UCI Celebrates King Birthday

Lisa Cornish flashed a smile at the crowd of marchers as they broke into a spontaneous dance and held each other’s arms during a UC Irvine rally Thursday celebrating the 58th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birth.

“This is for the man,” Cornish, associate director of housing at UCI, shouted to the crowd as she beckoned others to join and the marchers chanted, “Happy birthday, Martin, happy birthday.”

About 130 students and teachers celebrated King’s birthday Thursday with a two-mile march from William R. Mason Regional Park and a rally in the middle of a campus courtyard.

The event ended a three-day symposium at the university focusing on civil rights and King’s contributions, said Thomas Parham, director of the University’s Career Planning Placement Center.

The march, marked by spontaneous prayers, cheers and clapping, brought out people both familiar and unfamiliar with civil rights protests.

When King was assassinated on April 5, 1968, Parham was 14. But he knows the civil rights leader’s contributions well.

“I see Dr. King as a symbol, and I try to appreciate the principles he taught,” Parham said. “Some younger people have gotten caught up with only his personality. But we have tried to teach that he should really be seen as a symbol of human possibility and potentiality.”

Marcher Patrick Barnwell, 20, said he is learning about King and his achievements through personal experience.

“I am a black man in Orange County and I still see a lot of what King was fighting against,” said Barnwell, 20. “I step into a classroom, and people turn to me and say I must be an athlete, on financial aid or in a special program to get into this school. I’m sometimes seen as a lesser student.”

‘Direct Consequence’

Kenneth Kelly, 21, a senior majoring in social ecology, agreed.

“We are the direct consequence of King’s actions,” Kelly said. “We’re allowed to go to school here. People think everything is fine and want to forget his sacrifices. But there is so much more to do. I’ve been stopped so many times in the street by police who ask, ‘What are you doing here’ or ‘Why are you here?’ ”

Thursday’s rally was the sixth consecutive observation of the anniversary at UC Irvine. Parham remembered the problems at previous rallies.

“In the very first rally we had in 1982, two white men drove by in a truck and called us niggers. Now, when people pass by us, they honk their horns to cheer us,” Parham said.

Rita Whiteley, 45, a psychology lecturer, recalled the civil rights rallies of the 1960s.

“It’s very different these days. No danger and no risks like it used to be,” Whiteley said. “It was scary and life-threatening at times.”

Ralph Johns, 70, associate publisher of the Beverly Hills Courier newspaper, had marched several times with King, and he marked his 57th year in the civil rights movement by joining the rally.

‘Much to Be Done’

“I got to keep on marching,” Johns said. “There’s still much to be done. Like what Rev. Jesse Jackson says, ‘We got to be a rainbow coalition on the whole.’ ”

Many students who participated in the two-mile march learned about King and the civil rights movement from family and friends.

“My mom and dad would always tell me about the civil rights movement and how hard it was,” said freshman Allenna Wiggins, 18. “Martin Luther King marched for me. This is the least I could do for him for his birthday.”