BLOOMINGTON - The first black woman to gain tenure at Harvard Law School, and Saturday's keynote speaker at a luncheon in honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., says remembering King requires a deeper look behind the person.

"Sometimes we confuse leadership with the individual," said civil rights expert Lani Guinier, addressing the 31st annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Awards Luncheon, held at the Interstate Center.

King, assassinated nearly four decades ago, would have celebrated his 78th birthday Monday.

"There are many untold stories of leadership that made that great man possible," she said. And remembering those in no way diminishes his magnificence, she said.

Guinier turned to the four winners of Twin City annual awards tied to King and said: "Understand you alone are not being awarded." Rather, a whole community of people, without whom an individual's actions would not be possible, is part of the recognition.

Using the events leading up to the 1955-56 Montgomery Bus Boycott to illustrate her point about King, Guinier took a simple story of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her bus seat, and the young preacher King stepping into the international spotlight. Many little known civil rights heroes helped push the movement forward, she said.

Parks, who was the NAACP secretary for her area, didn't just get tired; her decision to refuse to move, to be arrested, was planned, Guinier said.

Once Parks was arrested, it was a group of black female professors at Alabama State University who led the brainstorming session that turned into the boycott, she said.

And those teachers turned to E.D. Dixon, a local railroad porter, to help spread the word.

"We cannot simply honor Dr. King … and take comfort in his greatness," said Guinier. He certainly not only rose to the occasion, but stepped over it and remade it, she said.

But to complete his legacy, we, "ourselves, must be willing to take action," she said.

Winners of the 2007 King Award winners and the "I Have a Dream" recipients, all chosen by the Bloomington and Normal human relations commissions included James Joyner of Bloomington and Jeanne B. Morris of Normal for the King awards, and students Caila Thomas of Bloomington and Tosha Monique Childs of Normal for the "I Have a Dream," awards.

Besides her position at Harvard, Guinier formerly taught at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and in the 1980s was head of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's voting rights project. Guinier also worked in the civil rights division of the Carter administration.

In 1993, the law professor was nominated by President Bill Clinton to lead the civil rights division of the Department of Justice.

Clinton withdrew the nomination after an intense campaign by conservative critics who labeled Guinier "anti-constitutional" and "a quota queen." She later wrote a book on that experience, "Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback into a New Version of Social Justice."