New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin called on black people to rebuild the city, which was more than 60 percent black before Katrina displaced about three-quarters of its population.

"This city will be a majority African American city," Nagin told a crowd at City Hall. "It's the way God wants it to be. You can't have New Orleans no other way. It wouldn't be New Orleans."

In other states:

• Several thousand people attended a rally at Columbia, S.C. Improved funding for schools and removing the Confederate flag from Statehouse grounds dominated the speeches. "We're not going to rest until that rag comes down," said the Rev. Nelson Rivers III, chief operating officer of the NAACP in Baltimore.

• Thousands of volunteers commemorated Martin Luther King Day across Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware by taking part in an array of service projects.

• In San Antonio, Air Force jets flew over the city's Martin Luther King Day celebration, sparking a protest by Iraq war opponents who said the military presence conflicted with King's teachings.

About two dozen protesters chanted "shame" while two Air Force training jets flew overhead. Members of the group, who were mostly white, also sang protest songs that drowned out speeches from the podium lauding King and his legacy.