
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, April 11, 1994                   TAG: 9404110057
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE                                LENGTH: Short

KING LINKS RACISM TO REAGAN, BUSH

Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush fostered an atmosphere conducive to racism and failed to show that discrimination would not be tolerated, Martin Luther King III said.

King also blamed the Republican presidents for creating a conservative Supreme Court that challenged the constitutionality of voting districts that the Justice Department developed to help blacks.

"Racism was almost dead under Jimmy Carter," King said in a speech Saturday at the University of Virginia. King, 36, of Atlanta, is the son of the slain civil rights leader, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

But when he followed the Democrat Carter as president, Reagan failed to address racism through opportunities such as the violence at Howard Beach in New York City, King said. That inaction allowed groups such as "skinheads" to take root, he said.

King praised President Clinton for selecting a diverse cabinet, and urged corporate America to follow suit.

King chronicled race relations in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

He called the 1960s a "tough decade," with the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X and his own father.

Much of the momentum gained through 1960s civil rights legislation was lost in the 1970s, as America became preoccupied with the Vietnam War, and later, hard economic times, King said.

Reagan in the 1980s bankrupted America, King said.

"We had mortgaged away our future's future's future," he said. "Ronald Reagan was a great communicator, and I guess that's about all he was great at."

by CNB