Much attention is paid to Dr. Martin Luther King's 'dream,' but in the past tense...as if he only talked about blacks and whites lining up and singing "Kum Bah Yah" together. But that's the campy early '70s misinterpretation of what he stood for that was old for most of us by third grade.

Make no mistake, as much as he wanted equality for all people, he was also very serious about African-American advancement and leadership and promoted it within his own organizational structure. King would be happy to know that despite the statistics we constantly hear about black youth, there are young blacks of every stripe that are working to make Kings' vision happen.

Here are five who are keeping Dr. King alive:




Cory Booker, 40
Mayor, Newark

Before President Barack Obama swept in to the White House, Booker came through representing a new flavor of black politicians. A Stanford, Oxford and Yale Law alum, rather than forging his way into Washington, as many expected, he stayed in the 'hood and worked his way in to City Hall. Since 2006, he's faced down, with some success, gun crime in Newark, N.J., which had been looked at as among the nation's most violent cities. But now, like other mayors, he's challenged by municipal deficits, unemployment and a dwindling population base. What Booker's got going for him, though, is that he's nothing like his predecessors, and people in Newark seem to like that, and in many ways he seems to represent what black folk want to vote for.



Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, 33
CEO, Green for All

It seems that we don't hear much about black folk in the green movement, but just like professional hockey, we're there too - you just have to look. For just about a year, Ellis-Lamkins has been at the helm of the organization that is at the forefront of civil rights in a way Dr. King never imagined. Green for All puts together partnerships between the public and private sectors that advances the green collar economy and promotes public policy that is favorable to the environment. Her work is grassroots, but it is also broad in scope and led her to the Copenhagen Climate Conference last month to advocate for a workable plan between nations to clean up the environment.



Roland Freyer, 32
Professor of Economics, Harvard University

Raised by relatives who wound up busted in a crack deal when he was only 12, a guy like this (statistically speaking) typically winds up following the same path, but not this cat. The education bug caught him in high school, and next thing he knew he shot through the University of Texas at Arlington in two years in economics and was on his way to the Harvard Tenure track. Among his most notable scholarly works is a paper done in 2006 on the phenomenon among kids of "acting white," in which he found some minority children do actually scrutinize each other for getting good grades. In another writing, he teamed up with Freakonomics author Stephen Leavitt, finding out why in the midst of the crack epidemic of the '80s and '90s, the murder rate somehow declined.



Farrah Gray, 24
Author, Entrepreneur

Instead of beating the odds, Farrah chose never to face them in the first place. As a child prodigy, he started out on the south side of Chicago selling lotion door-to-door in the housing project in which he lived. By age 14, he was a millionaire. In 2005, we profiled him here at BV, when he had started business ventures from food distribution to telecommunications. Now he's in to philanthropy and self-help publishing, in addition to being a coach on AOL's money channel. We won't list all of his accomplishments here, but among them are honorary doctor of Humane Letters from Allen University, National Newspaper Publisher's Association Syndicated Columnist, and he was named one of the most inflential black men in America by the National Urban League.



Dambisa Moyo, 40
Economist, Author

She's as controversial as she is smart (and I've also met her in person: she's very cool people). Born in Zambia, and educated at Oxford, Moyo spent several years working for Goldman Sachs before deciding to go the author route with her book Dead Aid, which has brought the ire of some, but praise of others with her analysis that outlines how aid to African nations is actually hurting them more than helping them. From an economic standpoint, she argues that as much as $1 trillion has been spent by wealthy nations on the continent, but much of it remains war- and disease-torn and destitute and never gets a chance to develop itself through existing resources. Her writings come well-recommended as an alternative to bringing Africa to a level of development that matches the rest of the world.