ATLANTA — Martin Luther King Jr.’s children decried disparaging remarks President Trump is said to have made about African countries, while protests between Haitian immigrants and Trump supporters broke out near the president’s Florida resort Monday, the federal holiday honoring King.

At gatherings across the nation, activists, residents, and teachers honored the late civil rights leader on what would have been his 89th birthday and ahead of the 50th anniversary of his assassination in Memphis.

Trump marked his first Martin Luther King Jr. Day as president buffeted by claims that during a meeting with senators on immigration last week, he used a vulgarity to describe African countries and questioned the need to allow more Haitians into the United States.

He also is said to have asked why the country couldn’t have more immigrants from nations like Norway.

In Washington, King’s eldest son, Martin Luther King III, criticized Trump, saying, ‘‘When a president insists that our nation needs more citizens from white states like Norway, I don’t even think we need to spend any time even talking about what it says and what it is.’’

He added, ‘‘We got to find a way to work on this man’s heart.’’

Referring to a former Alabama governor, King added: ‘‘George Wallace was a staunch racist and we worked on his heart and ultimately George Wallace transformed.’’

In Atlanta, King’s daughter, the Rev. Bernice King, told hundreds of people who packed the pews of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where her father and grandfather preached, that they ‘‘cannot allow the nations of the world to embrace the words that come from our president as a reflection of the true spirit of America.’’

‘‘We are one people, one nation, one blood, one destiny. . . . All of civilization and humanity originated from the soils of Africa,’’ Bernice King said. ‘‘Our collective voice in this hour must always be louder than the one who sometimes does not reflect the legacy of my father.’’

Trump dedicated his weekly address to the nation to King.

‘‘Dr. King’s dream is our dream, it is the American dream, it’s the promise stitched into the fabric of our nation, etched into the hearts of our people and written into the soul of humankind,’’ he said in the address, released Monday. ‘‘It is the dream of a world where people are judged by who they are, not how they look or where they come from.’’

Down the street from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago retreat in Palm Beach, Fla., on Monday, Haitian protesters and Trump supporters yelled at each other from opposing corners. Trump was staying at the resort for the holiday weekend.

Video posted by WPEC-TV showed several hundred pro-Haiti demonstrators yelling from one side of the street Monday while waving Haitian flags.

The Haitians and their supporters shouted ‘‘Our country is not a shithole.’’ Trump has said that is not the word he used.

The smaller pro-Trump contingent waved American flags and campaign posters and yelled ‘‘Trump is making America great again.’’ One man could be seen telling the Haitians to leave the country. Police kept the sides apart.

In New York, the Rev. Al Sharpton also used the holiday to take aim at the racial rhetoric Trump is said to have used.

‘‘Trump Tower is in the wrong state,’’ Sharpton told a crowd of 200 at the National Action Network in Harlem. He said it was embarrassing that Trump is from New York. ‘‘What we’re going to do about Donald Trump is going to be the spirit of Martin Luther King Day,’’ he said.

In Delaware, former vice president Joe Biden said American values are being challenged in present times but that the leadership of King provided an example of how to respond.

Biden spoke Monday at the Delaware State Bar Association’s annual King breakfast in Wilmington.

Biden criticized Trump’s response to white nationalist rallies last August in Charlottesville and his reported use of an obscenity to describe African nations and Haiti.

But he said he believes Americans are ready to respond and reestablish the nation’s ‘‘moral fabric.’’ Now is the time to ‘‘remind ourselves who we are as Americans,’’ Biden said.

The Cherokee Nation said Principal Chief Bill John Baker decided that the tribe should honor of King Day this year because of ongoing racial tensions nationwide and because the tribe is seeking to make amends with slavery.

Cherokee Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr. said Monday that the tribe is working to come to terms with its own history with African-American slavery and is welcoming descendants of former slaves, known as Freedmen.

A federal court ruled last year that the Freedmen had the same rights to tribal citizenship, voting, health care and housing as blood-line Cherokees.

Hoskin visited the Martin Luther King Community Center in Muskogee, Okla., and spoke how King’s message of civil rights resonates with Native Americans.