Service projects mark King holiday in Atlanta

''I don't think Dr. King wanted us to praise him, but he wanted us to serve others in need,'' said Sherman Lofton, principal of Atlanta's Crim High School, one of the cleanup sites.

Mashunte Glass had off from school and could have spent the day on her new roller skates. Instead, the sixth-grader went to her middle school - named for King - to paint murals of him for a service project.

''I don't know the full story of Mr. King, but I am trying to learn through his books,'' the 12-year-old said. ''I watched a movie about him yesterday, and I can't believe he's dead. He seems so alive. I wish he was.''

It was one of many ways in which the nation celebrated the legacy of King on the federal holiday in his honor.

In New Hampshire, which adopted a Civil Rights Day instead of a state King holiday, organizers held a food drive, then piled empty food cartons on the steps of the Statehouse in Concord.

''We want to show our lawmakers that there is support from their constituents for this holiday,'' said 17-year-old organizer Dan Kruk, a student from Lake Forest, Ill., attending Brewster Academy in Wolfeboro.

King was born Jan. 15, 1929, and was shot to death on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tenn., where he had gone in support of a sanitation workers' strike.

Admirers gathered in Memphis at the Mason Temple, where King gave his last speech the night before he was killed.

Kimberley Morris, 14, and friend Jessica Richmond, 14, said the service was the first they have attended on a King holiday.

''He wanted everybody to be free and equal, and it's a great day,'' Morris said.

In Atlanta, about 900 people attended the annual service at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King once preached.

''The King holiday has become a remarkable day of humanitarian service across the nation, a day of reaching across racial and cultural lines in a spirit of unconditional love to help our disadvantaged brothers and sisters,'' said King's widow, Coretta Scott King.

Dozens marched in protest at Indiana University in Bloomington, demanding improvements in recruiting and retaining black students. The school's black undergraduate enrollment is at its lowest since 1975.

The national holiday commemorating King's birthday is the third Monday in January, but many events this year were held over the weekend because of President Clinton's inauguration yesterday. Dexter King, King's son and chairman of the King Center, was in Washington for the inauguration.

Johnnetta Cole, president of Spelman College and the speaker at the Ebenezer service, explained why she stayed in Atlanta.

''I have an appointment with a few of the particular folks without whom it would not be President Clinton's inaugural day,'' she said. ''In Atlanta, Georgia, at Ebenezer Baptist Church, I must rendezvous with the spirit of a drum major for justice.''