Lesson Learned in the ‘60s Still Worth Teaching Today

For me, the ‘60s began a few months prior to the John F. Kennedy assassination. On June 13, 1963, I saw on the TV news that Medgar Evers had been shot to death the night before, in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Miss.

Evers was a field director for the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, and a leader in attempts to integrate Mississippi. I’d never heard of him. I’d just finished my high school sophomore year in a small Hoosier town and my universe stopped at the banks of the Wabash and Ohio rivers. The Evers murder was my first real awareness of what was going on in this country.

Four years later I read a book by Evers’ widow, Myrlie Evers (now Evers-Williams), called “For Us, the Living,” about her husband’s work, and dealing as a black family with racism in America. Nothing from the ‘60s affected me more than that book. No other author broke down the issues of the day in such profoundly personal terms.

The other day I found it in a local library and reread it for the first time in nearly 30 years. Her message is just as powerful now as ever. “For Us, the Living” ought to be on the recommended reading list for every high school history student in Orange County.

Evers-Williams is now chairwoman for the NAACP’s board of directors. She’s speaking at Chapman University’s Memorial Hall at 7 tonight. Her appearance is free.

It’s unfortunate timing that some who might want to hear her will instead be at Cal State Fullerton, where a better-known activist, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, is also speaking ($3-$6 for tickets.) Both are welcome voices here.

Oliver’s Spectator: When I was a student reporter at Indiana University in the late ‘60s, one of my assignments was to cover the campus right-wingers, led by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. I remember wondering then what kind of childhoods had led them to such narrow views of the world so early in life.

Tyrrell went on to become editor-in-chief of the archconservative American Spectator. He hasn’t changed any. So it came as a surprise that I found an article in Tyrrell’s magazine worth reading. Maybe that’s because it attacks someone whose work I distrust almost as much as I do Tyrrell’s. The magazine this month forcefully assails Oliver Stone’s “Nixon.” And the writer is Orange County’s own John H. Taylor, executive director of the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda.

My own view of “Nixon” was that Stone at least didn’t nose-dive as far into the deep as he did with “JFK.” But Taylor, as a longtime Nixon assistant, knew the entire Nixon family well. Scenes that to me were just typical Stone fantasies hit hard to Taylor, who accuses Stone of character assassination . . . “accomplished in large part by drowning (Nixon’s) character in alcohol and profanity.”

I figure a little of this is Nixon’s own fault. By using “expletive deleted” in the Watergate transcripts to bleep out all those “hells” and “g-d’s,” he gave free spirits such as Stone a chance to fill in the blanks, with no evidence that Nixon had ever uttered such vulgarities.

Taylor and I would certainly differ about Nixon’s place in history. But he sums up well that Stone’s “Nixon” . . . “twists the knife too sadistically to be even vaguely credible.” That’s an assumption you’d have to make about any Stone biographical movie after “JFK.”

Namedrops: It’s a treat when we can find any thread to connect our own lives to a larger world that interests us. My 13-year-old, Patrick, an eighth-grader at Ball Junior High in Anaheim, was delighted when he stumbled across the name of Gwen Stefani in an old yearbook there. It shows she’d been voted “most talented.”

Stefani has lived up to her advanced billing. She’s lead singer for alternative rock’s No Doubt. The group is on the sold-out bill at the Pond of Anaheim tonight with the Goo Goo Dolls and the hit British group Bush. . . .

It’s going to be a busy Pond. The next night it’s a Ducks game against Colorado. The Clippers entertain the Dallas Mavericks there Thursday night. Michael Smith sings there Friday night. The Globetrotters are there Saturday and it’s Wayne Gretzky and the St. Louis Blues on Sunday. . . .

It’s always tough following after a famous parent. But try to imagine if “Dad” were the Rev. Robert H. Schuller of the Crystal Cathedral, who needs a separate house just for all his formal accolades. Today in San Jose, his minister son Robert A. Schuller, part of Crystal Cathedral ministries, receives his first honorary doctorate degree, from National Hispanic University in San Jose. . . .

Remember the joyful Russian village of Anatevka in “Fiddler on the Roof”? The 31-year-old musical opens Friday night at Golden West College in Huntington Beach and runs for 16 nights (with Sunday matinees). Tickets are $15.

Open Board? Your post-bankruptcy Board of Supervisors holds the first in a series of open study sessions at 2 p.m. today at the Hall of Administration. The kickoff topic is on county landfills, with the staff even recommending a reduction in gate fees.

Wrap-Up: From Myrlie Evers-Williams, in “For Us, the Living”: “It took me years to learn what Medgar felt instinctively, that freedom has to be won, that it is worth fighting for. It was the lesson of his life. It was the lesson, if there was one, in his death.”

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling The Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or sending a fax to (714) 966-7711.