The Little America ballroom in downtown Salt Lake City was appointed as nattily as Monday's luncheon dignitaries.

But by the time Martin Luther King Jr. Day keynote speaker John Jackson had warmed up, it might as well have been an evangelical revival. And judging by the random "Yes sirs," and "Amens," nobody was complaining.

Jackson, who labeled racism "institutionalized lovelessness," is a highly decorated and heavily published academic — the president and CEO of The Schott Foundation for Public Education — who has served two presidents. In an address in which he was part preacher, part comedian and part poet, Jackson didn't shy away from the political.

"Fear is my major problem with the tea party," he said, wondering where the movement was during Hurricane Katrina and when thousands of teachers were laid off. He said their agenda "is based on going back," while warning today's wealth disparity is "attacking middle America."

Jackson also invoked the recent shootings in Arizona, imploring a politically fractured nation to change its rhetoric.

"Sometimes, when I listen to the radio, I wonder if we're all part of the same country."

But his tender pop-culture references, laced with humor, were his most moving — an appeal to embrace the promise of future generations, without a racial or ethnic lens.

Jackson called King the "it" for human rights, and, as context, added that the Williams sisters are the "it" for tennis, Michael Jordan for basketball and Joseph Smith for Mormonism.

But everyday people, he implored, must be a "lighthouse to communities," the "it" that breathes life into a new generation. That includes working to reverse the high incarceration rate for black males. "Many of us today are sleeping through a revolution," he said, noting the nation's demographics are changing so rapidly, a majority-minority is predicted.

The challenge, he said, is to ensure Americans are educated, regardless of color or social class. The risk, Jackson warned, is an inability to be globally competitive.

"We don't need individuals critical of this generation," he said, "but individuals willing to rebound for this generation," a reference to Michael Jordan's much-maligned secret weapon, the great rebounder Dennis Rodman.

Reading often from scripture, Jackson suggested each new birth suggests God is not giving up on humanity. "The question is, what are we doing with that miracle?"

In other luncheon business, new NAACP officers were sworn in, MLK scholarships were distributed and Karen Hale, Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker's communications director, was presented this year's civil rights award.