Josh AyersAbout 50 people participated in a silent march from Dexter Lawn to the red handprint area near the Sandwich Factory to honor the birthday and life accomplishments of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., Thursday afternoon.
The march, which took place in unseasonably warm weather, traveled uphill and seemed to symbolically mirror the uphill challenges that civil rights leaders faced decades ago in their efforts to create a more equal American society.
“I recognize that over the past 40 to 50 years, we’ve had such an intense struggle with civil rights,” said Associated Students Inc. President Angela Kramer. “Since Dr. King, we really have come a long way.”
Kramer gave a brief speech prior to the march in which she touched on the upcoming inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, which will take place the day after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday Monday.
“It’s kind of nice to be celebrating the birth of Dr. King and also the birth of a new nation at the leadership of a president that happens to be African American,” she said before her speech.
But even with the paramount accomplishments of the civil rights movement, Kramer said that there is still a lingering attitude of abhorrence toward the idea of diverse society.
“It’s also a reminder of how much further we have to go,” she said with regards to the recent presidential election. “Even now in 2009, you have parts of the country and even in this area, with people who are so filled with hatred based on something so culturally important, but so trivial as race.”
March participants were mostly faculty and staff members, but a handful of students and children also filed into ranks bearing ribbons symbolizing the legacy of King’s efforts.
Preston Allen, executive director of University Housing, had the honor of handing out the rectangular ribbons, which sported five horizontal stripes of different colors. Preston said that the length of the ribbon represented the “longevity of the legacy,” and that the different shaded stripes represented “the inclusion of all different colors.”
King, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, was born on Jan. 15, 1929 and was perhaps the most prominent figure to emerge from the civil rights movement during the late 1950s and 1960s.
Up until his assassination in Memphis, Tenn. on April 4, 1968, King had been arrested nearly 20 times, traveled more than six million miles, delivered more than 2,500 speeches, campaigned for presidential candidate Lyndon Johnson and permanently etched his vision into the minds of Americans with his “I have a Dream” speech, which he delivered to 250,000 people at the Lincoln Monument in Washington on Aug. 23, 1963.
Above all things, King emphasized the importance of non-violent protest.
Wednesday’s march featured special guest and Salinas resident Sandra Towner, 49, who organized the on-again, off-again annual march while attending Cal Poly in the early 1980s.
“Pulling it together, I didn’t think it was going to happen,” she said as she recalled the first march.
She said that during those ’80s marches, they often had students act out the roles of Rosa Parks and King, and that community members were also involved in the march.
Towner, who stood aside former mentor and Cal Poly director of student academic services Susan Sparling, recalled that the first march, which was put on by the African American Student Union – now the Black Student Union – drew a large number of people and required the assistance of the local law enforcement to block off the street to allow for demonstrators to march.
“I am just glad to see that it is still going on,” Towner said. “I was a very militant person, rebellious at times. I was always like ‘I want to be able to be apart of something’ and this is, to me, it’s a legacy I left. So to come back and know that they still want to do this brings honor.”
The march ended with a brief speech by Vice President of Student Affairs Cornel Morton, who reiterated King’s concept of each individual being capable of making a difference in the world.
Sparling, who witnessed the first march, said that about 100 people attended the original event and guessed that it took place in 1983.
“Almost every year since there has been a quiet and very respectful and important gathering like this,” she said.