Speeches, Protests Against Racism Mark King Birthday

Civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was remembered on his birthday Friday with memorial services, the renaming of a street long familiar to Monopoly fans and protests against racism at home and in South Africa.

King was “a man who dedicated his life to the pursuit of a dream, a dream not just for himself, but for you, for all of us, for America,” President Reagan said in a message videotaped for transmission by satellite around the country.

Reagan said King “reminded us that the destinies of all Americans were tied to one another, that the freedom of all Americans was inextricably bound together.”

Rights Marches Cited

King’s dream is still alive, his widow, Coretta Scott King, said in her annual “State of the Dream” address in Atlanta, pointing to civil rights marches and other demonstrations in his home state as proof.

“Some say the dream is on hold. Others believe the dream is rapidly becoming a nightmare,” Mrs. King told an audience of about 400 at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, of which she is president. “But I firmly believe that the dream is alive and well.”

King was assassinated outside a Memphis, Tenn., motel on April 4, 1968. Friday would have been his 59th birthday; the national holiday observing King’s birthday will be celebrated Monday.

But students in the Dallas suburb of Grand Prairie, Tex., will be in school. Their school board voted Thursday to hold classes Monday as a makeup day for a day missed because of an ice storm last week. “That is a blatant racist decision on the part of the school board,” local NAACP President Lee Alcorn said at the board meeting.

Protests in Chicago

In memory of King, members of Operation PUSH, a civil rights group organized by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, protested South Africa’s racial policy of apartheid outside that country’s Chicago consulate.

High school students met at Chicago’s Malcolm X College to discuss the struggle for civil rights in the 1990s. In Evanston, Ill., students at Northwestern University planned a candlelight service in King’s memory.

Education Secretary William J. Bennett, speaking in Atlanta, said King was “one of our greatest American citizens” and “the dream of equality and the dream of equal opportunity” must ma1852401253opportunity in school.”

In an earlier speech Friday at the King Center, Bennett said King “had answers for the questions posed by his education. His answers inspired action.

‘Our Strongest Allies’

“I believe we will find our strongest allies where Martin Luther King found his: in faith and in ideas--in education,” he added.

Bennett, a former philosophy professor, also taught a literature class at Benjamin E. Mays High School, one of 271 schools nationwide that he named last fall as National Schools of Excellence.

At a ceremony at the Georgia Capitol, Gov. Joe Frank Harris presented Mrs. King with a proclamation marking Monday as King Day in Georgia.

In Atlantic City, N.J., Illinois Avenue, an address familiar to enthusiasts of the game Monopoly, disappeared Friday and was replaced by Dr. Martin Luther King Boulevard. The change was approved by the City Council in May.

In New York City, Roman Catholic Cardinal John J. O’Connor said at a City Hall ceremony that he would use his Social Security benefits to provide a Martin Luther King scholarship for a black student of any religion. O’Connor estimated the benefits at $6,000 to $7,000 a year.