‘A REASON TO COME TOGETHER’
SEASIDE >> When Alice Jordan moved to Seaside from Atlanta — the home of the late civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. — she immediately felt the need to participate in the city’s march to honor King during his national holiday.
After all, Jordan grew up in the segregated South and even helped integrate a Louisiana school in 1967, more than a decade after the Supreme Court declared segregation unconstitutional.
“If we just take one day out of the year to acknowledge his life and legacy, and then process those strategies he used throughout the country, it would not only be a better community, it would be a better world,” said Jordan, who has organized the Seaside march for more than a decade and also serves on the Panhellenic Council. “Then we need to get involved and stay engaged. All of us have dreams, but we need to wake up.”
The 34th annual march traversed down Broadway Avenue/Obama Way before eventually ending at the Oldemeyer Center on Hilby Avenue on Monday afternoon. A diverse array of groups, from bikers to unions and church leaders, all led chants, played King’s speeches and held signs to show support.
The march has become a hallmark of Seaside, a diverse city of more than 30,000 residents which once had the largest black community between Oakland and Los Angeles. Seaside has celebrated King’s legacy by marching since 1986, the same year a national holiday for the civil rights leader was designated.
“Right now, there is division in the world, when Dr. King fought segregation, too. We can be a better community, a better world, by just coming together,” Jordan said.
Just prior to the march, CSU Monterey Bay student José Díaz waited at a nearby Mexican bakery with his fraternity brothers, of the La
tino-based Gamma Zeta Alpha, and the League of United Latin American Citizens, a civil rights organization. The group marched to show support for King and the local community while holding images of Cesar Chavez, the former California agricultural labor leader who showed solidarity with the civil rights movement.
“It’s good to be out there, get informed, help others in the community as well,” said Díaz of Watsonville. “Dr. Martin Luther King means a lot because we all have dreams, he especially had a dream. And we have seen changes, slowly, but we have seen changes.”
Police Chief Abdul Pridgen stood by greeting residents attending the event and answering questions about certain laws, including one about tasers. According to Pridgen, the march is emblematic of the community’s unity uplifting communities when residents work together.
“All of us recognize there is still work to be done,” said Pridgen, who has led the department since 2018. “There will always be work to be done whenever we have communities that aren’t supported to the same extent across ethnicities and races. So Seaside is a special community because we’re so diverse and everybody sees their role as being part of that continued movement to uplift our community and our city.”
For the past few years, Ebony Glover has brought her two sons, Neo, 9, and Nile, 14, with the Village Project, a Seaside nonprofit organization dedicated to address needs of the African American community.
“I think it’s good not to just march and wear out the soles of their shoes, but to really understand the commitment that it is to be a minority in this country,” Glover said. “I look at it in the sense of them understanding that there is a fight and struggle ahead of them, but at the same time, to highlight the positive moments in history, to learn about them as well, and the people who influence so they can, in turn, be influencers in their community and the world.”
Neo pondered the day while holding his sign, “When I come out to the marches … I feel like they come out for a reason to celebrate and a reason to … come together.”
Jeydi Santiago took her four nieces and nephews as well as her two children to the march for the first time. A Seaside resident, Santiago has watched the march from the sidewalk, but the children, all students at Martin Luther King Jr. School of the Arts, wanted to attend.
“He was the one that gave us freedom,” said Ashley, 9, alongside her cousins all holding signs with images, quotes and information about King.
After marching through Seaside streets, the event ended at the Oldemeyer Center, a multi-use meeting space where local leaders and elected officials spoke about King’s legacy. King — assassinated nearly 52 years ago in Memphis, Tennessee — would have been 91 on Jan. 15.
Jordan, a longtime local mentor and educator, emphasized the importance of young people continuing to appreciate King’s holiday.
“It is important that everybody participate in today’s activism and honor Dr. King,” Jordan said. “We stand on tall shoulders.”