Updated

Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says the "age of bullies and bigots is not fully behind us" — despite advances the country has made since the Rev. Martin Luther King. Jr. was slain while fighting poverty and racism.

Holder appeared at a symposium at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, on Monday, the first of three days of events commemorating the 50th anniversary of King's assassination. King was supporting striking sanitation workers when he came to Memphis in 1968. He was talking with friends on the balcony of Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968, when he was struck down by a bullet.

Holder was the United States' first black attorney general. He says the nation has made progress with racial, social and economic justice. But he also notes that people are "still marching, we are still striving."