One of our great national leaders, Martin Luther King, was assassinated 40 years ago this week. He was in Memphis supporting the rights of that city's sanitation workers to form a union. He saw their fight as a natural extension of the fight for social justice, and human and civil rights.

To honor King's contributions, the union made plans to bring a prestigious photo exhibit to the NYSUT Representative Assembly April 10-12 in New York City.

The exhibit — on loan from the Wayne State University library, with dozens of moving photographs — chronicles the events leading up to the assassination, emphasizing the strikers' successful fight to unionize and the turmoil in the weeks after King's death.

To demonstrate King's legacy, a recent study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research showed that, four decades after his death, African-Americans who are union members continue to make more money and have better benefits than their non-union peers (http://www.cepr.net/).