Church Leaders Say City Reneged on King Holiday

Black church leaders in Santa Ana on Wednesday said they were angry because city officials reneged on a promise made last year to give city employees a day off Monday when Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday is observed.

The city did offer workers the option of switching a “floating” holiday for the King holiday, but the offer was refused. Workers now have the option of taking three hours off on Monday to attend local ceremonies, city officials said.

“We’re just disgusted,” said the Rev. Richard Kessee of St. James Missionary Baptist Church in Santa Ana.

“I felt (City Hall) was passing the buck on it last year. I feel they’re doing the same thing this year,” Kessee said. “It’s going to take two or three years to change their attitude,” he added.

But in a letter to one black minister, Deputy City Manager Jan C. Perkins said the city will propose in upcoming employee negotiations that there be an “exchange of an existing employee holiday for the Martin Luther King holiday.”

Sights Set on 1988

“We will work toward the goal of having the King birthday recognized as an employee holiday for 1988,” Perkins said in a letter to the Rev. John Nix McReynolds, minister of the Second Baptist Church in Santa Ana.

But McReynolds, who also heads the Black Ministerial Alliance of Orange County representing 20 churches, said the issue should not be a “a matter of union negotiations but a matter of law.”

“Congress and President Reagan signed it into law,” McReynolds said of the national holiday that will be observed Monday.

Irvine and Huntington Beach are the only Orange County cities expected to observe the national holiday on Monday, McReynolds said. While most other cities in the county will not observe the holiday, he said that it was especially disturbing that Santa Ana, where the county’s largest concentration of blacks lives, does not officially recognize the day by giving employees a holiday.

McReynolds said the coalition of black churches was especially “disappointed” by Santa Ana’s decision not to observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day because it was the second year in a row it had failed to do so and because it followed a promise by the former city manager to seek citywide observance of the holiday. But despite the disappointment, McReynolds said, the coalition will not threaten a boycott of the city’s Black History parade.

Non-Violent Rally Planned

“We will wait another year,” he said. “We want to work within the system.”

Nonetheless, McReynolds said the coalition would hold a non-violent rally on Monday, between 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. at the Second Baptist Church in the 1900 block of West McFadden Avenue.

He also said he hopes that the city will allow the coalition of black churches to have a say when the holiday issue comes up during contract negotiations between the city and its employees this year.

The City of Santa Ana notified church leaders in the Dec. 17 letter to McReynolds that negotiations with one of the city’s five employee associations over the observance of King’s birthday had ended with the labor group rejecting a proposal to swap a floating holiday for the King birthday holiday.

Floating holidays usually are used at the discretion of individual employees. Santa Ana city workers first got a floating day off in 1979 in place of California Admission Day, an official with one of the labor groups said.

In the letter to McReynolds, Perkins said: “We will be starting negotiations with the employee associations in early spring, 1987. The city intends to propose in negotiations that there be an exchange of an existing employee holiday for the Martin Luther King holiday.

“We will work toward that goal of having the King birthday recognized as an employee holiday for 1988.”

Neither Perkins nor City Manager David N. Ream could be reached for comment Wednesday.

‘Nothing More to Trade’

Rita Montes, president of the 700-member Santa Ana City Employees Assn., said that city employees had asked for the holiday without having to make a trade-off.

“But (the city) was not interested,” Montes said.

“We had already traded one in 1979. We had nothing more to trade,” she said.

Despite their disappointment, McReynolds said coalition members would be patient.

Last year, the coalition threatened to boycott the city’s Black History parade if the city did not close its offices. The conflict was settled when the city, represented by then City Manager Robert C. Bobb, promised to allow employees to attend local ceremonies with pay and agreed to work toward making the day an employee holiday in 1987.

McReynolds said he plans to attend a public hearing Monday in City Hall, where he has been asked to give the invocation. He said he had refused to do so at first unless the city allowed him to speak of his concern about getting Santa Ana to recognize the national holiday in memory of the slain civil rights leader.

But he agreed to offer the prayer when city officials said he could have five minutes to read his rebuttal to the city’s Dec. 17 letter and to quote from King’s book “Why We Can’t Wait.”

Local black churches in Santa Ana will hold holiday services to commemorate King’s birthday throughout the week. These will include a memorial service at 7:30 p.m. today, the actual date of King’s birthday, at St. James Missionary Baptist Church, 1321 West 5th St., Santa Ana.

On Friday a memorial candlelight service will be held at Calvary Baptist Church, 1524 West 1st St., Santa Ana, at 7:30 p.m.

On Monday the Orange County chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People will have a memorial service at 7 p.m. at Santa Ana Valley High School, 1801 S. Greenville St.