The Message Goes Out on King Day

From Inglewood to Hollywood, through Catholic prayers and Aztec dances, Los Angeles residents celebrated the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy Monday with a display of unity that would have made King proud.

The eclectic observances of the holiday began with a Catholic prayer breakfast at Verbum Dei High School, followed by parades in Inglewood and the Crenshaw district, and a star-studded testimonial at the House of Blues in West Hollywood.

At the blues club, former Los Angeles Councilman Michael Woo reminded a crowd that included actors Angela Bassett and John Goodman and singers Lou Rawls, Isaac Hayes and Skee-Lo that “Dr. King stood for the ability of each individual to make a difference, not just celebrities.”

“Each of us could be a Rosa Parks, who refused to listen to a bus driver who told her where to sit,” Woo said, referring to the African American woman who in 1955 refused an order to give up her seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Ala., prompting King to organize a citywide bus boycott that brought the 26-year-old Baptist minister to national prominence.

His broad appeal was underscored by the more than 600 Catholics who showed up at 8 a.m. for a prayer breakfast at Verbum Dei in South-Central Los Angeles.

“It’s not about him being Baptist or Catholic, it’s about Christianity,” said Mell Hueston, of Simi Valley.

“Dr. King was [fighting for] human rights.”

Tens of thousands of people lined Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard for the annual Kingdom Day Parade, which started at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza shopping mall and ended at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Among the 160 floats and parade entries were marching bands from Centennial and Crenshaw high schools.

The crowd gave its loudest cheers to two embattled leaders: Police Chief Willie L. Williams and City Councilman Nate Holden.

The music of the bands and cheers of the crowd drew James and Sallie Pratt to the parade from their shopping.

King “brought about the beginning of the change,” Pratt said, allowing that King’s dream has not been realized.

“But it will come to pass,” his wife said.

Inglewood held its own parade, led by grand marshal Michael Cooper, a Los Angeles Lakers assistant coach and former player. Watching was Dave Balzer, 29, a seminary student from Winnipeg, Canada, who came to Inglewood with an international group of 30 colleagues as part of a two-week cross-cultural “immersion” course.

“For me, it is important to be in the black community, which is not my community, and align myself with people who believe in [King’s] message,” Balzer said. “Just being here and walking among different people is a powerful experience. Martin Luther had the ability to walk not only in his community but other communities to make society a better place.”

The Inglewood parade ended at the First Church of God, where an hourlong program included addresses from elected officials and the winners of a speech contest.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) lauded Inglewood as an ethnically diverse and harmonious city. She also used the forum to lash out at House Speaker Newt Gingrich for his efforts to cut the rate of growth of federal Medicare and welfare spending.

But the highlight of the program came when speech contest winners recited their essays in the packed church auditorium.

“Every child in America can make a difference,” read one winner, John Bulwer of Woodworth Elementary School. “I desire to make a difference by stopping the violence in my society. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a peace-builder. I am a peace-builder. I pledge to be a peace-builder like him.”

Speakers at the House of Blues also called for an end to violence. The Sunset Boulevard club is near many of the sites visited by King on a 1965 Los Angeles tour that was marred by death threats against the civil rights leader.

Security guards surrounded King on that Los Angeles trip, during which he spoke at theHollywood Palladium and the Hollywood Temple Israel and watched the movie “The Greatest Story Ever Told” in the Cinerama Dome on Sunset Boulevard. Three years after that visit, King was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn.

Violence blemished some of Monday’s celebrations. Two suspected gang members started a fight in the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza after the Kingdom Day Parade, forcing the mall to close for an hour, police said.

Times staff writer Peter Y. Hong contributed to this story.