Promoters keep alive link to King Day

By Vicki Viotti
Advertiser Staff Writer

At the top of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day poster — a call to a blood drive tomorrow — a whimsical cartoon shows blood drops dressed in aloha attire and ethnic costumes.

"We're all in this together," said Faye Kennedy, Hawai'i civil rights commissioner, of the ongoing struggle to protect civil rights. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

The phrase remains a slogan for the annual observance of civil liberties, non-violence and activism — a holiday that honors the civil rights hero assassinated at the height of his fight for racial equality.

In Hawai'i, however, it is a constant challenge for true believers to keep the holiday focus on something other than leisure.

"The national King committee wants to see not just having a good time, but doing something of service and giving back to the community," said Ed Young, a member of the nonprofit, all-volunteer Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. CoalitioniHawai'i.

Of course, he added, it helps if people get the day off. "I work in the Pacific Guardian Center, and they're all open," Young said.

He and other coalition members have made it their mission to keep vibrancy in a holiday that the state was late in adopting.

They're not unhappy with what they've accomplished. Hawai'i's celebration is more multicultural than most cities', said one of the founders, Marsha Joyner.

"We knew right from the beginning that this would not happen if it didn't happen with all the minorities in this state," Joyner said. "Of the 4,000 people in the parade last year, only 16 percent are black. No other city is like that."

"The reason we had such trouble getting the holiday is that there aren't that many African Americans here," said Faye Kennedy, a member of the Hawai'i Civil Rights Commission. "But there are a lot of brown people, people with different-shaped eyes, disadvantaged groups.

"We're all in this together," she said. "Let's all help each other have respect and tolerance."

This year, the holiday weekend began early, with a midmorning program at the Pacific Guardian Center courtyard. Young works with the National Weather Service, which is a sponsor because of its strong equal employment opportunity program and Young's personal commitment, as the grandson of a slave.

Young, Kennedy and Joyner were among the speakers, as was Amy Agbayani, director of the Commission on Diversity at the University of Hawai'iiManoa.

"Many programs in Hawai'i would never have happened without the efforts of the civil rights movement on the Mainland," Agbayani said. "At the UH, we depend on the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. to ensure we have ethnic groups admitted who are underrepresented."

Some groups still come up short, she said.

"Native Hawaiians are 20 percent of the public schools, and only 10 percent at Manoa," she said. "African Americans represent 3 percent of the population, and 1 percent of the students."

At King's zenith, in the 1960s, the UH student government sent him a carnation lei and were thrilled to see him photographed wearing it during marches, Agbayani said.

Joyner and Young are happy with the broad range of participants in tomorrow's parade, unity rally and blood drive (see box); the art exhibit "A Living Harmony," that opened Friday in Honolulu Hale; and the ringing of the Nagasaki Peace Bell at City Hall at 6:30 tonight.

There's a week of cleanup projects at UH, and other good works that go on quietly all over the island, Joyner said.

"A lot of people think of civil rights as something long ago and far away," said William Hoshijo, executive director of the Hawai'i Civil Rights Commission.

"It's not so long ago, and it isn't very far away."