King Holiday Marked With Parades, Prayers

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was remembered Monday with parades, prayers and a few pointed remarks as Southern Californians celebrated the birth and legacy of a man whose civil rights work was abruptly ended by an assassin’s bullet 30 years ago this spring.

A crowd of thousands, at times standing 10 deep, lined a 3-mile stretch of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Los Angeles to watch the “Kingdom Day ‘98” parade of floats, marching bands and antique cars carrying politicians and celebrities.

Among them were Lt. Gov. Gray Davis and state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren, both expected to run for governor, and Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks.

“They should have this parade every week,” said an appreciative resident, one of several who set up barbecues in their frontyards to sell food to the holiday throng.

The mood was more serious at a South-Central Los Angeles prayer breakfast held by the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles at which Bill Hawkins spoke of how the fight for equality has evolved since King’s time.

“It’s a different struggle, but it’s not over,” said Hawkins, a deacon at St. Brigid’s Catholic Church. “In the 1960s the struggle was very clear. It was access and lack of access.”

Today, Hawkins told the 1,000 people at the breakfast, “it’s become bigger than just a black thing. We now live in a world full of haves and have-nots. The enemy was very apparent in the 1960s. It’s very hidden in the 1990s.”

In Inglewood, others focused on the gains won by King and other leaders more than three decades ago, while lamenting such contemporary problems as gang violence and family disintegration.

“Americans, both sacred and secular, need the forgiveness of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. because we have failed,” said the Rev. J. Alfred Smith, who traveled from Oakland’s Allen Temple Baptist Church to deliver the keynote address at a lively celebration at the First Church of God.

“We have somewhat distorted the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King,” Smith said. “We have disregarded that he was a man of God and have just tried to make a social activist out of him.”

Smith criticized African Americans who have benefited economically from the rights that King helped win, but who have not made an effort to help fellow blacks who are less fortunate.

“Now, since they have climbed up the ladder on his blood sacrifice, they want to pull it up by saying there’s no need for affirmative action,” Smith said.

He also chastised politicians for capitalizing on the King holiday to appear sympathetic to the problems faced by many minorities.

“You’ve dismantled the infrastructure of the inner city,” Smith said of the politicians. “You’ve taken away the jobs. . . . You’ve said to the young people, ‘Pull yourself up by your bootstraps,’ and they don’t even have boots at all.”

Times staff writer Bettina Boxall contributed to this story.