A great conservative of the late 20th century who was part of the moral conscience that fought the horrible racism so prevalent in the Democrat party at that time... Heston had campaigned in 1956 for Stevenson and in 1960 for Kennedy. That was safe enough. But for those who made their living in the motion picture industry, the anti-communist congressional hearings in Washington and the purge of suspected party members in Hollywood had a deterrent effect on the political activities of filmmakers and actors. Yet at the very same time, a great movement was building in the late 1950s and into the early 1960s—and many of the nation’s biggest motion picture stars wanted to lend their fame and faces to the cause. Charlton Heston was one of the first. In May of 1961, Heston had picketed a segregated Oklahoma City lunch counter at a now-forgotten demonstration that was one of hundreds of such actions building up to the March on Washington. The day of the ’63 march, the U.S. Information Agency filmed a roundtable discussion with Heston, Belafonte, Poitier, Brando, and Baldwin. It’s worth watching, despite Belafonte’s long-windedness (and can be seen here, thanks to C-SPAN). Asked why he is marching, Heston steals the scene. “Two years ago, I picketed some restaurants in Oklahoma, but with that one exception -- up until very recently -- like most Americans I expressed my support of civil rights largely by talking about it at cocktail parties,” he says. “But like many Americans this summer, I could no longer pay only lip service to a cause that was so urgently right, and in a time that is so urgently now.” In later years, “Chuck” Heston, as his intimates called him, would break with the Democratic Party over what he saw as its liberal excesses. He’d go on to campaign for his friend Ronald Reagan, and become a leading proponent of 2nd Amendment rights. Along the way, he’d be shunned and scorned by “liberals,” some of whom were not yet born when Heston was marching for freedom. Heston himself liked to say he supported the rights of racial minorities before it was fashionable in Hollywood—and upon his 2008 death African-American scholar Earl Ofari Hutchinson concurred: “He did,” Hutchinson said, “and we honor him for his monumental contributions to the civil rights movement.” A fancy funeral was held in a scenic Pacific Palisades Episcopal church and attended by some 300 people, many of them California luminaries. But a small vigil was also held in South Central Los Angeles, at the corner of Crenshaw and Martin Luther King Boulevards. Read more: realclearpolitics/articles/2013/08/29/hollywood_whos_who_marched_with_king_in_63__119762.html#ixzz2dOPU1rZI Follow us: @RCP_Articles on Twitter
Posted on: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 20:32:25 +0000
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