Okay, no more obituaries for a while -- I promise. But when someone
who played such an indispensable role in battling for free speech and
against government abuses passes on, they must be saluted.
Frank Wilkinson was a favorite guest on the Pacifica Radio stations
for many years. Anyone who ever heard him rally the troops yet again
to push back the latest assault on our freedoms will never forget
his unique, gravelly (or was it raspy?) voice.
Neither of these obits says anything about the huge amount of time
and energy Frank expended to defeat the grandfather of the current
PATRIOT Act -- an unfortunate oversight. Both articles simply skip over
the period from 1975 to 1986 without mentioning that he toured the
country for months back in 1979-80 sounding the alarm on the
notorious Omnibus Crime Bill S.B.1, which originated in Atty. Gen.
John Mitchell's Justice Dept. Little did we suspect that even worse
things were in store for us...
Craig Gingold
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Frank Wilkinson, 91; Civil Libertarian
The L.A. housing official, imprisoned for refusing to testify
before HUAC, became an advocate of 1st Amendment rights.
By Dennis McLellan
Times Staff Writer
January 5, 2006
Frank Wilkinson, who began his half century as a national civil
liberties
leader after being fired from his job as a Los Angeles Housing
Authority
official during the McCarthy era and was later imprisoned for
refusing to
testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, has died.
He was 91.
Wilkinson, the former longtime director of the National Committee
Against Repressive Legislation, a civil liberties activist and
lobby group,
died from complications of old age Monday at his home in Los
Angeles,
said his wife of 39 years, Donna.
Wilkinson, who spent nine months in prison after being held in
contempt
of Congress for asserting his 1st Amendment right not to disclose
his
associations and beliefs before HUAC in 1958, helped form the
National
Committee to Abolish HUAC in 1960.
The organization was renamed the National Committee Against
Repressive Legislation about the same time that HUAC was abolished
in 1975. Ten years later, Wilkinson co-founded the nonprofit First
Amendment Foundation, which defends the right to dissent. He served
as its longtime director.
"For the last 50 years, Frank has been the one or two people most
closely identified with the defense of the 1st Amendment," Kit Gage,
director of the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation
and
the First Amendment Foundation, told The Times this week.
Nadine Strossen, national president of the American Civil Liberties
Union, described Wilkinson as "a towering and inspiring figure
throughout his entire career, starting from when he was a young
person
being an advocate for equal rights for the poor and members of
racial
minorities."
Wilkinson "was also constantly challenging government's power to
restrict 1st Amendment freedoms of belief, speech and association,
and
also opposing government violations of privacy, as well as
government
secrecy, which continues to be dramatically relevant today," she
said.
Gara LaMarche, vice president and director of U.S. programs at the
Open Society Institute, a New York City-based foundation, said:
"At a time of fresh revelations and renewed concern about government
spying on Americans, Frank's life story -- from being the target of
Joe
McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover to crusader for 1st Amendment rights --
has much to teach us."
Wilkinson's efforts as a nationally known civil liberties leader
grew out
of his role in a planned public housing project in Chavez Ravine in
the
early 1950s.
Wilkinson, who had gone to work for the Housing Authority in 1942,
was special assistant to the executive director and was director of
the
office of information.
The authority's $110-million plan to build 10,000 low-income housing
units outside poor areas of the city was viewed with suspicion by
many
in Los Angeles' conservative business establishment, who labeled the
effort "creeping socialism."
In what has been described as its biggest battle, the authority
began in
1952 to condemn property in Chavez Ravine, north of downtown Los
Angeles, for 3,500 new public housing units.
The primarily Mexican immigrant barrio was considered one of the
prime pieces of property for an integrated public housing project,
and
Wilkinson went door-to-door to persuade residents to give up their
pieces of land with the assurance that they would have homes in new
Richard Neutra-designed high-rises.
"It meant bringing black people and brown people and Asian people
out
of ghettos of various kinds and have them living with Anglo people
in
Chavez Ravine," Wilkinson told The Times in 1995.
During the eminent domain hearing in which Wilkinson was called as
an
expert witness to testify on behalf of the authority, the attorney
for the
opposition had completed his questions about the property when he
asked Wilkinson to name all the organizations to which he belonged.
Wilkinson refused, asserting his 5th Amendment right against
self-incrimination. He was immediately suspended from his job, and
the
incident spurred both the City Council and the Los Angeles Times to
demand an investigation of communist infiltration in the Housing
Authority.
After being subpoenaed to appear before the state Un-American
Activities Committee later that year, Wilkinson again took the
Fifth.
Although he and two other Housing Authority employees targeted as
Communist agents had signed annual loyalty oaths over they years,
they
all lost their jobs.
Wilkinson's first wife, Jean, was suspended and later fired from
her job
as a public school teacher. After many months of unemployment,
Wilkinson became a night custodian at a Pasadena department store --
a job offered with the proviso that he not publicly disclose that
he had
been hired.
In the wake of the Housing Authority controversy, plans for the
project
in Chavez Ravine were scrapped and the land eventually was obtained
by the Dodgers and became the site of Dodger Stadium.
