Marchers united by King’s legacy

Seventy-eight-year-old Hallen Griffin remembers when civil-rights marches weren’t quite so peaceful.

A native of Tennessee, Griffin grew up in the segregated racism of the South, a place where for people like him, equality was a distant dream and police were often the “judge, jury and executioner,” he said.

He’s seen the changes wrought by leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., and so he makes a point of showing up for the Unity March on the annual holiday honoring King.

“I’m here every year,” said Griffin, who was stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base for a decade before retiring here. “This is good. Everything’s good.”

Griffin – along with his son, Tim, and grandson, Nolan – was among hundreds of people who flooded the streets of downtown Spokane on Monday to celebrate King’s vision of racial equality and nonviolence. Teenagers walked alongside old-timers; families pushing strollers weaved around people carrying banners with King quotes, anti-war slogans and Bible verses. Many longtime observers said it was the largest crowd they’d ever seen at the march.

“Today was the biggest,” said Ivan Bush, a longtime civil-rights voice in Spokane and the equal opportunity officer for Spokane Public Schools. “It gives me hope that our community is really on the verge of coming together and living the ideals that Dr. King so eloquently laid out for us.”

Bush spoke to the crowd and introduced local politicians and officials who spoke at the INB Performing Arts Center before the march. He noted that in the year to come, Spokane will have a street named for Martin Luther King Jr., when Riverside Avenue is extended from Division Street to Trent Avenue.

Others noted that, despite progress, racism still shows itself here. Mayor Mary Verner referred to recent incidents of racial vandalism and graffiti in Spokane and Coeur d’Alene, and urged the crowd to keep fighting.

“We’re not going to tolerate that in Spokane,” she said. “It’s not going to happen here.”

The Rev. Percy “Happy” Watkins sent off the marchers with a rousing speech inspired by King’s famous “I Have a Dream” address.

Watkins, who has given the speech countless times in area schools, churches and public events, tweaked the words just a bit – name-checking President Barack Obama at one point – and he brought the crowd to a roar when he reached King’s well-known conclusion: “Free at last, free at last, Thank God Almighty we are free at last!”

The crowd spilled onto the streets and marched south on Bernard Street and then west on Main Avenue to River Park Square.

Jim Burks, 75, carried a sign with the full text of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech printed on one side and a newspaper photograph of the relatively small march from 1994 on the other.

“That’s just a drop in the bucket,” compared with Monday’s crowd, he said. “This day here, when I see all of these people – it says they have their hearts open for freedom and equality for all. It shows love.”