Cities Plan Celebrations : King’s Holiday Evoking a Dream Across America

ATLANTA —  Vice President George Bush has signed one. So have pop star Stevie Wonder, Republican Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Edward J. Jefferson, chairman of E. I. Du Pont de Nemours, the chemical company.

But when the Dundalk, Md., high school requested 1,550 “Living the Dream” pledge cards for its students, the federal commission overseeing preparations for the first national celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday believed that a milestone had been reached.

James Karantonis, director of the commission’s Washington office, is a 1963 graduate of Dundalk High School, and he knows the town. “Dundalk doesn’t have a large black population,” he said. “It’s basically a blue-collar, white ethnic community with a big Bethlehem Steel plant a couple of miles away. The high school’s asking for these pledge cards shows me that we’ve come a tremendous way with this holiday.”

Signers of “Living the Dream” pledge cards vow to honor King’s principles by loving, not hating; by showing understanding, not anger, and by making peace, not war.

In the three years since President Reagan signed the bill designating King’s birthday a national holiday beginning in 1986, just how far the nation would go in celebrating the life of the charismatic civil rights leader has remained a big question.

The holiday--to be observed this year on Monday, Jan. 20--was born in controversy. Congressional opponents doubted whether King or anyone else should be given an honor never bestowed on Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson. Senate action was held up when conservative Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) threatened a filibuster. Reagan approved the measure with obvious reluctance, saying he would have preferred a day of remembrance for King to a formal holiday.

Setbacks have plagued celebration planners. The 31-member Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Holiday Commission, set up last January to organize commemorative events, raised less than a third of its original budget goal of $1.5 million. Blacks frequently have bemoaned the low level of white support and participation.

Even here in Atlanta, King’s hometown and the focal point of the chief events commemorating the holiday, a rally just three months ago to launch preparations for the big day attracted fewer than 70 persons--and they had to be coaxed repeatedly to sing and clap enthusiastically.

Nevertheless, as the day draws near for the first new national holiday since Congress designated Thanksgiving in 1941, it is becoming increasingly apparent that--despite many disputes and still-simmering differences--America is closing ranks behind the memory of the man who called himself a drum major for justice and equality.

Community Events Planned

A sampling around the nation found plans for a variety of activities and observances. In most cases, the theme will be the one chosen by the national commission, “Living the Dream,” an allusion to the famous “I Have a Dream” speech that King delivered at the Lincoln Memorial during the 1963 March on Washington demonstration.

Some examples:

--In Los Angeles, city and county as well as state and federal employees will have the 20th off and schools, banks, and government offices will be closed. A week of events honoring King will include services around the city next Sunday, and will be capped the next day by a birthday celebration at the Bonaventure Hotel featuring South African Bishop Desmond Tutu as keynote speaker.

--In Denver, jazz pianist Dave Brubeck and an 80-voice choir will perform in a concert featuring a King-inspired Brubeck composition, “Gates of Justice,” as part of a six-day schedule of events that will also include a 5-kilometer foot race and “Martin’s Parade,” with floats and bands, on Jan. 20.

--In Dayton, Ohio, a weeklong program will be launched. An interfaith breakfast is expected to draw 500 people from the Catholic, Jewish, Protestant, Islamic and Asian religious communities. During the week, workshops on civil rights, economic development, international affairs and human rights will be offered at colleges and community centers.

Montgomery Plans Honors

--In Montgomery, Ala., where King first rose to national prominence in 1955 as leader of a black bus boycott protesting segregated seating, a commemorative marker will be placed at the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, where King once was pastor. On the state Capitol steps, state, county and city proclamations honoring him will be read.

--In the Rotunda of the U. S. Capitol, a bust of King will be unveiled Thursday. It will be the first time a black American has been so honored. On the same day, a reception in honor of King for the diplomatic corps will be given by District of Columbia Mayor Marion Barry Jr., a black who was a militant activist during the 1960s, and Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, the senior foreign diplomat in Washington.

--In Richmond, Va., one-time capital of the Confederacy, more than 400 state and community leaders--including the new Democratic governor, Gerald L. Baliles--will attend a breakfast as part of a weeklong celebration. Virginia Union University, a predominantly black school, will announce the opening of a center for community education and public service that was inspired by King’s life and work.

Variety of Activities

--In Alaska, Fairbanks, Juneau, Sitka and other cities plan a variety of activities, including plays and films about King’s life. The Rev. Ralph Abernathy of Atlanta, who formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with King in 1957, will be guest of honor in Anchorage, the state’s biggest city. Alaska is one of more than 40 states that set up commissions, independent of the federal commission, to promote King holiday activities.

--In Atlanta, a nine-day program of events will include a national conference against apartheid, with Bishop Tutu as featured speaker, after a wreath-laying ceremony at King’s crypt and a gigantic march and parade down Peachtree Street led by Coretta Scott King, King’s widow, and other veteran civil-rights leaders. Atlanta’s celebration is to begin today with an interfaith breakfast at the historic Big Bethel AME Church.

Businesses Are Sponsors

Businesses are also sponsoring activities. The McDonald’s hamburger chain, for instance, has put together a traveling exhibit, “Happy Birthday, Dr. King: A Celebration of His Life and Times,” which will visit 20 cities across the country during the year.

Atlanta station WSB-TV has produced a one-hour drama, “The Boy King,” for national syndication. The film, an account of King’s boyhood years, stars Academy Award nominee Howard Rollins Jr. as Martin Luther King Sr., the powerful and influential Atlanta minister known widely as “Daddy King.”

