Civil Rights Movements

SAN FRANCISCO - In 1958, the Gallup Poll asked Americans whether they approved or disapproved of marriage between blacks and whites. The response was overwhelming: 94% were opposed, a sentiment that held for decades. It took nearly 40 years until a majority of those surveyed said marriage between people of different skin colors was acceptable. By contrast, attitudes toward gays and lesbians have changed so much in just the last 10 years that, as Gallup reported last week, "half or more now agree that being gay is morally acceptable, that gay relations ought to be legal and that gay or lesbian couples should have the right to legally marry.

During World War II, as a tank commander in Gen. George S. Patton's 3rd Army, Eugene Patterson participated in a daring maneuver that helped assure the Allied victory in the Battle of the Bulge. Asked subsequently what he was most proud of about his part in this and other engagements, Patterson often talked about how he led troops into combat not with an impersonal "Go" but with a command that signaled his intention to expose himself to the same dangers they faced: "Let's go. " Patterson, who died of cancer Saturday at 89, was a 21-year-old lieutenant when he fought under Patton.

A few years ago, I stood at the front of a cavernous lecture hall that, at the University of California passes for a classroom. I was describing legal segregation in the South and the impact of Jim Crow laws. A young woman politely raised her hand and asked when Jim Crow had lived and where he had been active in the South. I looked out at the sea of young faces and decided I needed a reality check. I asked if anyone knew the name of any civil rights activist other than Martin Luther King Jr.

SAN FRANCISCO - In 1958, the Gallup Poll asked Americans whether they approved or disapproved of marriage between blacks and whites. The response was overwhelming: 94% were opposed, a sentiment that held for decades. It took nearly 40 years until a majority of those surveyed said marriage between people of different skin colors was acceptable. By contrast, attitudes toward gays and lesbians have changed so much in just the last 10 years that, as Gallup reported last week, "half or more now agree that being gay is morally acceptable, that gay relations ought to be legal and that gay or lesbian couples should have the right to legally marry.

In an unprecedented effort, gay-rights organizations are forming a national coalition with civil rights groups to win support for President Clinton's plans to lift the military's ban on homosexuals. Stunned by last week's uproar over the issue, gay and lesbian leaders say that they will mount a multimillion-dollar campaign to sway public opinion and Congress.

The Supreme Court, acting in a Louisiana case with far-reaching implications for civil rights and politics, said Friday that it would rule on whether the Constitution allows lawmakers to use the race of voters as a criterion for drawing electoral boundaries.

In an unprecedented effort, gay-rights organizations are forming a national coalition with civil rights groups to win support for President Clinton's plans to lift the military's ban on homosexuals. Stunned by last week's uproar over the issue, gay and lesbian leaders say that they will mount a multimillion-dollar campaign to sway public opinion and Congress.

Rosa Parks does not know if she was chosen by God to become the mother of the civil rights movement. What she can say nearly four decades after she changed the course of U.S. history is that her refusal to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Ala., in December, 1955, was an act of faith. "I felt the Lord would give me the strength to endure whatever I had to face. God did away with all my fear," the 82-year-old Parks writes in a book released this month by Zondervan Press.

As 25-year-old Patricia Melchor of Bell Gardens explained why she and her 20-year-old sister Laura were going to Washington for Saturday's historic Latino civil rights march and rally, her mother fought back tears. "They're going back to Washington to tell them we Latinos are here," said the weeping mother, Esperanza Mendoza. "I can't go because of my work, but we want a voice to have power. Too many people say, 'If you're Hispanic, you can't do it.' We can do it."

To get a snapshot of the gay rights frontier, one need only pick up a turquoise handout from the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. In describing lawsuits dealing with everything from gay marriage to custody battles and harassment of a gay high school student, the sheet summarizes not only Lambda's caseload but also the issues driving much of the contemporary gay rights movement. The gay equivalent of the National Assn.

"Students' Knowledge of Civil Rights History Has Deteriorated," one headline announced. "Civil Rights Movement Education 'Dismal' in American Schools," declared another. The alarming headlines, which appeared in newspapers across the country, grew out of a report released three weeks ago by the Southern Poverty Law Center, "Teaching the Movement," which claims that the civil rights movement is widely ignored in history classrooms. By not teaching it, the report claims, American education is "failing in its responsibility to educate its citizens to be agents of change.

The Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, a blunt-talking preacher who braved beatings, bombings and fire-hosings to push Birmingham, Ala., to the forefront of the civil rights movement and advanced the historic fight with a confrontational strategy that often put him at odds with its most charismatic leader, died Wednesday. He was 89. Shuttlesworth had been in poor health for the last year and was hospitalized with breathing problems three weeks ago at Birmingham's Princeton Baptist Medical Center, where he died, said family spokeswoman Malena Cunningham.

As "X-Men: First Class" completes nearly a week of release, thoughts wander, well, much further ahead, all the way to a sequel. Though they're not confirming any new development, executives at studio Fox have certainly hoped that the movie's performance warrants a new installment. Like every big Hollywood company these days, Fox craves a franchise, and young actors such as Jennifer Lawrence and James McAvoy were cast at least in part so they can grow with the series. The plot of Matthew Vaughn's movie -- which tells of the origins of the mutant superhero group against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis -- does pave the way for a follow-up.

His unblinking yet compassionate photographs in the 1950s and '60s documented Los Angeles' beat culture and emerging art scene, the civil rights movement here and in the Deep South, the Black Panthers and antiwar protests. Yet Charles Brittin was relatively unknown. Sidelined by declining health beginning in the '70s, he faded from the scene as documentary photographers were first being recognized as artists, said Andrew Perchuk, deputy director of the Getty Research Institute, which holds Brittin's photographic archive.

Lamont Johnson, an Emmy-winning director who was honored for his work on the TV programs "Gore Vidal's Lincoln" and "Wallenberg: A Hero's Story" during a wide-ranging career in television, film and theater, died of congestive heart failure at his Monterey home Sunday, his son, Chris, said. He was 88. Johnson, known for his sensitive treatment of controversial subjects in made-for-TV movies, dealt with interracial romance in "My Sweet Charlie" (1970), homosexuality in "That Certain Summer" (1972)

Dorothy Height, who was called the queen mother of the civil rights movement through seven decades of advocacy for racial equality -- including 41 years as president of the National Council of Negro Women -- has died. She was 98. Height, who also played a key role in integrating the YWCA, died Tuesday of natural causes at Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C., the council announced. Though not nearly as well known as her male contemporaries, Height was a steadfast presence in the civil rights movement.

The organizers of the Latino march and rally in Washington, who were told it couldn't be done, are pretty satisfied with themselves. Getting 20,000 to 30,000 people of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Central American and Cuban descent together for the march--and wide media coverage--was no easy task. "It was an unprecedented success," says Juan Jose Gutierrez of Los Angeles, the lead coordinator of the event that drew thousands of participants from across Southern California.

For nearly two decades they were almost inseparable. The civil rights leader and his protege, the man who would some day carry on the legacy of one of the nation's oldest Latino rights organizations. When Bert Corona, the fiery and charismatic director of Hermandad Mexicana Nacional, passed away earlier this year at the age of 82, Nativo Lopez, 48, who had long headed the Orange County chapter, seemed poised to succeed him.

Charles Moore, a photojournalist who both chronicled and helped alter the course of history through extraordinary photographs that reflected the brutal reality of the civil rights movement in the South, has died. He was 79. Moore died Thursday of natural causes at a nursing home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., said his daughter Michelle Moore Peel. From 1958 to 1965, he trained his lens on the unfolding drama of civil rights as a news photographer for the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser and Life magazine.