King’s Legacy Cannot Be Dampened : Holiday: Thousands brave wet weather to witness and participate in eighth annual parade. Ceremonies throughout the area commemorate civil rights leader who stood for nonviolence.

They called themselves the die-hards--the thousands of people who came prepared with parkas, rubber boots and umbrellas for the eighth annual Kingdom Day Parade Monday in Los Angeles honoring slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

“For as long as it took us to make this a legal holiday, we shouldn’t give up on it,” said Carolyn Burroughs of Los Angeles, who has attended the parade ever since it started. “I don’t care if it was snowing. I would have been here.”

Her friend, Kimberly Ingram of Inglewood, said: “It’s better in the rain, it shows how serious we are about this.”

Wanda James of Pasadena brought her 5- and 7-year-old granddaughters, bundled in jackets. “It’s my mission to make sure that they know their history, that they know who Martin Luther King was,” she said. “I want to make sure this becomes a part of their routine, just like the Rose Parade on New Year’s.”

Police estimated the crowd at under 2,000. Parade organizers said there were 7,000 at Crenshaw and Martin Luther King Jr. boulevards, where the parade started.

Jan Pye, whose daughter, Amber, 10, marched with the Starlites Drill Team, had some reservations about letting her take part in the rain. But her daughter’s enthusiasm for participating in her first Kingdom Day Parade prevailed.

“They’ve been practicing since September and they’re all pumped up,” said Pye of Los Angeles. “That’s all they do and that’s all they talk about.”

As the parade wound down at Exposition Park, some of the beauty queens shivered in the mid-afternoon chill, calling out for something warm to drink and wishing they could have worn thermal underwear and boots instead of hose and pumps.

“My feet are gone,” cried Miss Black Los Angeles Crystal Justine, 22. “This is one parade I will never forget.”

Shivering and tired by the end of the three-mile event, members of the Inglewood-based Black Diamond Drillettes agreed that in spite of the chill and occasional downpour, it was worth it.

“For me it’s an honor,” said Celeaste Harris, 22, a psychology student at West Los Angeles College. “Martin Luther King did so much for us and we’re just out to show some respect. We still have to see through his dream. We still got to get together. Black people have to get together among ourselves and with others.”

At a King Day celebration at Santa Monica Community College, the Rev. James M. Lawson Jr., the retiring president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, blasted President Bush for bombing Iraq, particularly on the eve of a national holiday commemorating a man who stood for nonviolence.

Lawson, known as the Gandhian mentor of the civil rights movement, was honored Monday night at the 16th annual Martin Luther King Jr. birthday dinner organized by the SCLC, the group founded by King to end segregation through nonviolent protest.

In New York, several thousand people were expected Monday night at a rally honoring King that turned into an anti-war rally after the U.S. attack on Iraq.

“It is an insult to the memory of Dr. King, who stood for peace and social justice, to again launch such a racist attack on Dr. King’s birthday weekend,” rally organizer Larry Holmes said.

For the first time in eight years since the slain civil rights leader’s birthday was made a national holiday, all 50 states, including Arizona and New Hampshire--the two states that had refused to observe King Day--shut down state offices for the day.

A national boycott of Arizona called by black activists and liberal allies cost that state several hundred million dollars in convention revenue, including this year’s Super Bowl. The state’s voters established King Day last November as a state holiday by a 61%-39% vote.

In King’s hometown of Atlanta, the Rev. Jesse Jackson was honored with a medallion and Haiti’s exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was grand marshal for a march through the downtown business district to King’s grave.

In Davie, Fla., north of Miami, three people were arrested during a Ku Klux Klan demonstration that drew 200 hecklers and Klansmen. In Dayton, Ohio, an alleged neo-Nazi was arrested for planning to bomb a museum devoted to African-Americans, law enforcement officials said.

An 18-year-old woman in Denver was reportedly beaten by four men who had come to protest a Ku Klux Klan demonstration over the King holiday, authorities said. The woman was beaten when she tried to break up a fight between two unidentified men, Denver police said.

Times staff writer Bernice Hirabayashi contributed to this story.