Martin Luther King

Why does the author feel that whites owe King the greatest debt?
Our country takes pride in being a free country with free people. Had Martin Luther King not come, we would still be under, as the author calls it, "...the burden of America's centuries-old hypocrisy about race." It would have been impossible for the US to be as succesful as it is if we could not take pride in the very thing that we our country was created for.
Was King "the right man at the right time"?
Yes. Thousands of other black men had fought for equal rights or an end to slavery, like Federick Douglass, but the society at the time was not ready for that kind of reform. When Martin Luther King came, some people had begun to realize that segregation was wrong, and some people had already begun to try to get that changed. Martin Luther King had gifts that helped him achieve his goal, but had he come some 50 years earlier, it wouldn't have been possible.
Would King be upset with the current use of his most often quoted line? Why or why not?
He probably would. The line has been twisted and tangled to fit so many different situations that people have forgotten its true meaning.