Dr. King Visit to Orange Remembered : Civil rights: Slain leader’s speech 32 years ago is recalled during his birthday observance at Chapman University.

History professor Jim Miller can’t quite remember how many students filled Memorial Hall that Sunday, Dec. 10, 1961, to hear Martin Luther King Jr. speak at Chapman College in Orange.

“In those days (King) wasn’t so popular--especially in Orange County,” said Miller, who has taught at what is now Chapman University for 38 years.

But on Monday, as 200 people gathered on campus to commemorate the birthday of the slain civil rights leader, Miller had no trouble recalling the words King spoke that day long ago.

They were:

“The extreme optimist says ‘do nothing’ because integration is inevitable. The extreme pessimist says ‘do nothing’ because integration is impossible . . . the realist . . . would agree with the optimist that we have come a long, long way. But he would seek to balance this by agreeing with the pessimist that we have a long, long way to go.”

This time, the words were said by Don Will, associate professor of peace studies, who read excerpts from King’s famous speech on “Racial Justice and Non-Violent Resistance.”

After the opening prayer and college President Jim Doti’s remarks, the musical group Curtis Clay and Associates crooned “Reach Out and Touch Somebody’s Hand,” as groups of students, faculty members and administrators held hands.

Then, administrators and students unveiled the 6-foot-high stand and bronze bust of King, who was assassinated in 1968.

Sculpted by Ed Dwight, an African American artist in Northern California, the bust will be engraved with a permanent plaque recalling King’s words: “I have a dream that my four little children will . . . not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Said Vice President for University Relations Dick Cheshire: “When we walk past the bust every day, we will be reminded of King’s dream.”

The exhortation to never forgot the dream and the civil rights movement it spurred was repeated during a King remembrance at Valley High School in Santa Ana earlier Monday.

Sponsored by the Orange County chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People and the high school’s Black Heritage Club, the tribute included sermons, gospel songs by the Johnson Chapel AME Church Choir and poetic narration of King’s life by Tustin High School students.

Allen Doby, Santa Ana’s executive director of recreation and community services, cautioned the approximately 80 audience members that civil rights milestones like Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up a bus seat may be forgotten.

“We can forget where we came from and how we got here,” he said. “We do programs like this so youngsters understand, or at least hear about it. This is a celebration of all the projects in the ‘50s that got us here today.”

J. Anthony Boger, a pastor from Santa Ana who spoke during the program, agreed. “When you have a birthday, you don’t sit like a lump on a log,” he told the audience of church members, parents and children. “You get happy.”

In a booming voice, he preached: “The difference begins with you, even when you are not accepted. . . . The dream is alive though not in the government institutions, though not in the industrial institutions, though not in the educational institutions. The dream is alive in our hearts. The dream is alive in our minds . . . the dream is alive.”