“What you see in all this is that King’s life and what he stood for touched so many people--young and old, black and white--and continues to serve as an inspiration for many Americans,” Karantonis said. “I really believe this holiday is now going to take on a life of its own, and next year and in the years after that, more people, more groups, more associations, more state and local governments will want to be part of the holiday.”

The prospect did not always seem so rosy. When Congress passed the holiday legislation in 1983, it did not allocate any public funds for the King holiday commission’s activities--although it stipulated that federal agencies could loan the commission personnel and office space free of charge.

“This led to a Catch-22 situation, where agencies that we called on for staff said that they would give us some people when we got an office, while others would say they would give us an office when we got some staff,” recalled Karantonis, who is himself on loan from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Offices, Money Donated

The commission got by with a little help from its friends.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Samuel R. Pierce Jr. solved the office problem in March by donating space in his agency’s Washington complex.

Two major fund-raising efforts--one headed by commission members Dole and Du Pont Chairman Jefferson, the other by commission member Jesse Hill Jr., an Atlanta insurance company president, and Nicholas Katzenbach, former U.S. attorney general and senior vice president for International Business Machines--raised almost $200,000.

In Atlanta, where more than 100,000 out-of-town visitors are expected to show up for the King celebration, the City Council helped the commission out of a tight financial spot by voting it $100,000 in aid.

Half of the money was earmarked for sprucing up Sweet Auburn, the heart of the city’s old black neighborhood, where King was born and the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change is located.

One of the commission’s major goals has been to ensure that individuals and groups did not try to turn the holiday celebrations to their own financial advantage. It has, for example, rejected requests from companies that wanted to manufacture “official” Martin Luther King Jr. knives, designer jeans and other items.

Guidelines Met Resistance

It also offered guidelines for states and localities to follow in preparing their observances. For example, the commission said the holiday should be used to recognize the good works of black Americans, to strengthen the idea of family unity and to promote freedom, justice and opportunity for all Americans.

“This holiday should authentically celebrate the life and ministry of Martin Luther King Jr.,” said the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and a commission member. “It should be a time to renew the struggle to put an end to poverty and to injustice and to war.”

Some white public officials said they thought the commission was trying to dictate to them, however.

“This kind of thing shouldn’t have come from the commission but from the local blacks, if they wanted to do something,” said Mayor Perry Lee DeLoach of Claxton, Ga., a rural community of 3,000 about 50 miles west of Savannah. “The commission doesn’t mean anything to us. There should be more grass-roots instead of trying to start at the top.”

DeLoach, however, opposed any official city celebration. He was quoted as saying that local businessmen had made it known to him that they “would just as soon celebrate my birthday” as King’s.

Booker T. Hagen, the 68-year-old president of the Claxton chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, said white resistance to observing the King holiday in Claxton and elsewhere in the rural South stems from the resentment many whites still feel over the gains blacks have made since King helped them break down segregation.

White Resentment Persists

“Whites had it all, under the old system, and it was hard for them to give up something that they had had all their lives,” he said. “They feel like Dr. King was the one who tore down their kingdom.”

Many whites throughout the South are also upset that the King holiday has encroached on traditional Confederate holidays.

The Georgia Legislature, for example, passed a bill making King’s birthday a state holiday, but it downgraded the birthday of Confederate President Jefferson Davis to avoid giving state employees an additional holiday off. Davis’ birthday will now be recognized by proclamation only.

“I do not like the idea of swapping blacks for whites,” said one woman, a longtime Georgia resident. “Let’s hold onto something. I don’t want to take the black people’s hero away. We all need heroes, but we should not eliminate anyone. Jefferson Davis meant a lot to the Confederacy.”

In reality, there is no such thing as a national holiday for the whole country. Only states can decide what legal holidays will be observed. So-called national holidays are actually legal holidays only for federal employees and the District of Columbia, the seat of the national government.

King’s birthday, which by law is celebrated on the third Monday in January each year, is the 10th federal holiday. The others are New Year’s Day, Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Nobel Prize Winner

King, who was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1964, when he was 35, would have been 57 on Jan. 15, had he lived. He died from a sniper’s bullet fired on April 4, 1968, as he stood on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, Tenn., where he had gone to lead a demonstration of striking garbage workers.

On the night before he was assassinated, he had expressed no fears about his mortality.

“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life,” he said. “I just want to do God’s will, and he has allowed me to go up the mountain, and I’ve looked over and I’ve seen the promised land.”

There is no denying that King inspired many an American.

‘Bloody Sunday’ March

John Lewis, a 45-year-old Atlanta city councilman, led the “Bloody Sunday” march 25 years ago across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., which ended in a violent confrontation between the 525 marchers and state troopers and sheriff’s deputies armed with clubs, whips and tear gas. Lewis, who went on to head the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, recalled the influence King had on his life.

“I was 15 years old at the time of the Montgomery boycott,” said Lewis, a native Alabaman. “Watching Montgomery and watching Dr. King was one of the most amazing and exciting things to ever happen to me. Segregation was very real to me--the signs saying ‘White Only’ and ‘Colored Only.’ He gave me hope and a real sense of optimism that there was a way out.”

Blacks were not the only ones King influenced.

Karantonis of the national King holiday commission’s office said that King inspired him to become a civil rights worker.

“I never saw him in person or marched with him,” Karantonis said. “I only saw him on TV, but even that was enough to change my life. His message was for everybody.”

Times researchers Diana Rector in Atlanta, Wendy Leopold in Chicago, Dallas Jamison in Denver, Joanne Harrison in Houston, Lorna Nones in Miami and Barclay Walsh in Washington also contributed to this report.