Napa County Court Commissioner Monique Langhorne-Johnson was not alive when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., struggled on behalf of Civil Rights across the country.

But King’s words and actions have had a great influence in her life, Langhorne-Johnson told a group of 350 or more individuals who gathered at First United Methodist Church for Napa Interfaith Council’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration Sunday.

For several years, Napa Interfaith Council has celebrated King’s birthday in Napa, each time offering compelling guest speakers. On Sunday, the council brought Langhorne-Johnson to address the group.

King lived during a time in America that was marred by great racial inequality. He was murdered by James Earl Ray on April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his hotel room in Memphis, Tenn.

Many years after his death the racism and racial inequality that King dedicated his life to ending touched the life of Langhorne-Johnson — Napa County’s only female, African American court commissioner — and helped fuel her desire to rise above it.

Langhorne-Johnson, 32, was in the 6th grade when she told her teacher at her elementary school in Norfolk, Va., that she wanted to become a lawyer. The teacher responded by telling her that she would never amount to anything more than a maid, she said.

“I was in tears,” Langhorne-Johnson said in an interview before she spoke to the crowd. “She said I couldn’t do it.”

But Langhorne-Johnson didn’t let that encounter and several others deter her, and eventually graduated from UC Berkeley with a law degree, worked as a Napa County deputy district attorney and became a court commissioner for Napa County Courts.

Langhorne-Johnson told the crowd that King’s legacy taught her to “Hold on, have faith and be humble.”

“He not only spoke of the atrocities of the era, he lived through them,” she said.

King was jailed, shot and harassed but he never gave up said Langhorne-Johnson. Each time she wanted to give up pursuing a career in law, she said she thought of how King and other great Civil Rights leaders endured the worst, yet held on to their cause.

“Dr. King not only held on, but he held hope ... (he) taught me to have faith,” she told the group. “Through his life, I have been inspired to keep my dream alive. Third, he taught me to be humble in the midst of a storm. He had a calm and humble demeanor.”

Several times in her speech, Langhorne-Johnson prompted audience members to turn to their neighbors and say: “Neighbor, hold on. Neighbor, have faith. Neighbor be humble.”

In many ways, King’s message of equality has been realized, but the nation still has room for improvement, Langhorne-Johnson said. She said that the variety of races and creeds represented at the gathering was a testament to King’s struggles, and if everyone adheres to the principle “Treat others the way that we want to be treated,” the nation can move forward.

Thousands of miles away, in Atlanta, Georgia, Yolanda King — the oldest daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King — combined her love of acting with her passion for social justice as she reminded those remembering her parents Sunday that America has not yet attained peace and racial equality, according to the Associated Press.

She urged an audience at Ebenezer Baptist Church — where her father preached for several years — to be a force for peace and love, and to use the King holiday Monday to ask tough questions about their own beliefs on prejudice.

“We must keep reaching across the table and, in the tradition of Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, feed each other,” Yolanda King, 51, said at the end of an hour-long presentation that was part motivational speech, part drama.

At Napa’s event Pastor Morris Curry, former pastor at Hosanna Life Renewal Christian Fellowship Church in American Canyon, acted as emcee and provided a bit of spirit and humor to the event. Performances by Vintage High School Chamber Choir and Union Baptist Church Choir kept things lively.

King was born on Jan. 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia, and would have turned 78 today. He became a pioneer in the Civil Rights movement, using nonviolent tactics such as protests, marches and boycotts on behalf of racial injustices and Civil Rights. King was one of the leaders of the 1955 Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott, which eventually led to the end of racial segregation on buses.

King’s speeches, including his famous “I Have A Dream” speech delivered on Aug. 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial  in Washington, D.C., inspired and united thousands of individuals in the name of racial equality, and continues to resonate with new generations.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.