Civil Rights

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.

Civil rights groups said Thursday that they had reached a settlement with federal officials guaranteeing that workers nabbed in an immigration raid last month in Van Nuys can be accompanied by an attorney to all meetings and interrogations.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was the guest of honor Friday at a Los Angeles mosque. But it was the spirit of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that held the crowd. "King was a leader who gave his life working for justice," said Muzammil H. Siddiqi, religious director of the Islamic Society of Orange County, in his sermon during Jumah, the weekly prayer service. "He stood for freedom, justice and equality among all. These are principles that we have to talk about as often as possible."

A jury convicted an iconic civil rights figure of incest after concluding that he had sex with his teenage daughter 15 years ago. The Rev. James L. Bevel, 71, a former top lieutenant to Martin Luther King Jr., faces up to 20 years in prison. The four-day trial in Loudoun County Circuit Court included bizarre testimony about Bevel's philosophies for eradicating lust, and parents' duty to "sexually orient" their children.

A longtime Los Angeles civil rights attorney is trying a new strategy to push federal immigration authorities to change the way they conduct workplace raids. Peter Schey filed 114 federal claims for damages late Thursday on behalf of U.S. citizens and permanent residents who were temporarily detained during a recent raid at Micro Solutions Enterprises in Van Nuys. On Feb.

A Quaker who lost her appointment as a Cal State Fullerton lecturer after she objected to a state loyalty oath submitted a revised statement of her beliefs Thursday in a bid to win the job back. People For the American Way, a Washington-based civil rights group now representing lecturer Wendy Gonaver, called on the university to reinstate her and adopt a policy protecting the religious freedom of all California State University system employees.

The California Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage Thursday in a broadly worded decision that would invalidate virtually any law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation. The 4-3 ruling declared that the state Constitution protects a fundamental "right to marry" that extends equally to same-sex couples.

There was a time when residents in this liberal college city would greet homeless people by name. They'd stop to chat with Scanner Dan, the grizzled guy with a walkie-talkie buzzing at his hip as he asked for change. They'd offer odd jobs to a man known as Snowball, who was rumored to have been a smuggler for the Chicago mob during Prohibition. Then two violent slayings in less than three months shook residents in the state capital, which is also home to the main campus of the University of Wisconsin.

For several hours, as he waited to get booked for petty theft at the Los Angeles County Jail in October, Peter Johnson told deputies he needed to go to the restroom. Although other inmates were free to use the facilities, Johnson -- a paraplegic -- was told there were none in the area equipped to accommodate the physically disabled. Guards, he said, seemed indifferent to his plight, telling him he simply had to wait.