Pealing of Bells, Prayer Honor King on His Day

The Liberty Bell’s peals echoed across the country and across the sea today as Americans marched, prayed and sang “We Shall Overcome” in honor of Martin Luther King and his dream of racial justice on the day that bears his name.

Coretta Scott King, widow of the slain civil rights leader, stood at his grave in Atlanta with Secretary of State George P. Shultz and black leaders as a wreath of red and yellow flowers was placed at his crypt.

In Philadelphia, Samuel Pierce Jr., secretary of Housing and Urban development, tapped the Liberty Bell at 12:30 p.m., triggering the pealing of replicas in state capitals across the United States and in London at Parliament’s Big Ben.

“This is not a ‘black’ event. This is an American holiday, black and white,” Gov. Arch Moore said at a ceremony in Charleston, W.Va., where participants sang “We Shall Overcome.”

48 Hours After Riots

Martin Luther King Day came less than 48 hours after blacks and whites marching in Georgia’s all-white Forsyth County were pelted with rocks and bottles by a crowd of Ku Klux Klansmen and their supporters.

It was nearly a month after a gang of white youths in New York City attacked and beat three black men, chasing one to his death when he ran onto a road and was hit by a car.

The day was a holiday for federal workers and most of the 40 states that celebrated the second observance of Martin Luther King Day.

Financial markets were open, but the New York Stock Exchange observed a minute of silence at noon. Schools, banks and government offices in some states were closed.

King, a Baptist preacher awarded the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for his civil rights leadership, was shot to death in 1968 by a sniper on the second floor of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

About 200 people gathered at the motel today.

‘Needs to Know About Dr. King’

Anita Gary, leading her 5-year-old daughter, Nadonna, to the room which has been made into a King memorial, said, “She’s in kindergarten now and she needs to know about Dr. King and what he stood for.”

In Atlanta, the Rev. Hosea Williams, a former King aide, stood with Coretta King at the grave site ceremony then led a prayer that King’s followers would “rededicate ourselves . . . until the dream becomes a living reality.”

King’s struggle for racial equality “must be won every day,” Shultz said later at an ecumenical service at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King and his father were co-pastors.

“Dr. King’s achievement is real only as we maintain our vigilance and commitment,” Shultz said.

Coretta King then presented the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize to Philippine President Corazon Aquino, whose husband, a leader of opponents of the Marcos government, also was slain. A sister-in-law accepted for Aquino.