By Mike DeNardo

GLASSBORO, N.J. (CBS) — Actor Danny Glover of ‘The Color Purple’ and ‘Lethal Weapon’ fame brought a personal perspective to Rowan University’s annual Martin Luther King Junior breakfast on Monday.

Glover said he was humbled by the fact that unlike many of those who have spoken at Rowan’s annual King breakfast, he never knew King personally. But he presented a scholarly appreciation, as an artist and as a citizen.

Glover’s keynote examined the evolution of Dr. King’s political thinking, from his 1963 march on Washington to his condemnation of the Vietnam War to his championing the rights of union sanitation workers. In tracing the evolutions of King’s teachings, Glover quoted his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

“We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish,” Glover said. “But we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.”

And on this Inauguration Day of President Barack Obama, Glover wondered what Dr. King would think.

“It’s not enough for African-Americans to just have a Black president,” he said. “We have been the moral center, the moral underpinning of what this country’s history has been about. So where do we go from here, for all of us?”

About 300 people attended the annual scholarship fundraiser. Glover told the crowd that King would say America needs to shift attention from its own selfish needs, to the betterment of mankind.