Help ‘Fulfill the Dream,’ Coretta King Tells Children

When Coretta Scott King arrived in Los Angeles on Sunday, she was showered with gifts at her airport hotel, including a hand-sewn designer evening gown, black satin shoes and a fur that she was to wear to a star-studded benefit held in her honor.

The soft-spoken wife of the slain civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr., graciously accepted the “gifts of love,” as she called them, but she made it immediately known that her day in Los Angeles had a more profound significance.

“I hope I can become worthy of your gifts of love,” Mrs. King said, as half a dozen children who recorded the “Children of the World” song helped present her with the clothing. “I hope someday you young people will have the opportunity to visit the center and learn more about Martin Luther King Jr. and the great works he did for people--especially for children and young people.”

The center she spoke of is the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, and it has been Mrs. King’s life ever since her husband was slain by a sniper in Memphis in 1968. She was in Los Angeles for various reasons Sunday, but two of the most important were raising money for the center and letting the children of Los Angeles know she expects them to help carry on her husband’s work--to help blacks and people of all races “fulfill the dream.”

In an interview at her hotel and in remarks she made during a program honoring her at the A. C. Bilbrew Library in Watts, Mrs. King spoke passionately of the younger generation and the importance education can play in recruiting young blacks into the nonviolent social movement her husband first pushed into the national consciousness three decades ago.

“I am very concerned about the children and what kind of values the children will be developing,” she said in the interview. “The kind of things they are exposed to will develop their values.”

Mrs. King called on parents and teachers to teach about the history of nonviolent struggle and to inspire them to read her husband’s works and share in his dreams. She encouraged children to visit the center in Atlanta and to see firsthand the place where her husband was born, raised and began his work.

“We were involved in an important struggle that really, I believe, saved the nation at a time when the nation was threatened to become divided,” she said of the civil rights movement that her husband led. “The basic freedoms were threatened and many people today don’t understand the climate of the time.”

Mrs. King said the most important lesson to come from the early years of the civil rights movement is that change--”absolutely tremendous change,” as she called it--is possible in a world that institutionally resists it.

“We aren’t what we ought to be, but we sure aren’t what we were,” she told a standing-room-only audience at the library, which had invited her as part of the Los Angeles County Library’s Black History Month program. “We need to understand what it means to live the dream every day of our lives.”

Mrs. King spoke proudly of the accomplishments of her non-profit center in Atlanta, pointing specifically to programs it has developed to help single mothers care for themselves and their children. “I, too, am a single parent,” she said, signaling for her son, Dexter, 25, to come to the podium.

“I had to raise four kids without a father. . . . As busy as I was, they were always my first priority.”

During the interview, Mrs. King emphasized that programs like the one for single mothers could be exported to Los Angeles and other cities in California. She urged leaders here to develop official ties to her center, go to Atlanta for classes and then return to California to promote her husband’s work.

At the library ceremony, the several thousand well-wishers on hand applauded Mrs. King, giving her a standing ovation when she proclaimed, “I know that we shall overcome.”

One junior high school student who lives several blocks from the library said she hoped Mrs. King’s remarks would inspire young blacks in her community.

“Maybe people will take the time to listen to her since she is the wife of someone who helped lead the world,” said Andrea Blakely, 13, a student at Van Guard Junior High School. “Maybe the people will now stop being on drugs, shooting each other and being in gangs.”

After leaving the library, Mrs. King headed for a fund-raising dinner for her center, which featured celebrities such as Gladys Knight, Louis Gossett Jr. and Jennifer Holiday. She is scheduled to go to Washington today, but will leave behind a traveling exhibit on her husband. The exhibit, which includes Martin Luther King Jr.’s personal memorabilia, films and a pictorial display, will be on display at the A. C. Bilbrew Library until March 7.