More so than in past years, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s concerns about economic hardships, in addition to his better-known stand against racial oppression, were raised at Monday’s community and college observance of King’s life and activism.

David Diaby, a Wilmington College senior from Sweden whose father’s side of the family is from West Africa, remarked that King opposed oppression whether it was racial oppression in South Africa or social and economic oppression in the United States.

Keynote speaker Valarie Willis, in answer to her own question about what King would say in today’s world, said King would maintain “we are still here to serve the underserved.”

King also would advise us “to stay rooted in the common principles that bind us,” Willis said. And King “would tell us we are stronger together than alone,” she said.

Willis said, “If you think about it, the economic crisis is the result of misguided values of misguided people.” King, she reminded, said humanity’s scientific advances have outpaced its spiritual and moral progress.

In seeking alternatives, people have to re-imagine a new day, Willis said.

“Wilmington, you will have to re-imagine life without DHL,” she said.

Along with re-imagining, Willis said, two other “R’s” are needed: rejoicing and renewing.

“We cannot turn our backs on inequality. Eventually, it will touch everyone,” she said.

Allen Willoughby of Sugartree Ministries said King was “a mentor to all of us. He’s a great example of taking faith and putting it into action.”

For the 17th consecutive year, a choir from the Bible Missionary Baptist Church on Grant Street in Wilmington presented music during the local celebration of King.

Art Brooks, part of the Wilmington College staff, asked the audience to do what it can, “as a college community and as a local community” to assist the people of Haiti, rocked by an earthquake last week.

“Let your heart be your guide,” Brooks told the standing-room only crowd in the Hugh G. Heiland Theatre at Wilmington College.