Atlanta ? The first Martin Luther King Jr. Day since the death of King’s widow and the chief keeper of his civil rights dream was marked Monday with speeches, visits to the couple’s tomb and the opening of a collection of his papers, including a draft of his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Coretta Scott King’s legacy loomed large over the 21st observance of the King holiday at the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King preached.

“It is in her memory and her honor that we must carry this program on,” said her sister in law, Christine King Farris. “This is as she would have it.”

Mayor Shirley Franklin urged the congregation not to pay tribute to King’s message of peace and justice on his birthday and then contradict it the next.

“Millions can’t find jobs, have no health insurance and struggle to make ends meet, working minimum-wage jobs. What’s going on?” Franklin said, repeating a refrain from soul singer Marvin Gaye.

Just as King condemned the war in Vietnam 40 years ago, Ebenezer’s senior pastor, the Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, denounced the war in Iraq.

“The real danger is not that America may lose the war,” Warnock said. “The real danger is that America may well lose its soul.”

Marchers make their way past the Confederate Soldiers Monument on Main Street during a rally to honor slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. at the Statehouse in Columbia, S.C.

Visitors also paid homage to the slain civil rights leader and his wife at their tomb, not far from the church.

“They’re together at last,” said Daphne Johnson, who was baptized by King at Ebenezer.

Coretta Scott King died last year on Jan. 31 at age 78. An activist in her own right, she also fought to shape and preserve her husband’s legacy after his death, and founded what would become the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.

In California, Stanford University released some of King’s earliest sermons and other writings Monday, a decade after the documents were discovered in a moldy cardboard box in an Atlanta basement.

The texts include sermons written when King was a 19-year-old seminary student in 1948 until 1963.

In a 1949 sermon, King asked God to “help us work with renewed vigor for a warless world, a better distribution of wealth and a brotherhood that transcends race or color.”

King also sought a peaceful coexistence between science and religion and rejected a literal reading of the Bible, an approach he said had been used to justify slavery and other racial injustices.

Elsewhere, thousands of volunteers observed the holiday by taking part in service projects. Organizers expected about 50,000 people to participate in about 600 projects, said Todd Bernstein of the group MLK Day of Service.

Shemar Moore, 4, is bundled against the cold and wind as he watches the Martin Luther King Jr. Grand Parade, honoring the late civil rights pioneer, Monday in downtown Houston.

President Bush, in an unannounced stop at a high school near the White House, said people should honor King on the holiday by finding ways to give back to their communities. Classes were not in session but volunteers were sprucing up the school.

“I encourage people all around the country to seize any opportunity they can to help somebody in need,” Bush said. “And by helping somebody in need you’re honoring the legacy of Martin Luther King.”

This year’s holiday comes on the day King would have turned 78. King was assassinated April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of a hotel in Memphis, Tenn.