Why does the author feel that whites owe King the greatest debt?

The author of this essay feels that white's owe their progress in the Civil Rights Movement to Martin Luther Kingh. He feels that without Martin Luther King we would still be fighting against the burden of America's centuries-old hypocrisy about race. The author also believes that without Martin Luther King and his many followers, both African -American and Caucasian, the vast regions of the U.S. would have remained indistinguishable from South Africa under Apartheid.