cultivate generations in deprivation and despair, we are bound to harvest a bitter crop."