1 of 5. U.S. President Barack Obama (C) greets people as he arrives to participate during a day of service to honor Martin Luther King, Jr, at the Browne Education Campus school in Washington, January 16, 2012. 
 
 WASHINGTON | 
 
 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama led Americans on Monday in honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., while the Occupy Wall Street movement staged a new march protesting economic injustice. 
 
 Obama, the first African-American president, joined his wife, Michelle, and daughter Malia in helping build a library reading nook at a school in Washington. 
 
 Speaking beneath a sign with the words, "United we serve," Obama said service and diversity strengthened America. 
 
 "At a time when the country has been going through some difficult economic times, for us to be able to come together as a community, people from all different walks of life, and make sure that we're giving back, that's ultimately what makes us the strongest, most extraordinary country on earth," he said. 
 
 On the first King holiday since the Occupy movement reignited debate in the United States over inequality, hundreds of protesters marched in wintry temperatures in Manhattan, stopping at a Bank of America branch to shout, "The banks got bailed out, we got sold out." 
 
 Protest leaders said in a statement the march was held "because Dr. King dedicated the last months of his life to planning a campaign for the right of all to a decent-paying job." At least two protesters were put in a police van. 
 
 King, a Baptist pastor who advocated for nonviolence, racial brotherhood and equal rights and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, was assassinated in 1968 as he stood on his motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had gone to support striking sanitation workers. 
 
 "I came here on the one hand to honor (King's) birthday, but also for the things that he stood for," Jim Glaser, a retired teacher from Nyack, New York, said at the march. "We have to have a government that's responsive to people ... a government that people can have some influence on." 
 
 Protesters in the Occupy movement complain that billions of dollars in bailouts were given to banks while many Americans suffer from joblessness and housing foreclosures. They say minorities are disproportionately affected by predatory lending practices. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Ellen Wulfhorst Karen Brooks and James B. Kelleher; Editing by Peter Cooney)
– Martin Luther King day inspired an Occupy march on New York and more traditional remembrances across the US today. Among the events: Hundreds of Occupiers staged an "Occupy the Dream" march on Manhattan, stopping to chant, "The banks got bailed out, we got sold out." At least two protesters were arrested, MSNBC reports. "Dr. King dedicated the last months of his life to planning a campaign for the right of all to a decent-paying job," Occupy said in a statement. Schoolchildren played "We Shall Overcome" on violins at New York's African Burial Grounds, where Occupy started its protest, the New York Daily News reports. President Obama, Michelle, and daughter Malia built a reading nook at the library of a mostly black school in Washington, Reuters reports. "For us to be able to come together as a community ... that's ultimately what makes us the strongest, most extraordinary country on earth," the president said. At South Carolina's capitol building and the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, speakers denounced voter ID laws that they said would disenfranchise black voters.