Americas History

Sharon Smith tried to explain the dark complexity at the center of "Nixon" to her daughter, Angela, but all the Irvine 13-year-old could think of was how creepy it seemed. "He looked weird," Angela said, referring to Anthony Hopkins in the title role shortly after a recent screening at the Edwards South Coast Plaza theater in Costa Mesa. "And he acted weird too. Was he really a president?" Sharon Smith patiently pointed out that Hopkins' clenched performance tried to show the human side of Nixon, a flawed man who for a few long years was the most powerful figure in the world.

Despite often-voiced concerns about the effect of voter identification laws, black voter turnout remained high in 2012 and, for the first time, may have topped the rate for whites, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center.   Four years ago, the rate of black voter turnout almost equaled that of whites, continuing a trend of a steady increase in black turnout rates that began in 1996. This year, with white turnout appearing to have dropped, black turnout seems very likely to have exceeded the white level, although definitive figures won't be available until the Census Bureau reports in a few months.

Manual Arts High School beat out 35 other high schools to win the Los Angeles Unified School District's first English/Spanish decathlon, a district spokesman announced. Each team was composed of four bilingual students, two native English speakers and two native Spanish speakers, said Ricardo Velasquez, a deputy to school board member Jeff Horton.

More than a dozen Orange County schools are ringing in the holiday season with Golden Bell awards. The honor goes to outstanding academic and student support programs. Sixty schools statewide are winners this year, the most since the program was founded in 1980 by the California School Boards Assn.

"A lot of what is wrong could be fixed . . ." reads a greeting card pinned to the wall of Sylvia M'Lafi Thompson's office. Photographs of black leaders and actors, commendations and notes frame the card with a cluttered chorus of related messages. The greeting is one that Thompson took to heart when she moved to San Diego in 1983 from Washington, D.C. Something that needed to be fixed, she said, was the lack of attention paid to artists of color.

After two years under interim leadership, a new president for Cal State Dominguez Hills will be selected from five finalists next month at a meeting of university trustees in Long Beach. The candidates, in telephone interviews Wednesday, said they share with university officials a vision of the Carson campus as a model of what most California institutions of higher learning will become in the 1990s as the state's population and culture become increasingly diverse. Dominguez Hills, which was built in the postwar years to serve a largely white population explosion in the southern part of the county, now has a 58% minority enrollment.

After two years under interim leadership, a new president for Cal State Dominguez Hills will be selected from five finalists next month at a meeting of university trustees in Long Beach. The candidates, in interviews last week, said they share with university officials a vision of the Carson campus as a model of what most California institutions of higher learning will become in the 1990s as the state's population and culture become increasingly diverse. Dominguez Hills, which was built in the postwar years to serve a largely white population explosion in the southern part of the county, now has a 58% minority enrollment.

Something extraordinary occurred Wednesday night as death row inmate Troy Davis awaited word on whether his execution at the hands of the state of the Georgia would go forward. The merits of Davis' case, as well as capital punishment, were debated on Twitter around the world in real time as the U.S. Supreme Court took up Davis' plea for a stay and the clock ticked. Some arguments were moral. Some were based on evidence. And some were based on theories of governing. (Is putting a man to death the ultimate in “big government?