Calls Made to Carry On King’s Work

While praising the achievements of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a prominent Southland clergyman warned several thousand residents Monday to “resist the temptation of yielding to complacency” and exhorted them to carry on the work of the civil rights leader who was assassinated in 1968.

“If we put all our energy on where we’ve been rather than where we’re going, we will die--in spite of our progress, we will die,” Bishop Kenneth C. Ulmer of the Faithful Central Baptist Church told a cheering, clapping Inglewood throng that was gathered to celebrate the national holiday in King’s honor.

Ulmer, whose congregation has mushroomed from 350 to 7,000 in the past 15 years, urged the crowd to take stands, whether large or small, because even one action can make a big difference. “When Rosa Parks stepped on that bus and said she was not moving to the back, that one step was amplified,” Ulmer said, and made similar references to other African American heroes including anti-slavery crusader Harriet Tubman and track star Jesse Owens.

“We shall overcome, but we have not overcome,” Ulmer said, referring to the song that has been the anthem of the civil rights movement. He said many people in this society are still judged solely by the color of their skin and treated unfairly because of it.

Ulmer’s sermon concluded Inglewood’s 17th annual Martin Luther King Birthday celebration--perhaps the largest gathering of its kind in the area. Despite rainy weather, the event started with a spirited march featuring high school bands, drill teams and a coalition of youths brandishing a banner urging the defeat of Proposition 21, the March ballot measure that could dramatically escalate the number of California juveniles who are tried as adults when charged with crimes.

King, a Baptist minister with a PhD, came to prominence as the leader of the landmark Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott precipitated by Parks’ arrest in 1955. Two years later, King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and became the central figure in the civil rights movement--a nonviolent activist who was arrested scores of times for engaging in civil disobedience.

King, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, would have turned 71 on Saturday. He was assassinated April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tenn., while organizing a demonstration on behalf of the city’s sanitation workers.

King’s legacy was celebrated throughout Southern California and across the country.

Other King events included community service projects in Watts, a parade in South-Central Los Angeles, an NAACP celebration at West Covina City Hall, and a march and rally in Oxnard.

In addition to Ulmer, the Inglewood gathering featured a hard-hitting address by Mayor Roosevelt Dorn, moving speeches by children ranging in age from 5 to 17 talking about what King’s legacy meant to them, and lively gospel music.

“Today, we are not living the dream Dr. King prayed for,” Dorn said. “The rich are getting richer, the middle class is disappearing, the poor are increasing, racism is alive and well.”

Perhaps the biggest applause at the church went to Christopher Jones, a poised kindergartner from Worthington Elementary School in Inglewood. “I was not born when Dr. King was alive,” said Jones, who used a hand-held microphone and sported a black bow tie and a black and white vest.

“My parents taught me that Martin Luther King was a great man who spread the message of peace, love and equality. We should keep Dr. King’s dream alive,” Jones said as his parents beamed and the crowd applauded.

Like several speakers, Garry Baynes, a senior at Hillcrest High School, spoke of King’s “spirituality” and the role that quality played in the civil rights movement. Then, looking ahead, Baynes, 17, said: “Let us stop the racism and come together as one. Harmony is not an option but a necessity for living in the new millennium.”

Along the march, and outside the church, organizers handed out fliers about the importance of the coming census and about job opportunities connected with the census.

Both Bishop Ulmer and Mayor Dorn urged the crowd inside the church to participate in the census. Dorn said Inglewood had been undercounted by as many as 14,000 people in the 1990 census, depriving the city of $1 million a year in government resources it otherwise would have received.

Earlier in the day, young adults, working at a job training program in Watts, distributed books to children at area housing projects.

Abraham Rincon, 19, one of those who gathered at the job training site, described King as “a man who helped get equal rights, not just for blacks but for everyone.”

In Oxnard, nearly 500 community members as well as civic and spiritual leaders gathered in the rain to celebrate the holiday and rekindle King’s spirit.

Ventura English teacher Ron Hertz perched his son, B.J., on his shoulders while he held a sign reading, “Tell us who really killed MLK” on one side and, “End war and poverty” on the other.

Hertz and others at the gathering of mostly African Americans, but also whites and Asians, sang “We Shall Overcome” as they walked nearly a mile through the rain to the Oxnard Performing Arts Center. Children huddled in groups under umbrellas and stomped through the occasional puddle.

Hertz, who has attended the Oxnard march every year for nearly a decade, said King’s vision is often summed up in the civil rights leader’s epochal 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech that called for a society that judges individuals on the content of their character, not on the color of their skin. But Hertz said King stood for much more.

“Some of these other battles,” said Hertz, listing problems ranging from drug addiction to hunger and illiteracy, “have yet to be won.”

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Times correspondent Tony Lystra contributed to this article.