Changing MLK March still biggest
Web Posted: 01/16/2005 12:00 AM CST
Lisa Marie Gómez
San Antonio Express-News
The route has changed
and its purpose has widened, but the stature of San Antonio's MLK March remains the same — the largest in the nation.
Almost 70,000 people are expected to gather Monday for the annual march honoring the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights leader and proponent of nonviolence who was gunned down by an assassin in Memphis, Tenn., in 1968.
Although the focus of the march will be on King and his championing of the civil rights movement, it has come to embrace an array of ideas and causes — labor rights, affirmative action, peace, and greater equality for minorities, gays and lesbians.
The march is set to begin at 10 a.m. from the Eastside Boys & Girls Club/MLK Freedom Bridge at 3500 MLK Drive.
But this year, instead of ending at MLK Plaza, where a wreath has traditionally been placed at the foot of the statue commemorating King, the march will end at Pittman-Sullivan Park on Iowa Street, where an award-winning gospel quartet will fill the air with foot-stomping harmonic tunes.
For the first time since it began 18 years ago, the MLK Commission changed the 3-mile route to accommodate more people at the end and to avoid any problems from ongoing construction on Houston Street. The commission also wanted to open up the streets so EMS vehicles could get in and out more quickly if necessary.
The march has come a long way from its humble beginnings, local activists said. But how did it get to be the largest in the nation, despite the African American population here only being about 6 percent?
Cities with larger African American populations, such as Memphis, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Washington and Detroit, have celebrations to honor King, but none draws more than the march in San Antonio.
Denver, which claims to have "one of the nation's largest MLK Day marches," drew an estimated 30,000 people last year.
"The march is large because it basically struck a chord in San Antonio," said Morris A. Stribling, a former chairman of the MLK March and a former commissioner of the MLK Commission.
Susan Ives, a peace advocate who is a staff member at the Peace Center and a columnist on the opinion page of the San Antonio Express-News, credits the MLK Commission for welcoming and inviting various groups to join the march.
"I suspect that other cities are more turf-oriented and perhaps view it as an exclusively African American event," she said.
Richard Lewis, 50, who grew up in San Antonio and remembers when King led the 1963 march in Washington that ended with his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, said the local march has been broadened to allow groups that are striving for elements of the American dream.
San Antonio, he said, should be a model for other cities.
"I hate to sound like a homer, but San Antonio is a very, very unique place as a city," said Lewis, an associate professor of sociology and special assistant to the president of the University of Texas at San Antonio.
"When you look at the embodiment in civil rights in general, especially ethnic, racial and gender issues related to civil rights, what better place than San Antonio to exemplify the dream?" he said.
The march, which Lewis calls a "walking history pictorial for young people," is about inclusiveness that everyone has a right to pursue.
And that includes the gay and lesbian community, which isn't always welcome in some civil rights circles.
Lewis said, "The civil rights movement was a lightning rod for several groups that have historically been locked out," but not everyone agrees.
Some feel the movement for racial equality led by King is sometimes "hijacked" by certain groups to further their own causes.
"In the minds of most African Americans, the gay and lesbian movement has really no relationship to the civil rights movement because they believe that gays and lesbians actually have a choice as to which sexual orientation they choose," said Stribling, who said he also believes this to be true.
"But if you were African American and born in this country, you didn't have very many choices, as far as where you could live, what kind of income you could achieve and what kind of wealth you could ac ulate."
Nevertheless, if gays and lesbians show up to march, no one will object, he said.
"If you are a minority of any fashion, whatever that might be, you just kind of relate to the civil rights movement and you'll march for whatever rights you think you deserve."
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