The pews of Memorial Church were full Monday evening as hundreds gathered to celebrate the birthday of civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The service, which combined music, prayer and reflections on King's legacy, was both a commemoration of the leader's past achievements and an evaluation of the present state of society.

In his address to the congregation. Rev. Jeffrey L. Brown, pastor of Cambridge's Union Baptist Church, recalled the famous words of poet Langston Hughes, asking "What happens to a dream deferred?"

Brown told the story of "Solo," a man who, even before the age of 25, was a kind of "90s local version of AI Capone."

After several gang members stormed a Baptist church in Mattapan, Solo, a drug dealer, found himself acting as a field advisor to area Baptist ministers seeking to case the conflict between the church and the community.

As much as the ministers tried to help Solo move away from drugs and crime, so did Solo help the ministers see their moral responsibility to help the community with more than words.

"He encouraged us to move from spiritual theory to practice and from the pulpit to the streets." Brown said.

But the change in Solo didn't last long. No matter how he presented himself, "he was perceived as a street hood and treated accordingly." Growing more and more despondent, Solo fell back into drugs, and died of an overdose.

"His life and our dreams for him literally went up in smoke," Brown said.

Brown used the story of Solo and his deferred dreams as an example of a larger trend in the African American community.

"This generation is destined to enter the next century in a position economically, spiritually and politically inferior to their ancestors, who entered the 20th century in the shadow of slavery," Brown said.

The solution, he said, is not to be the "honor guard" of social conscience, but to act to help the increasingly disillusioned youth.

"How can we be agents of life to people with deferred dreams?" Brown asked. "We cannot wait for them to come to us, we must go to them."

Quoting the words of Dr. King, taken from his letter from the Birmingham Jail, Brown told the congregation: "The time is ripe for doing right."

Brown's address was complemented by music from the Kuumba Singers and scripture readings from Merry Jean Chan '97, the co-chair of the Harvard Foundation Student Advisory Committee, and Black Students Association (BSA) President Kristen M. Clarke '97.

The Linnaean String Quartet, a group of four musicians from the class of 1995, followed Brown's address with their performance of "Anthem," a movement of a piece composed by Professor of Mathematics Noam D. Elkies. Elkies based the movement on James Weldon Johnson's "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing."

The service, which ended with a benediction from Plummer Professor of Christian. Morals Peter J. Gomes, was sponsored by Memorial Church, the United Ministry, the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, the Black Students Association and the Department of Afro-American Studies