Civil Rights Activists Urge Public to Lay Down Arms : Violence: Gun buybacks, Klu Klux Klan demonstrations mark the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Hoping to counter the violence that one governor said would make Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. weep, civil rights activists called on members of their communities to lay down their arms Saturday.

“He would weep if he saw the grandsons and granddaughters of those who marched with him using violence to solve their problems,” North Carolina Gov. James B. Hunt Jr. said of the slain civil rights leader, born 65 years ago Saturday. The national holiday is Monday.

In memory of King’s nonviolent teachings, gun buybacks were scheduled in five Florida cities. A feature of Jacksonville’s buyback: the chance to win Super Bowl tickets, plus air fare.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Georgia continued its gun buyback program through the weekend. Weapons were exchanged for $35, a $50 grocery certificate or two tickets to an Atlanta Hawks basketball game.

In Washington, D.C., gun owners from as far away as Pennsylvania and West Virginia lined up outside the Union Temple Baptist Church for $100 in cash from money supplied by former heavyweight boxing champion Riddick Bowe and his manager, Rock Newman.

In Atlanta, Education Secretary Richard W. Riley warned that a crisis of violence and despair among young people could drown the contributions made by King and his followers.

“They seem to be giving up on America, turning away from the sure grounding of Dr. King’s philosophy of nonviolence,” Riley told educators at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change.

King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, awarded the 1994 Martin Luther King Jr. Distinguished Service Award to Johnnetta B. Cole, president of Spelman College in Atlanta.

“Dr. Cole is a champion of human rights, very much in the spirit of Dr. King,” Mrs. King said.

Writing in today’s editions of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Mrs. King said the nation must confront businesses that promote violence in order to reduce violent crime.

“We must recognize that while violence is ultimately committed by individuals, it is promoted and encouraged by a massive violence industry,” she said, singling out film and television companies, video arcade operators, gun manufacturers and sellers, and toy makers for advertising and promoting violence.

Elsewhere Saturday, Ku Klux Klansmen rallying against the King holiday were mostly outnumbered by counterdemonstrators in protests in several state capitals.

No arrests or injuries were reported as the klan demonstrated in Columbus, Ohio; Little Rock, Ark.; Topeka, Kan.; Montgomery, Ala.; Tallahassee, Fla.; and Austin, Tex. Rallies were planned today in Denver and Springfield, Ill.

Authorities estimated the anti-klan crowd in Austin at 2,000. Their placards read: “One Planet, One People” and “Klearly Kowardly Kriminals.”

One counterdemonstrator burned a small Confederate flag. Others kept up a constant drumming on pots and pans, blew whistles and shook tambourines to try to drown out 33 klan supporters.

About 150 protesters in Columbus beat drums, blew whistles and hurled snowballs at 30 klansmen who spoke in sub-zero temperatures outside the Statehouse.