There are leaders and then there are misleaders.

The difference between the two can be hard to detect, at first, but still gargantuan in ramifications.

Pick the vocation -- it could be a police chief, foreman at a work site, mafia don, football coach, head counselor at a summer camp or the president of this sometimes-great nation of ours.

Or a civil rights leader.

Martin Luther King Jr. -- slain 40 years ago today -- was, above all else, a leader.

Forget the titles -- Dr. and the Rev. -- in front of his name.

For today, let us focus on the man and his ability to galvanize people -- all kinds of people -- under circumstances that his self-proclaimed followers can only simulate in their attempts, righteous or otherwise, to carry on his legacy.

No one else, at that crucial point in history, could have had the content of character -- the leadership, above all else -- to hold up a mirror to a nation laden with hypocrisies and look at itself.

He left us with food for thought.

He left us with a dream.

And then, tired and weary beyond his years, he left us.

The night before he was shot outside his hotel room in Memphis, King gave a speech about having been to the mountaintop and seeing the Promised Land. He may not get there, he said. But his eyes "have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

Rightfully, and without arrogance, King was comparing himself to the biblical figure Moses who led the ancient Hebrews out of bondage in Egypt and traversed the desert for 40 years before going off to die while Joshua took command.

While I don't pretend to be a biblical scholar, Joshua was charged with many difficult tasks to keep the Moses momentum going.

If I may be so bold, the view from here is that America's black community became too divided into factions with varying views and agendas to properly carry on King's dream against continuing odds.

There was no Joshua.

A lot of willing and able men and women, but no Joshua.

The walls -- walls between the races, between equity in the criminal justice system, educational opportunities, etc. -- have not come tumbling down like they allegedly did in Jericho.

The problem -- again, if I may be so bold -- has been the whole leader/misleader question.

I spent part of today on the Internet reading the writings and watching clips of Louis Farrakhan, Jeremiah Wright, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and some others.

I came away filled with hate -- hate for whoever assassinated King 40 years ago (King's own family is convinced it was not James Earl Ray).

King would be pushing 80 years old by now. Maybe he would've died of natural causes. Maybe the FBI would've successfully concocted a smear campaign to sully his image.

But my educated guess is that we would've been better off with him than without.

That's the just type of leader -- the type of man -- he was.