Apply King Teachings to Drugs, Poverty, Seminar Told

In the keynote address of a three-day symposium honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on Thursday night, a prominent educator urged the audience of a packed church on the campus of UC Irvine not to “freeze” the memory of the late civil rights leader but to apply his teachings to today’s problems.

Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu, founder of African-American Images, a Chicago-based publishing and consulting firm that deals mainly with academic achievement among black youths, said that society has failed to apply King’s message of nonviolent resistance to the problems of poverty and drug abuse that plague inner cities and the nation as a whole.

“Right now in Los Angeles and Chicago and other cities . . . we’re losing between 300 and 1,000 brothers a year to homicide,” Kunjufu said. “We need to be able to use whatever Dr. King said between 1929 and 1968 (King’s lifetime) to deal with our homicide problem today.”

While praising King’s work, Kunjufu also said he believed that King made a mistake during the civil rights movement in not continuing the 381-day Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott in 1956. Continuing the boycott, Kunjufu said, could possibly have led to the establishment of a black-owned transportation service and set the civil rights movement on a course toward economic self-sufficiency.

“At some point, we need to realize that maybe freedom is starting our own businesses,” Kunjufu said in his lecture at the University United Methodist Church.

The civil rights movement, he said, also failed to use federal grants in the 1960s to further black-owned businesses and institutions, a fault that is now manifesting itself in economic problems facing African-American communities.

“We need to use that (grant) money to create some goods and services, so when the money leaves, fine,” Kunjufu said.

In an interview with The Times before his speech, Kunjufu also emphasized the point of economic advancement among African-Americans. His consulting firm, which he founded in 1980, promotes that notion by urging school systems around the country to raise self-esteem among black youths.

“We have to look at the issue of education, and ultimately empowerment of our own community,” Kunjufu said. “We still look to others for basic goods and services.”

African-American Images, he said, seeks to further self-esteem among blacks and advance academic achievement by targeting youths as early as the fourth grade.

“A lot of people are concerned about black men who are 18 or 20 hanging out on the street corners,” Kunjufu said. “ My concern was, let’s try to catch it before it starts.

“The drug problem is caused by low self-esteem,” he added. “You don’t deal and use drugs if you feel good about yourself.”

UCI’s symposium honoring King--who would have been 61 years old Monday--concludes today with a march through Irvine to the campus starting at 10 a.m. at Mason Park and followed by a noon rally at the school’s Gateway Plaza.