City Halls Open on King Day : Antelope Valley: Ceremonies honor Martin Luther King Jr. but black leaders chide Lancaster and Palmdale for not closing city offices.

The Antelope Valley on Monday held its first official ceremony honoring Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, even as black community leaders chided its two major cities, Lancaster and Palmdale, for failing to join most other cities in recognizing the holiday.

About 300 residents, mostly blacks, and some Lancaster and Palmdale officials gathered in front of Lancaster City Hall for nearly two hours of speeches, hymns and prayers commemorating the civil rights leader, who was assassinated in 1968. The event was sponsored by Lancaster, the NAACP and two other black groups.

But while it was taking place, work went on as usual in the Lancaster and Palmdale city halls. Unlike the federal, state and Los Angeles county governments and most cities in the county, neither Lancaster nor Palmdale recognizes the day as an official holiday.

“I think the two cities not observing this holiday without a question sends a message, true or not true, that this day is not that meaningful,” said the Rev. Henry W. Hearns, president of the East Antelope Valley Ministers and Wives Alliance, and chief organizer of Monday’s ceremony.

“If the federal government has given this as a holiday, what’s wrong with these two cities? Why can’t they do it?” asked the Rev. Samuel T. Hooker, another area pastor and president of the Antelope Valley chapter of the NAACP.

Lancaster, the largest city in the Antelope Valley, has never commemorated King’s birthday by closing its city offices. Palmdale observed the holiday in 1986, but opted in 1987 to keep municipal offices open and grant city employees a floating holiday instead. City officials said employees requested the change as part of a package of holiday changes.

Hearns and Hooker blamed the area’s small but growing black population for not pushing the issue.

In Los Angeles, black political organizations lobbied city officials for the holiday, Hearns said, “whereas here we’ve had a reasonably comfortable living environment and haven’t done a lot of talking to our city governments.”

The federal government began observing the third Monday in January as an official holiday in 1986.

Lancaster Mayor Lynn Harrison, who attended the ceremony, said she thought at the time the city should do the same. But Harrison said she never brought up the issue for a council vote.

“There was not a council consensus,” she said.

“If there isn’t any support for doing it, then you don’t put it on the public agenda.”