What started out as a tribute to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has blossomed into the Bucks County Committee for Interracial Harmony (BCCIH).

The committee was formed 25 years ago, committee vice president Natalie Kaye said recently, "to celebrate the life and work Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."

Later, the committee began offering "healing racism dialogues." "These dialogues," BCCIH literature says, "provide opportunities for communication and development of more harmonious understandings amongst diverse ethnic groups."

Kaye, who has been with the committee for about 10 years, stressed her belief that "we're all one race: the human race."

Aside from the annual Dr. King celebration in January, BCCIH also holds quarterly potluck dinners, at which it provides programs during those potlucks that show how people can get along better together.

With a small membership (about 10 people), the BCCIH has been networking with other local groups with similar missions. The committee has been involved with other efforts like No Place for Hate and Multicultural Harmony Month.

The BCCIH also supported the installation of a statue in Bristol honoring Harriet Tubman.

They formed a coalition on what would have been Dr. King's 75th birthday, and provided a whole week of events called the Jubilee Week.

Ivan Winegar, Kaye's husband, has been a BCCIH member for about three years.

"We're always trying to get more faith-based and other community organizations involved in this work of bringing the races together, increasing understanding of different cultures within the county," Winegar said. "We're especially interested in getting youth involved. Right now, we need somebody young."

Recruitment is definitely high up on the committee's "to do" list.

"We certainly have to increase the amount of people on the committee," Kaye said. "We don't have as active a committee as we used to have."

"I would say another challenge facing any organization is keeping up the momentum, keeping people interested and active and getting new blood," Winegar said. "That's an ongoing process.

"We really need more representatives from other organizations around the county to be as effective as we possibly could," Winegar added.

Kaye said she believes there are fewer hate crimes committed today than when the committee started in 1982. "I think you see fewer instances of prejudice," Kaye said, noting she hopes their work will help prevent race-based crimes.

"We're all about educating people to how we're all one and how, as Dr. Martin Luther King said, 'If we don't live together as brothers, we're going to perish together as fools,'" she said. "There is racism here. It's very, very subtle. But it's here nonetheless."

Kaye said she feels good about the work she does on the committee when she sees the effect it has on the lives of people, "knowing that we are opening people's eyes to the beauty that's in each human being and no matter the color of the person's skin or what they believe that we're all the same and I personally believe and my mantra is: 'There is one race: the human race.'"

She said the potlucks have "definitely" been examples of that.

"It's been wonderful, heartwarming to see people who were strangers sitting at the table as family," Kaye said. "What's very rewarding is to see people of color and white and people of different ethnicities and religions and all of that, coming together and sharing and creating an atmosphere of love and harmony - to me that's one of the most meaningful, beautiful experiences of my life."

Bucks County Committee for Interracial Harmony President Keith D. Jones, has been with the organization for about 15 years.

He agreed with Kaye's assertion that present-day prejudice is subtler than in the past.

"I think it's become more of an institution rather than a blatant attack," Jones said. "I think racism now is something we have to couple with other issues like immigration, homophobia - even standing alone it's still relevant, but even if you partner it with other things, racism still keeps its permanence in a lot of people's minds with regard to bigotry and intolerance."

Saying the BCCIH members "are not exactly the protest type," Jones noted the quieter approach is used.

"What we try to do is we try to react more in the vein of trying to get people to dialogue with one another," he said. The biggest challenge facing BCCIH, Jones said, is creating "county unity."

He said "the whole [Route] 413 divide, as I call it" prevents people from extreme lower Bucks and upper Bucks meeting.

The Bucks County Committee for Interracial Harmony meets the first Monday of each month at Pennswood Village in Newtown.

next week: The next installment of our month-long series celebrating Black History Month will feature a profile of the honorable Clyde Waite, Bucks County's first African American judge.