By JOSEPH KELLARD
Cecil Garrett, an 18-year-old then but now a longtime Long Beach resident, got home that night - April 4, 1968 - turned on his TV and discovered that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot dead at the Lorraine Motel.
“It got crazy there because people were outraged,” Garrett said of the subsequent riots in his native city. “People were stomping on cars and throwing rocks through store windows and set fires to grocery stores.” He remembered being baffled that people would torch their neighborhoods, as helicopters swept the burning Memphis streets with spotlights.
Last Friday night, exactly 40 years after that tumultuous day, Garrett, chairman of the Deacon Board at Christian Light Missionary Baptist Church in Long Beach, sat peacefully in the gym at the Martin Luther King Center on Riverside Boulevard with Leary Wade, a former Long Beach civil service commissioner and a member of the North Park Neighborhood Association, after a march from City Hall to memorialize the anniversary of King's assassination. “I just went blank because I was shocked,” recalled Wade, who was at a Harlem barbershop when a radio broadcast reported that the civil rights leader had been gunned down. “I just remember I really wanted to hear more about what happened, about the real deal, so that I could come to my senses.”
Garrett, Wade and about 60 others had just marched behind the procession leaders, a group of young children and a police SUV that blared parts of King's “I Have a Dream” speech. Passers-by on Riverside Boulevard stopped to watch the marchers, some of whom held poster-sized portraits of King, while another raised a sign that read, “There is no way to peace, peace is the way.” They passed some North Park Avenue homes that sported “Barack Obama for President” placards and Jesus-related bumper stickers.
During the post-march program at the MLK Center - where the walls sport black-and-white photos of King leading protest marches - Garrett noted that he was in Washington, D.C., when King gave his most famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. Garrett attended last Friday's activities, he said, because he hopes they will keep alive that dream of political equality and peaceful coexistence between people of different races.
“I think that you never can get to the fulfillment of the dream unless you set aside some time to remember and reflect, and maybe it will inspire those coming up behind us to continue,” Garrett said.
Fifth-graders from East School had made construction-paper biographies of accomplished black Americans, from Harriet Tubman, Langston Hughes and Marian Anderson to Jackie Robinson, Colin Powell and Halle Berry, which were displayed on a table in the gym. There, kids took turns reading parts of King's biography.
“We were able to stop traffic today and it wasn't a holiday,” said Lisa Hayes, assistant director of the MLK Center, “so people were very upset, but it's something that is necessary - it's necessary for people to remember what happened.”
Asked what distinguishes the celebration of King's birthday each year from remembering him on the day he was assassinated, Hayes said, “I think today is just another opportunity to remind people of the social injustices and some of the struggles that we as African Americans, and even as citizens of Long Beach, have endured.”
Hayes's keynote speech touched on slavery, the civil rights movement and the events leading up to King's murder, as well as the present state of the black community, nationwide and in Long Beach. She described King as “arguably the most significant person in the last 50 years.”
“Dr. King said that the purpose of the march on Washington was to cash a check with a promissory made with the words of the Constitution that guarantees all men, black as well as white, the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” Hayes told the predominantly black crowd. “In my opinion, that check has been cashed. That's not to say that racism does not exist today or that social injustices have been resolved. We know they may not be as obvious, but they are still real.”
Hayes talked about the disproportionately low number of black firefighters and teachers, and the many black students who score low on statewide exams, and then asked the audience, with a rhetorical tone, if they attend school board, planning board and City Council meetings. “We love to complain about the school board and the city officials,” Hayes said, “but how many of our own have we groomed amongst us to be represented just in case an opportunity comes for them to be in the race? It all comes down to our plans for the future … We've got to make the plans now, before the plans are made for us.”
Hayes also addressed the nation's high incarceration rate among blacks, and said that most news reports about blacks are related to the crime rate. She added that in Long Beach schools they are known as the unmotivated underachievers. “We've been taught horrible things about ourselves, that we're not naturally smart and that we're not that capable,” she said. “And [we answer this] by not being prepared and by not stepping up to the challenge.”
Hayes said she believes that blacks have more opportunities open to them than at any other time in history, and she called on them to come together around a common purpose, something she claimed many people have talked about but have not acted on.
The program's other speakers included City Council member John McLaughlin, who said it was ironic that the crowd was honoring a man who preached nonviolence in a multi-media age when “the most violent people get the most respect.”
Nassau County Legislator Denise Ford said she was a high school senior blind to racism when King was killed, but was thereafter forced to look at the wider world around her. “Dr. King fought for every person living in America and living throughout the world,” Ford said, “because he wanted us all to be empowered to work and fight the injustices in our world.”
Shelly Earl O'Reilly, who for many years has provided the MLK Center with financial and technical assistance, was sworn in as the newest member of its Board of Directors.
Mary Lou Monahan, the education chairwoman of the Long Beach branch of the NAACP, a Democratic political activist and a former board member, said she is setting up a presidential campaign headquarters in the city based on a recommitment to King's dream. “We still need to take it forward,” she said, “and we're hoping that either Barack or Hillary can do that.”
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 213.
Photos By Allison Nichols/Herald
