Civil Rights Movement

In the 1960s, the civil-rights movement owed much of its momentum and power to a moral authority derived from historical circumstances. Most fair-minded Americans accepted the idea that African Americans' historical experience of discrimination justified legal and social redress. By contrast, the addition of women, Latinos and Asians to the civil rights movement was more politics than morality. One consequence is that race lost its role as the primary determinant of a civil-rights claim.

If there was still skepticism six months ago that an African American could be elected president of the United States, imagine how unlikely the prospect felt to Nat King Cole a half-century ago when he recorded the song "We Are Americans Too." Cole's recording session came just one month after some white supremacists assaulted him on stage during a concert in April 1956 in Montgomery, Ala. He never performed another concert in the South.

The Rev. James Orange, who rose from foot soldier to leader in the civil rights movement and whose 1965 jailing set in motion events that ultimately led to the bloody Selma-to-Montgomery march in Alabama, died Saturday at Emory Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta. He was 65. Orange, who later became an organizer with the AFL-CIO and fought apartheid in South Africa, had gallbladder surgery last week, but the cause of his death was unknown, his daughter Jamida Orange said Sunday.

Ever since Proposition 8 passed Nov. 4, enshrining heterosexual-only marriage in the California Constitution, demonstrators from Sacramento to San Diego have staged daily marches and protests to express their anger and disappointment that homosexuals will continue to be treated as second-class citizens. It's a stirring movement, reminiscent of past civil rights struggles, but it raises a troubling question: Where were these marchers before the election?

The Rev. James L. Bevel, a fiery top lieutenant of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and a force behind civil rights campaigns of the 1960s whose erratic behavior and conviction on incest charges tarnished his legacy, has died. He was 72. Sherrilynn Bevel, a daughter, said he died of pancreatic cancer Dec. 19 at her home in Springfield, Va. She said Bevel, who was freed on bond because of ill health, had been there since Nov. 8.

Eddie Robinson, the record-setting coach who turned Grambling State University into a nationally recognized football power, ushered more than 200 players into the National Football League and largely realized his vision of transforming the Louisiana school into the Notre Dame of historically black colleges, has died. He was 88. Robinson, who for nearly two decades held college football's record for most victories, died Tuesday night at Northern Louisiana Medical Center in Ruston, La.

New York will get the photo show, but Los Angeles will get the photographer: Veteran Magnum photographer Bruce Davidson will discuss his 50-plus years behind the lens in a lecture and slide show Thursday at the UCLA Hammer Museum, including what is perhaps his best-known work: images from the civil rights movement, 1961 to 1965. The 7 p.m. event is in advance of Davidson's exhibition "Time of Change," at Aperture Gallery in New York from May 18 through Aug. 2.

An Alabama grand jury indicted a former state trooper Wednesday in the fatal 1965 shooting of a black civil rights activist, a death that was a catalyst for the historic march from Selma to Montgomery. Jimmie Lee Jackson, a 26-year-old church deacon, died from two gunshot wounds during a voter registration march in Marion, Ala. Witnesses have said he was protecting his mother and grandfather from state troopers wielding billy clubs.

Yolanda King, an actress, producer and motivational speaker who was the eldest child of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and who turned to the performing arts to carry on her father's civil rights legacy, has died. She was 51. King died late Tuesday in Santa Monica, said Steve Klein, a spokesman for the King Center in Atlanta. According to Klein, family members suspected her death may have been caused by a heart problem, but he provided no additional details.