Marches, Speeches, Services : Week’s Special Events Honor King Birthday

“If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice, say that I was a drum major for peace, I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.”

That was what Martin Luther King Jr. once suggested as his own eulogy. King, who was assassinated April 4, 1968, in Memphis while planning a march to support striking sanitation workers, will be remembered in marches, speeches, films and prayer services throughout Orange County through Jan. 21, as the nation commemorates the 56th anniversary of the birth of the man whose words and deeds brought the civil rights movement to life.

“The dreamer is dead, but not the dream,” said the Rev. James D. Carrington of Fullerton’s Friendship Baptist Church. Carrington is president of American Baptist Churches of the Pacific Southwest. He will be guest celebrant of a memorial service at the Marine Corps Air Station Chapel in El Toro at 2 p.m. Tuesday (Jan. 15, King’s birthday). The service will be open to the public.

Carrington said that in his sermon he will exhort Americans to fulfill King’s dream.

Compared to Moses

“After Moses died, Joshua was asked to pick up the mantle,” Carrington said. “Likewise, in today’s society, we are asked to pick up the mantle from Martin Luther King and bring down the walls of injustice.” Martin Luther King Day was designated by Congress and signed into law by President Reagan in November, 1983, but the first official national holiday will be in 1986.

Until then, Gov. George Deukmejian has proclaimed the third Monday of January a California holiday to honor King. State offices will be closed on Jan. 21.

Orange County government offices including Superior and Municipal Court Clerk offices, will remain open, but courtrooms will be closed that day because Superior and Municipal Court judges, who are state employees, have the day off.

Most public schools in Orange County will be closed Monday (Jan. 14). On Jan. 21, the following schools will be closed: Buena Park Elementary, Fountain Valley Elementary, Fullerton Elementary and schools in the Garden Grove Unified School District, Laguna Beach Unified School District, Orange Unified School District, Placentia Unified School District, Tustin Unified School District and Saddleback Valley Unified School District.

Cal State Fullerton and UC Irvine classes will not meet Jan. 21.

Tuesday, the Black Student Union of UC Irvine and other university groups will march from the William R. Mason Regional Park, in Irvine, to the University Center on campus.

The program, beginning at 10 a.m., will include student poetry readings and speeches outside the University Center Complex. The Black Student Union Gospel Choir and the Ballet Folklorico also will perform. Free birthday cake and lemonade will be served, and films of King’s speeches will be shown at 2, 3 and 4 p.m. in the Heritage Room of University Center.

The Black Cultural Council of the Bowers Museum, in Santa Ana, will have a Black Film Festival today in the Humanities Building of Santa Ana College, Room C104.

The children’s program will feature the film “Sounder,” starring Cicely Tyson, and will be shown at 1 p.m. Admission is $2.

“Rufus Jones for President,” starring Sammy Davis Jr. and Ethel Waters, and “Nothing but a Man,” starring Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln, are featured in the adult program. Screenings begin at 6 p.m. Admission is $5.

Chapman College will have its ninth annual Martin Luther King Birthday Celebration in the Davis Community Center at 8 p.m. on Tuesday (Jan. 15.)

The Rev. John Nix McReynolds will speak, and the 2nd Baptist Church Choir will sing. Dudley Weeks, professor of Peace Studies at Chapman College, will share his personal remembrances of King.

On Thursday, the Orange County Rainbow Coalition will stage a “rainbow vigil” with the Alliance for Survival anti-nuclear activist group outside the Westin South Coast Plaza Hotel in Costa Mesa.

“We are advocating jobs, peace, and an end to intervention in Central America, in continuation of the vision of Martin Luther King,” coalition member Jack Kent said.