Today is dedicated to service. Unlike Presidents Day, which for many is a weekend of discount shopping, or Memorial Day, which for some is a holiday for picnics, Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday is about working toward achieving the civil rights leader's goals.

For mindful celebrants of the day, this work remains necessary because 43 years after Dr. King pleaded for racial equality on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, his dream remains unrealized.

Some progress must be acknowledged. For instance, in the hearings last week for Supreme Court nominee Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., conservative senators supporting him on the Judiciary Committee took pains to rebut insinuations that he was unsympathetic to the interests of minorities. In Dr. King's lifetime, reactionary racial attitudes were common in American public life. Today they are no longer tolerated.

That's progress.

The death Thursday of Pittsburgh civil rights leader the Rev. Leroy Patrick recalls some of the local battlegrounds where the struggle for equality was fought. Segregated swimming pools. Racially drawn neighborhoods. Underperforming schools for poor children.

Mr. Patrick, like Dr. King, believed that Christian works were an essential part of Christianity -- hence their calls to action on behalf of those who are mistreated by society. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday is a time to recommit to that hard work -- because human progress, unfortunately, comes all too slowly.

Forty-three years ago, Dr. King said, "This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children."

Amen.