Magic Johnson is one of the newest Forbes list billionaires, and he says it wouldn’t have happened without Martin Luther King Jr.’s work to help integrate public schools.

Fitting that Johnson wouldn’t take credit, since he’s the greatest passer to ever play basketball.

“I (was) one of the young Black men who benefited from everything that he was teaching, everything he was about,” Johnson said at Arizona State University on the 60th anniversary of King’s only public address in the state.

King’s message, Johnson said, was that “things had to change for the better. This has to be a world where everybody’s equal and treated with respect and dignity and that the only thing that minorities wanted was an opportunity. They didn’t want a handout. Just an opportunity.”

Let’s hope Arizona leaders were listening.

The way things are going in public education, there’s not much opportunity for the next Magic........

© Arizona Republic