By KEITH GRANT
Mr. Graham took the helm three years ago after being coaxed into it while back on Long Island to complete a fellowship at the university at Stony Brook. He had been living in North Carolina since graduating Long Beach High School in 1988, and is headed back to Charlotte with his wife.
With his contract expiring Dec. 31, his tenure received a fitting end with the center's first Awards Night at the Lido Gold Club, an event attended by more than 200 people, including many city and county officials.
"That really gave validation to our efforts," Mr. Graham said. "Three years ago, many of them wouldn't have been there."
Upon taking the reins in the fall 1997, Mr. Graham inherited a center that was in disarray, having been damaged by audits the year before.
"The center was really a mess," he said. "It was really in need of an image makeover. The trust in the center and its ability to carry on the programs of the past was gone."
Part of that image makeover was to branch out, create programs that could attract youth from other areas of the city. While problems such as drugs, alcohol and teen pregnancy were always present among local youth, Mr. Graham felt the community was losing some of those battles. The declaration of the center and much of the North Park area as a drug-free school zone, and the institution of numerous new educational programs have helped the community wage those battles more effectively, Mr. Graham believes.
However, such changes did not come easy as the new director faced much opposition during his term, competition Mr. Graham faced head-on.
"When we wanted more education programs, it was because we felt there was a need in the community," he said. "There were so many youths failing in the school system." But that and the drug-free declaration were not accepted overnight by everyone.
"This was one of the only areas in Long Beach that wasn't drug-free zoned," he said. "We felt it was our duty to protect our youth. It's a constant challenge, but there was a reluctance for any change."
One of his biggest challenges was to bring the center out of the North Park area and into other parts of the community. "Your audience won't always come to you. Sometimes you have to go to your audience," he said.
By successfully branching out, Mr. Graham believes more attention and focus was brought to the center from throughout the city. Again, though, the task was not easy.
"For those that understood Dr. King's message, they understood the need to do what we were doing," he said. "Some people had concerns, but once they saw how the program was being successful, they began to come along."
Long Beach, he believes, has long been a community of very separate and segregated neighbourhoods. "We need to bring it together, especially the youth," he said. "Many of our youth have many of the same issues they all must face on a daily basis."
As evidence, Mr. Graham pointed to a youth night held just last week at St. Mary's R.C. Church. The group was about as diverse as you can get in Long Beach, but their questions all held the same theme: same drugs, violence, sexism, an inability to relate to parents. "The consensus among them was that those were major issues," Mr. Graham said. "They found we have many common things to fight for."
Mr. Graham's successor will face some large shoes to fill, many in the community believe. Rev. William Fuller, a past chairman of the MLK Center board, called Mr. Graham "a full-time director in the greatest sense of the word. He will be very much missed by myself, personally, as well as the kids and the board."
Rev. Fuller said that Mr. Graham gave the center a strong and positive identity, and feels his impact will be long-lasting.
"Most of the work he did won't be realized until well after his absence," Rev. Fuller said.
Some of the work he hoped to see through was the implementation of a careers and computer center, which has received a grant from Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg. "Harvey really made an effort to help get that established," Mr. Graham said.
While he will, for a time, be flying back and forth from Charlotte as a consultant, Mr. Graham already has a long-term agenda in mind for his successor.
"One, is you have to keep the collaborative efforts going," he said. "Two, I was more of a p.r. [public relations] person. That's what was needed. This person will need to expand the administrative capacity of the center."
The center has come a long way from the days when Mr. Graham played basketball there as a youth, he said. He described it as more of a family atmosphere, and less of an agency.
"The good thing about the workers here then," he said, "was they knew you. They knew your parents. That was important. One of the things I saw when I came back was that the youth were a lot more angry, a lot more disillusioned. They were more skeptical of adults."
Mr. Graham took up the challenge of meeting that skepticism, although he clearly had other plans at the time. "Sometimes life throws you a curveball," he said. When offered the job, he said, "I thought what better way to give back to the community."
As the MLK Center widens its reach into the Long Beach community, Mr. Graham hopes to see the North Park community have more participation in higher levels of local government.
"I believe in integration of power, from the top down," he said. "Not one day. Now. Soon. I'd like to see an African-American or Latino on the City Council. Not as a form of tokenism, but as a pure representation of the city of Long Beach. If you want to tap into one of Long Beach's greatest strengths, it's still its diversity."
