Kamenko Pajic/AP The Rev. Jesse Jackson delivers the sermon in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day at the Washington National Cathedral

He lived in a black neighborhood.

When he wanted to see a movie at the local theater or have a Coke at the counter at Woolworth's, he was turned away.

Those were places for white people, and Lightner was black.

Then in 1966, when Lightner was 16 years old, he was a student at Shaw University, where, during a lecture, he met a black preacher from Atlanta who was about to help change all that.

"Well, when Martin Luther King entered the room, you could tell he was a special person, and the room became very quiet," Lightner, now 53, recalled. "It was really humbling being the presence of this man and these people who, when they needed to do something, they got it done."

In 1982, Lightner proved himself to be one of those people who gets things done, when he became a leader in the movement to officially recognize King's birthday as a national holiday.

Today, the civil-rights leader is celebrated in every corner of the country, with everything from lectures by renowned authors and historians to city-wide line-dancing sessions. Unity, naturally, is the order of the day.

In Seattle, the Martin Luther King Black/Jewish Coalition will have a breakfast at a Catholic community center. Anchorage will see performances by a local folk ensemble, the MLK Jr. Choir and the Kicuput Dancers. In Phoenix, Ariz., each child at the Martin Luther King Elementary School will get an envelope with a canceled MLK stamp from the U.S. Postal Department. And at the Tedford Shelter in Brunswick, Maine, volunteers from Teach Maine will celebrate by cleaning, painting and organizing the shelter as it prepares to move to a new building.

In Utah, the state's Martin Luther King Jr. Human Rights Commission has gone the high-brow route: Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Taylor Branch, who wrote Parting the Waters and Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, spoke at a two-day symposium earlier this month in Salt Lake City. On the holiday itself, state legislature will have a symbolic bell-ringing ceremony followed by a formal luncheon, commission chairwoman Phyllis Caruth said.

"Basically, it's really a day where we are racially and culturally inclusive and a day to familiarize ourselves with Dr. King's teachings, his life work and contributions to the civil rights movement," she said.

Rick Bowmer/AP At the Lincoln Memorial, where King gave his famous 'I Have a Dream' speech, the slain civil rights leader is honored on the eve of his birthday

"We're continuing the journey here as it is all over the country," she added. "I don't think we're quite there yet, as a country."

What's billed locally as the world's longest MLK celebration will be in Cary, N.C., where residents remember the leader with Dreamfest 2000 — this year's name for the eight-day festival that has bracketed the holiday for the five years.

"Most people gear up around Saturday, Sunday, Monday, but for we go out the whole week — for the town, it really is a big thing," Carolyn Sampson, president of the MLK Jr. Task Force of Cary, said. "I think we're giving it all we've got. It's fun, and we have activities planned to inspire, to educate, to bring families of all backgrounds together in common fellowship."

Perhaps less staid than your average MLK Day, Cary's "Dream" events include "Martin and Me," a birthday party at a Mexican restaurant for everyone born in January; "The Dream of Inspiration," where young local singers sing contemporary music at a teen dance; and "The Dream of Dance," where dance instructors and line-dance professionals lead the town's adults in two and a half hours of country dancing.

"I think Martin, while his cause was and is a serious one, was a human being," Sampson said.

According to task force member and Councilman Jess Ward said, it's important that the event isn't focused on race, but on the citizens of Cary — which is overwhelmingly white — coming together.

"Often people characterize this as a black event," said Ward, himself black. "In Cary, obviously it's not so."

Only five minutes to the east of Cary, in Raleigh, one of the men who helped get the holiday started in the first place said there's only one way he's going to celebrate his city's Martin Luther King Day.

"I'm going to sit back and relax," said Lightner, founder and co-chairman of the Raleigh MLK Celebration Committee. "I've spent six months preparing for it this year."

And as for those neglected black neighborhoods — the unpaved streets, the street lamps and the broken water pipes — they all got fixed in 1972, only four years after King was assassinated in Memphis, Lightner said.

That year, he noted proudly, was the year his father became the first black mayor of Raleigh.