By late 1953, Wilkinson had become secretary of the Citizens
Committee to Preserve American Freedoms and worked to support
individuals who had been subpoenaed by HUAC and other investigative
committees.
In 1958, during a trip to Atlanta to support civil rights activists
called before HUAC, Wilkinson was subpoenaed. Asserting his 1st
Amendment right in refusing to testify, he was cited for contempt of
Congress.
"A number of folks previous to him had taken the 1st Amendment
before HUAC," said Gage. "Frank wanted to bring that case to the
Supreme Court."
In 1961, by a vote of 5 to 4, the Supreme Court ruled against
Wilkinson, and he began serving nine months of his one-year prison
sentence. He and civil rights activist Carl Braden were the last two
people imprisoned for contempt of Congress for exercising their
1st Amendment rights.
After his release in 1962, Wilkinson returned to the work he and
others
had started in 1960 when they formed the National Committee to
Abolish HUAC. He also worked with and helped build membership of
the National Lawyers Guild, the ACLU and other groups.
Gage said Wilkinson worked "to help people to recognize that the
Bill of
Rights is a living document but not self-enforcing: The only way
the Bill
of Rights will continue to exist is by the people of the United
States
acting to exert their rights."
Wilkinson, who had joined the Communist Party in 1942 and remained
a member until 1975, discovered in 1986 that the FBI had
surveillance
files on him and the organization against repressive legislation.
He filed a
Freedom of Information Act suit against the FBI and eventually
received
132,000 pages of files.
The files, which spanned 38 years, included information chronicling
the
FBI's surreptitious work to cancel meetings, infiltrate and disrupt
events
and discredit Wilkinson, said Gage, who served as editor of Robert
Sherrill's 2005 biography of Wilkinson, "First Amendment Felon."
When Wilkinson's lawsuit against the FBI was settled in 1987, the
bureau agreed to remove his surveillance records from its files and
to
never spy on him again.
The son of a physician, Wilkinson was born in Charlevoix, Mich.,
in 1914. The family moved to Los Angeles in 1925 and Wilkinson
graduated from Beverly Hills High School. After graduating from UCLA
in 1936, he considered becoming a Methodist minster.
But travel to the Midwest, New York, North Africa, Palestine, Europe
and Russia, in which he encountered extreme poverty, caused him to
change his plans.
In 1939, he went to work for Msgr. Thomas O'Dwyer, founder of the
Citizens Housing Council of Los Angeles, to promote public housing.
Hired by the Housing Authority in 1942, Wilkinson managed the first
integrated housing project for the poor on the West Coast, in
Watts, and
soon was managing several other projects, one of which he lived in
with
his family.
"He was somebody who was not just important because of the
historical
role he played," said the ACLU's Strossen, "but because he
continued to
be a forceful leader and teacher, especially speaking to young
people on
college campuses and helping them to see the connection with what
happened in the past to what is happening now."
Wilkinson was portrayed in the theater group Culture Clash's play
"Chavez Ravine" at the Mark Taper Forum in 2003, and Ry Cooder
wrote a song about Wilkinson, "Don't Call Me Red," for his recent CD
"Chavez Ravine." Wilkinson also was featured in the recent
documentary "Chavez Ravine" by filmmaker Jordan Mechner and
photographer Don Nomark.
A memorial service for Wilkinson will be held at 2 p.m. Jan. 28 at
Holman United Methodist Church, 3320 W. Adams Blvd., Los Angeles
Contributions in Wilkinson's memory may be made to the Southern
California Library for Social Studies and Research, 6120 S. Vermont
Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90044, or to the First Amendment Foundation,
3321 12th St. NE, Washington, D.C., 20017.
* Caption: The civil liberties leader, left, shows his FBI files in
1987
with Paul Hoffman of the ACLU and attorney Douglas Mirell.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
NEW YORK TIMES
January 4, 2006
Frank Wilkinson, Defiant Figure of Red Scare, Dies at 91
By RICK LYMAN
Frank Wilkinson, a Los Angeles housing official who lost his job in
the
Red Scare of the early 1950's and later became one of the last two
people jailed for refusing to tell the House Un-American Activities
Committee whether he was a Communist, died Monday in Los Angeles.
He was 91.
Mr. Wilkinson, whose experiences inspired a half-century campaign
against government spying, had been ill for several months and was
recovering from surgery and a fall, said Donna Wilkinson, his wife
of 40
years. "It was just the complications of old age, " Mrs. Wilkinson
said.
In 1952, when Mr. Wilkinson was head of the Housing Authority of the
City of Los Angeles, he spearheaded a project to replace the
sprawling
Mexican-American neighborhood of Chavez Ravine, home to 300
families and roamed by goats and other livestock, with thousands of
public-housing units.
Real estate interests that viewed public housing as a form of
socialism
accused Mr. Wilkinson of being a Communist. When asked about this,
under oath, he declined to answer, causing a furor.
After a City Council hearing, in which Mayor Fletcher Bowron punched
a man in the audience who had called him a "servant of Stalin," Mr.
