1988 Racism Cited in Santa Ana : King Speakers Use Day to Assail Drugs

With bursts of joyous song and reminders of bitter realities, Santa Ana residents Monday marked the birthday of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., praying that the dream did not die with the dreamer.

Speakers at the Second Baptist Church in Santa Ana, scene of a three-hour tribute to King, lashed out at the perils of cocaine and alcohol, gangs and school dropouts, which plague the black community.

In rolling cadences familiar to those born on the bayou and in towns of the Deep South where cotton was king, black ministers who now call Orange County home exhorted the faithful to follow the promise of the Baptist preacher who won the Nobel Peace Prize and proclaimed: “I have a dream.”

In a separate observance, about 300 men, women and children gathered at Santa Ana Valley High School for a memorial sponsored by the county chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

King would have been 59 Friday. He was shot to death at age 39 by James Earl Ray on a motel balcony in Memphis on April 4, 1968.

This was the first year that King’s birthday, already a federal holiday, was also a holiday proclaimed by Santa Ana, the city with the county’s largest black population. Huntington Beach and Irvine are the two other county cities that observed the holiday.

At the Second Baptist Church, the congregation cheered a visiting minister from Monroe, La., the Rev. Oliver W. Billups Jr., when he linked the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, with King. Congregants cheered again when Billups asked why Amerasians are welcomed with open arms to America, but “Lady Liberty puts on her blindfold” at the sight of “native-born children of color.”

Still, the Rev. Thomas Shipp said many of the young people in the crowd of more than 350 in the filled-to-overflowing church did not realize “how far we have come.”

“I can remember even in my town when I used to stand at the door, the back door, and asked for a hamburger, that I paid the same price as anybody else paid,” said Shipp, treasurer of the Baptist Minister’s Conference Fellowship of Orange County, which organized the tribute.

“I remember once in the state of Texas . . . hungry and wanting food, and having money in my pocket. And I asked the man where could I find some place to get a good breakfast. He showed me around to the bus station and said I could stay out here and ‘order your food and eat it in the parking lot.’

“But because of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, that does not exist anymore. Dr. King suffered and laid down his life. . . . (Yet) so many of our young people today are misusing the opportunities that a man died for . . . (because of) cocaine and drug abuse. . . . I want to challenge all of you: Let us live out the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King.”

But it was Billups, pastor of the Mount Olivet Baptist Church in Monroe, La., who wrapped the congregants into his sermon, their shouted counterpoints punctuating virtually each of his phrases.

“We live in America,” Billups intoned, speaking some of his words, virtually singing others.

“Yeah,” the congregation replied.

“The home of the free.”

“Yeah.”

“And the land of the brave.”

“Yeah.”

“But we say, Jesse, you have not lived a scandalous life.”

“Yeah.”

“You are intelligent.”

“Yeah.”

“You are diplomatic.”

“Right on.”

“You are diplomatic enough to get a foreign government to release a citizen hostage.”

“Yeah.”

“You haven’t done anything to discredit your country.”

“All right.”

“In fact, in our narrow-mindedness, we must admit that you are a credit, but not necessarily to your country, but to your race.”

“Yeah.”

“We acknowledge, Jesse, that you are a viable candidate for the presidency of the United States of America.”

“Yeah.”

“But we can’t elect you--because you’re black.”

Applause, cheers and amens followed.

At Santa Ana Valley High School, businessman James Tippins told the audience, “It is our responsibility for each of us to ensure that our children, grandchildren and their children” keep King’s memory alive.

Ivan McKinney, the master of ceremonies, said King “was for all oppressed people, irrespective of ethnicity. I don’t want you to think we are celebrating a black holiday. Dr. King says we must learn to live together as brothers and sisters or we will perish together as fools.

“We’re not here to honor a black person. He just happened to be an outstanding American--who happened to be black.”

The Rev. Clinton Rogers Jr. of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Santa Ana injected a note of caution into the memorial service.

Although blacks have made great strides in the 20 years since King’s death, “we need to do something to encourage and improve our economic condition,” Rogers said, adding that white women have benefited more from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than have black men.

“I pray that we realize the goal of Dr. King, that we have civil and social equality but that we also have economic equality,” he said.