Pasadena MLK Coalition Honors King at Community Celebration

Residents across the region honored Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday.

Locally, the Pasadena MLK Community Coalition celebration was held at Eliot Arts Magnet School in Altadena. 

Mayor Victor Gordo, Councilmembers Tyron Hampton, Felicia Williams and Justin Jones attended the event along with Assemblymember Chris Holden and State Sen. Anthony Portantino.

Gordo, Holden and Portantino spoke at the event. 

Local students received awards for essays and art projects.

“Each year, we, as a community, come together to celebrate Dr. King,” Jones told Pasadena Now. “The Pasadena MLK Community Coalition has uplifted the legacy of Dr. King every year by coordinating student performers and awarding essay and art contest winners. It was made apparent by the speakers and the exhibition of art that we must continue to inspire and cultivate the next generation of leaders in our community. There’s no reason the next President of the United States, the next CEO of a Fortune 500 company, or the next City Manager cannot come from the halls of Elliot Middle School or a desk within Pasadena Unified School District. It’s incumbent upon us to build a society that is just, fair, and equitable to ensure that anyone, anywhere, can achieve anything regardless of their race, ethnicity, religion, gender identity, or the barriers placed around them economically and environmentally. We have work to continue, which is why the program’s theme: ‘Why we can’t wait’ was so fitting. I encourage all to join the work of the coalition by visiting http://www.pasadenamlk.org.”

Hampton also praised the coalition.

“My six month old daughter smiles when I come home. When I smile back at her or give her a kiss, she smiles more. I share this because I think it shows what I believe to be true; people are born with love in their hearts. They want to do good and feel good.

“As life unfolds, sometimes people forget the goodness in our hearts with which we are born,” Hampton said. “Life can be difficult and as we get older, we can have experiences that harden our hearts causing us to lose touch with the inherent goodness that’s in our hearts.

“The MLK Community Coalition does a wonderful job of helping us reconnect with the goodness in our hearts. They demonstrate for our young people, and they remind us adults, the importance of building community by bringing us together and encouraging us to celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. King. I am grateful for the work they do for our community. The MLK Community Coalition invites us to reflect and reconnect to goodness, love, compassion, and care that are in our hearts.

“Let’s refuel the goodness in our hearts. I pray that we all remember that we were born with an abundance of love and joy in our hearts. This will help us to work together and working together will help us to heal the world. “

The theme of this year’s event was “Why We Can’t Wait.” The event featured PUSD student performances. PUSD Board Trustee Patrice Marshall Mckenzie served as the keynote speaker. 

“The Committee asked me to speak to the theme ‘Why We Cannot Wait’ as it was addressed in Dr. King’s writing in Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” McKenzie told Pasadena Now. “I selected a few passages from the letter and wrapped it in my advocacy around stability, service and safety as the key to building strong communities.”

King was inspired to write the letter after eight white clergyman wrote “A Call For Unity.” In the piece the men railed against King and called on Black people to pull their support and stop demonstrating. 

The piece described King as an outsider who incited hatred and violence. The piece also claimed that racial injustice should be properly pursued in the courts.

The piece provoked King to respond with his own piece. In the margin of that missive, King scribbled the words “Why We Can’t Wait.”

In the April 16, 1963 letter, King emphasizes that people have a moral responsibility to break unjust laws and to take action.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” King wrote. 

King came to Pasadena several times. Coincidentally, his appearances corresponded with major advances in the Civil Rights movement. 

When King first came to Pasadena in 1958, it was less than a year after Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 into law. The law was the first major civil rights legislation since post-Civil War Reconstruction and allowed federal prosecution of anyone who tried to interfere or prevent someone from voting. 

The law also created a commission to investigate voter fraud.

King was just 29, and gave two speeches at Caltech —“A Great Time to Be Alive” and “Facing the Challenges of a New Age.” He gave a third address, “Progress in Race Relations” the following day. 

By 1960 when King came back to Pasadena, hundreds of people were protesting at lunch counters across the country. The protests kicked off on Feb. 1 of that year when four college students in Greensboro, North Carolina refused to leave a Woolworth’s lunch counter without being served.

King accepted the invitation of Pastor Marvin Robinson of Pasadena’s Friendship Baptist Church, after the two began corresponding.  Robinson, a dedicated civil rights activist, had invited King to speak at the church on several occasions, and King found time in 1960 when he was on a fundraising trip to Southern California.

“I am certainly delighted to have the privilege and pleasure of being with you today and of being a part of this worship experience,” King said. “As your pastor said, I have been invited to Friendship on a number of occasions, and each time some previous long-standing commitment stood in the way. But I am very happy that at long last I found it possible to come to this community and to the church of my good friend Marvin Robinson and my friends of Pasadena.”

By 1965 when King came back to speak at the Pasadena Friendship Baptist Church the Civil Rights leader had won a Nobel Prize, delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech and been named Time magazine’s “Man of the Year.” The crowd at the church was so large, police had to build a barricade around the church to protect King.

That year, many white Americans got their first look at the violence of Jim Crow when they saw police viciously beating peaceful demonstrators during a march from Selma to Montgomery to protest the killing of Black civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson by a white police officer.

Police blocked the protesters who refused to stand down, and attacked them as they moved forward. Dozens of protesters were hospitalized. King continued to push for nonviolent protests.

In Pasadena, Robinson introduced him at the church as the “Moses of the 20th Century.”

In his sermon, King took aim at the failings of American churches, both white and black. He mentioned that Southern Baptists donated to charities in Africa but would not allow Blacks to worship in their congregations; he also criticized Black churches for mixing “dignity and classism” with “emotionalism.”

“Many people have more religion in their hands and feet than in their hearts and souls,” he said.