SAM DEAN The Roanoke Times

The NRV Glorylanders perform gospel tunes Sunday in Christiansburg at an NAACP celebration of the life of Martin Luther King Jr.

SAM DEAN The Roanoke Times

The Rev. Robbie Morganfield delivers the keynote address at Sunday's NAACP celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. at Christiansburg High School. He said people need to carry King's dream forward.

SAM DEAN The Roanoke Times

Morganfield urged the crowd that showed up Sunday to "dare to dream" as King did and "run with the dream as Barack Obama did."

SAM DEAN The Roanoke Times

Participants in Sunday's celebration clap during a musical performance by the NRV Glorylanders.

CHRISTIANSBURG -- Even in death, Dr. King stands tall.

That was the message of a poem recited during the annual NAACP Community Martin Luther King Celebration on Sunday in the auditorium of Christiansburg High School.

The celebration was free to the public, and rows of auditorium seats were filled despite chilly weather and icy roads that had caused many church services to be cancelled hours earlier.

The event focused on the impending inauguration of Barack Obama as much as it honored the life, legacy and dream of King.

"I'm just elated because we can see it now," said Debbie Travis, secretary of the New River Valley branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and coordinator of the event.

Obama's election "really celebrates [King's] dream of achieving," she said.

The Rev. Glenn Orr, newly elected president of the branch, said the pursuit of this dream and helping others achieve it prompted him to leave his Virginia Beach home and move to Blacksburg. Orr was impressed with the local organization's efforts in the black community with events such as the King celebration, so he now pastors Blacksburg's Saint Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church and volunteers in the NAACP chapter.

Orr said he is proud of Obama's accomplishment, but realizes the president-elect is facing many "giants" as he prepares to take the oath Tuesday.

"We don't get to celebrate for very long; there's a lot of work to be done," Orr said.

Orr's sentiments were reflected by the keynote message, titled "Now What? Moving from Symbolism to Substance."

"We cannot afford to get lost in the moment," said the Rev. Robbie Morganfield of St. Mark's United Methodist Church in Laurel, Md., shortly before taking the stage to deliver his speech, which he said was still being polished late Saturday night.

Morganfield had the audience's full attention, with many chiming in with words of agreement as he touched on certain topics.

Now that the United States has bought all of the memorabilia and celebrated the history-defining moment, Morganfield said, it needs to move past the symbolism and carry on the dream that allowed Obama to win the election in the first place.

He said that dwelling on ideas while not living them is the problem that caused blacks to live as second-class citizens for so long, even as the nation touted itself as the "land of the free" and Jim Crow laws denied equal rights.

"We are setting ourselves up to make the same mistakes that so many people before us have made," he said.

Morganfield said that despite all of the progress, there is much work to be done.

He mentioned the alarming rate at which black males are incarcerated, the number of black children failing in school and the number of broken homes in the black community.

With the NAACP celebrating its 100th anniversary next month, he also urged black organizations not to lose sight of their purpose just because times look better.

He mentioned that black organizations, one of which he belongs to, should not get so caught up in the shows and paraphernalia that they forget the role they are intended to play in the community.

He called it "divine design" that Obama will take office the day after the King holiday.

It was the spirit of King's message, Morganfield said, that drove Obama to persevere and defy the odds by becoming the nation's next president.

"Dare to dream," he urged the crowd, "as Dr. Martin Luther King did, and dare to run with the dream as Barack Obama did."