Essays Evoke King’s Memory for War Against Drugs

Adam Pena’s essay began with a heart-stopper.

“I started using drugs when I was 7 years old,” wrote the 10th-grader at Sylmar’s Evergreen High School. “This was my way of escaping life. As time went on I saw myself in a dark room. I could not move in either direction. I was lost and could not reach out for help.”

Raphael Leib, a fourth-grader at Baldwin Hills Elementary School, was even more to-the-point in his literary effort. “My teacher knows a guy who used to be clever and witty,” the youngster wrote. “He started taking drugs and now he’s living in a Volkswagen.”

The two young essayists were among several dozen winners honored Saturday at an awards ceremony for an art and essay contest commemorating the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. Sponsored jointly by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the California Afro-American Museum and the Southern California Gas Co., the contest drew 1,100 entries from area students age 5 to 18. Their theme: “Drugs--Killer of the Dream.”

“We wanted to make the life of King relevant to some of the problems of today,” said Anthony Smith, an SCLC program assistant and one of the contest organizers. “What King did was impose a sense of hope where there was no hope. Now, in 1987, we are still faced with problems (such as drugs) that seem (hopeless). We wanted young people to grapple with that issue.”

They grappled with it in a variety of mediums and styles ranging from Styrofoam stand-ups to collages and from first-person confessional essays to well-researched treatises laced with academic references. Among the art projects were foreboding portraits of drug abusers clutching hypodermic syringes and a dark-looking drawing of King next to a devil symbolizing drug addiction. Essays ran the gamut from Pena’s personal story to an impassioned plea by high school senior David Lui for a new “campaign of awareness, a new Freedom March” against drug abuse.

“Hopes and dreams matter,” wrote 17-year-old Lui, a student at Woodrow Wilson High School in Los Angeles. “The drug culture’s dreams, however, are tainted.”

The two 12th-grade winners--Lui for writing and Central High School student Irvin Garcia for art--each received a $1,000 scholarship. Other winners, one for each grade level in art and writing, were given gold medals bearing King’s likeness and copies of a biography of the civil rights leader. After the ceremony at the California Afro-American Museum in Exposition Park, the estimated 300 participants and observers watched a jazz dance performance and attended a reception.

“I’ve been a loser all my life,” said Pena, 17, whose essay ends with the happy news that he ultimately got off drugs by admitting himself to a hospital for addicts. “When I heard that I had won this contest I was thrilled, but I didn’t know how a winner should feel. Now I feel great.”

Lui, whose family emigrated to the United States from Hong Kong in 1972, said the exercise had been educational. “We usually think that King only talked about racial segregation,” he said. “What I learned was that you can read his speeches and apply them to other problems.”