Grappling over meaning of the dream

"That is not the dream," Beck told his audience. "That is a perversion of the dream. We are the people of the civil rights movement. We are the ones that must stand for civil and equal rights. Equal rights. Justice. Equal justice. Not special justice, not social justice, but equal justice. We are the inheritors and the protectors of the civil rights movement. They are perverting it and they are doing it intentionally. There cannot be equal stuff and equal houses."

Roger Wilkins, who was at the 1963 march, said Beck has no right to link his political causes with the struggle for racial integration. Because his uncle Roy was then president of the NAACP, Wilkins sat in a VIP section that put him close enough to hear gospel singer Mahalia Jackson call out, "Tell them your dream, Martin."

Before a racially integrated crowd of tens of thousands, King launched into soaring oratory about how the nation's promise of equal citizenship could unite Americans.

Wilkins said Beck "doesn't sound like a person who is a uniter." He said the political causes supported by Beck and the "tea party" movement are contrary to important parts of King's message, including the crusade against poverty and social inequality.

"This is a gimmick to get a lot of headlines," Wilkins said. "That's not the spirit that I saw some 40 years ago."

Other critics of the rally include Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, who has called Beck's choice of day and place for the rally "insulting." King's son, Martin Luther King III, gently disassociated his father from Beck's event in an op-ed article this week in The Washington Post. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign, has described Beck's rally as "blatantly political."

Promoting the rally

Beck says the event is not about politics. No elected officials are scheduled to speak. No political signs are permitted. He has sometimes described the rally as an opportunity to honor those who have served in the U.S. military.

Promoting the rally in June, he said: "As we create history together, your children will be able to say: 'I remember. I was there.' As we, as we pick up Martin Luther King's dream that has been distorted and lost and we say, 'We bought it when he first said it,' it's time to restore and to finish it."

On Thursday, on Beck's Fox show, Alveda King compared the criticism she has faced for agreeing to speak at the rally to the threats faced by her uncle and other civil rights leaders.

"We have to have courage. We have to be prepared," Alveda said. "I say to the naysayer, to the critics who say, 'Alveda King has no right; she is hijacking the dream,' I have the dream in my genes."

Beck replied: "Doesn't everybody have the right to dream?"

Carson and another historian said Beck's claim to the mantle of the civil rights movement stems from a simplification of the causes for which King fought. Although King is best remembered for the struggle for racial justice, they said, he also fought for social justice and was deeply critical of many aspects of American society, particularly of the nation's treatment of poor people. (In one recent show, Beck warned his viewers to run from churches that promoted "social justice," which he likens to socialism.)