The Long March Continues Martin Luther King Jr.’S Dream Of Equality Is Alive Though Not Always Well In Spokane

Never mind the television specials, the speeches and the government buildings that are closed in remembrance.

Never mind the displays in libraries and on school bulletin boards.

The only way really to gauge whether Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream is alive in Spokane is to ask the children, black and white.

The dream was for them, after all.

“Where I live (on the lower South Hill), we’re not doing very well,” said Danyse Johnson, 13. “There’s cliques of different colors and different groups of people who don’t get along with each other.”

“Sometimes,” said 12-year-old Deterius Scott, “when a group of us walk into a store, they look at us like we’re going to steal something. They literally stare at us.”

Erin Staples, 14, spent time in her principal’s office Friday to settle a flap that had started when a classmate “said something prejudiced about me and my friends and Martin Luther King.”

Johnson, Scott and Staples were among several hundred people who marched Monday in honor of the slain civil rights leader.

King, who was assassinated April 4, 1968, would have been 66 on Sunday. His birthday, which became a holiday in most states in 1986, was celebrated across the nation Monday.

“Dr. King was not a non-threatening orator but a public policy prophet,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson said at a weekend celebration in Manchester, N.H. “He was killed not for being eloquent but for being a threatening drum major for justice.”

In Atlanta, King’s widow and three of his children laid a wreath on his crypt, then walked to nearby Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King and his father both preached.

In Dallas, Martin Luther King III urged listeners “to rededicate our lives to the unfinished work” of his father.

In Olympia, where lawmakers didn’t take a holiday, a group calling itself the Washington Firearms Civil Rights Coalition rallied on the Capitol steps to protest gun control measures.

“Dr. King would peaceably resist many of the attacks on the civil rights of gun owners and others by our elected officials,” an organizer wrote in a press release.

The Spokane marchers walked from the U.S. Court House to the Opera House, where they listened to speakers who noted America’s progress in race relations and lamented its setbacks.

The Rev. Percy Watkins urged kids to set goals, work hard to achieve them and not be discouraged if the odds against success seem overwhelming.

“I looked out the window the other day and saw a St. Bernard being chased by a Chihuahua,” Watkins said.

Anastasia Shyvers, 13, marched the march, sang the songs, listened to the speakers and decided King would have been pleased.

“He’d be proud to see the white people and the black people coming together,” she said. “His dream is alive.”

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Dan Hansen staff writer The Associated Press contributed to this report.