Crowds turn out for Martin Luther King Jr. parade in downtown Las Vegas

To parade is to take action in celebration, to make a public spectacle in honor of someone or something important to the culture at large.

So on Monday, the churches of Las Vegas, the radio stations and the schoolchildren, the politicians and the corporate sponsors, they paraded in honor of the life and the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.

Spectators began to line Fourth Street downtown hours before the festivities, blessed with unseasonably warm weather.

They brought lawn chairs and placed them on the sidewalks.

They stood on the sunny side of the street, marking their spots for later.

They carried their coolers, their cameras, their children.

"Say cheese!" Stephanie Grant cheerily commanded her godchildren, 2 and 3 years old. She snapped a few photos.

"Happy Martin Luther King Day!" she said.

She said she is 30-ish, and she thinks it is important to show the children how important the world believes King was.

"If we don't teach them," she said, "how are they going to know?"

Indeed. King has been gone for nearly 44 years now, long enough that what he did, what he helped accomplish in the world, can seem like ancient history to the young.

He might seem like just another historical figure.

But he is not, of course.

Other than Christopher Columbus, whose accomplishment certainly did change the world, no other federal holiday honors the achievements of a single man.

This year's parade was the 30th in Las Vegas. It began before King's birthday officially became a federal holiday, in 1986. The parade has grown from barely over a dozen entries to nearly 150.

Though King did not accomplish all he set out to do before he was shot down in 1968, the world today is a better one than it was then, Grant said. It is not perfect, but better.

"There are some things that have gotten better," she said. "But there are some things ..."

She trailed off. Got back to the children.

"All we can do," she said, looking at them, "is try to teach them what's best and hope they continue on, teaching it to the next generation."

The parade floats began to stream by then, the children of Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School, Mayor Carolyn Goodman with her husband, followed by a firetruck, a marching band, a congressional candidate in a convertible, three guys on unicycles because, why not?

Why not indeed. Even if all this heavy stuff is too much, the parade -- any parade -- is a glorious place to people watch.

In the same 50 yards of space Monday morning, for example: a man with his iPod fastened to a chain around his neck with black electrical tape, a woman with bright red fingernails that were long enough to be considered weapons, a girl too young to be doing so wearing a skirt short enough to be illegal in some places, a little boy with a mohawk, the Metropolitan Police Department's gang unit shading themselves under a palm tree, a homeless man on a bicycle with a 12-pack of Keystone beer in one basket and a full McDonald's bag in the other, a skinny man in a T-shirt with no jacket and a short woman with two sweaters and a heavy winter coat.

A little bit for everyone.

"Everyone was very moved by the struggle we represented at the time," said Patricia Brooks, 66, who said she saw King speak when she was a teenager.

She marched, too, she said, with her church when King visited Los Angeles, where she grew up.

She attended Monday's parade because it would be ridiculous not to.

"You have to care about the legacy," Brooks said. "You have to. This is just what you do."

She said thinking back on those times in her life gives her goose bumps. It is impossible to explain in words, she said, the feeling that it gives her.

She nodded toward some nearby children.

"Look at these kids out here," she said. "They really don't know.

"This is a man who brought so much to so many."

That, she said, is why it is important to hold parades for a man like King, the silliness of it all aside. A parade lets the young people know that we, as a culture, find what King did important enough to declare so in public.

Soon enough, one of the largest floats in the parade came by, a flatbed truck holding children from Booker Elementary School, which sits on Martin Luther King Boulevard.

These children, most of them black, each held a sign stating what they wanted to become in life.

The goals were diverse: an engineer, a school principal, a teacher, a judge, a nurse, an architect, a mechanic, a scientist.

The parade moved onward, another marching band, another politician, another group of children taking a lesson from all the fuss.

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.