Wilkinson was questioned by the California Anti-Subversive
Committee.
Mr. Wilkinson was fired along with four other housing officials and
five
schools employees, including his first wife, Jean.
The housing project was scuttled and much of the land eventually
turned over to the city after which it became the site of Dodger
Stadium,
new home to the former Brooklyn Dodgers.
The entire episode has inspired books, documentaries, a play and
even a
recently released album by Ry Cooder called "Chavez Ravine." "Every
church has its prophets and its elders," one song goes. "God will
love
you if you just play ball."
Mr. Wilkinson consistently refused to testify about his political
beliefs.
He had, in fact, joined the Communist Party in 1942, according to
"First
Amendment Felon," a 2005 biography by Robert Sherrill. He left the
party in 1975.
Mr. Wilkinson continued his antipoverty activities and, in 1955, was
called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which
wanted to know whether he was a Communist. This time, Mr.
Wilkinson used what he believed was a novel approach. Instead of
claiming his Fifth Amendment right against compelled
self-incrimination,
he refused to answer on First Amendment grounds, saying the
committee had no right to ask him.
The committee requested that Congress cite Mr Wilkinson for
contempt,
but it was not until 1958 that he and a co-worker, Carl Braden,
became
the last men ordered to prison at the committee's behest. Mr.
Wilkinson
fought the contempt citation in the courts, but the Supreme Court,
by
a vote of 5 to 4, affirmed it.
At a press conference after the decision, Mr. Wilkinson said: "We
will
not save free speech if we are not prepared to go to jail in its
defense.
I am prepared to pay that price."
In 1961, the year construction began on Dodger Stadium, Mr.
Wilkinson
spent nine months at the federal prison in Lewisburg, Pa. He came
out
of prison, he said, determined to fight for the committee's
abolition. For
the next decade, he traveled the country, speaking and protesting,
largely
through his National Committee Against Repressive Legislation,
based in
Los Angeles.
On Jan. 14, 1975, when the committee was finally abolished,
Representative Robert F. Drinan, Democrat of Massachusetts, paid
tribute to Mr. Wilkinson, saying, "No account of the demise of the
House Un-American Activities Committee would be complete without
a notation of the extraordinary work done by the National Committee
Against Repressive Legislation."
But Mr. Wilkinson was not finished with the federal government. When
he discovered, in 1986, that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had
been compiling files on him, he filed a Freedom of Information Act
request for their release.
He was sent 4,500 documents. But he sued for more, and the next year
the F.B.I. released an additional 30,000 documents, and then 70,000
two years later. Eventually, there were 132,000 documents covering
38
years of surveillance, including detailed reports of Mr.
Wilkinson's travel
arrangements and speaking schedules, and vague and mysterious
accusations of an assassination attempt against Mr. Wilkinson in
1964.
A federal judge ordered the F.B.I. to stop spying on Mr. Wilkinson
and
to never do it again.
Frank Wilkinson was born Aug. 16, 1914, in a cottage behind his
family's lakeside retreat in Charlevoix, Mich. His father, a
doctor, came
from a family that had lived in America since colonial days. His
mother
was French Canadian. Mr. Wilkinson was the youngest of four
children.
Mr. Wilkinson's father fell in love with Arizona while posted there
in
World War I and moved the family to Douglas, Ariz., after the war.
The
family lived there until Frank was 10, then moved to Hollywood for
two
years while their permanent home was being built in Beverly Hills.
They were a devout Methodist family and firm Republicans. "Every
morning of my life, we had Bible readings and prayers at the
breakfast
table," Mr. Wilkinson once said.
He attended Beverly Hills High School and then the University of
California, Los Angeles, graduating in 1936. He was active in the
Methodist Youth Movement, president of the Hollywood Young
People's chapter of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and
an organizer for Youth for Herbert Hoover.
After college, considering a career in the ministry, he decided to
tour the
Holy Land. On the way, along Maxwell Street in Chicago, the Bowery
in New York and later in the Middle East, he had his first glimpse
at
wrenching poverty, and he described it as a life-altering
experience.
Mr. Wilkinson lost his faith and found himself adrift. "What do you
do
if you have no religion?" he said. "What is the basis of your
ethics?" He
chose to become active in efforts to eradicate the kind of poverty
he had
seen in his travels.
In later years, he would spend months on the road speaking to
whatever
group would listen to him, usually telling his own story and
answering
questions.
In 1999, he received a lifetime achievement award from the American
Civil Liberties Union. Four years earlier, the City of Los Angeles,
which
had once fired him, issued a citation praising Mr. Wilkinson for his
"lifetime commitment to civil liberties and for making this
community
a better place in which to live."
He is survived by his first wife, Jean, of Oakland, Calif.; their
three
children, Jeffry Wilkinson, of Albany, Calif., Tony Wilkinson, of
Berkeley, Calif., and Jo Wilkinson of Tucson; and by his second
wife,
Donna; her three children from a previous marriage, John, William
and
Robert Childers; 19 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.
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