Posted on 01/20/2020 7:58:59 AM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
Charlton Heston, who shined a bit brighter than the rest of the Hollywood crowd. He was taller than the others...he’d played Moses in the movies...
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
In before the haters...the Founders weren't spotless but we (rightly) revere them for what they did. We often speak first of their writings, the Declaration, the Constitution, how they put it all on the line so that WE could have a better life. We then acknowledge that they were not perfect, often owning slaves and other conduct that was unbecoming, but we ultimately agree that they were a net positive element in the universe.
( HT leaning right). MLK is in a similar camp. Yes, he didn't help found America and I'm not equating his work with drafting the Constitution. But the man took a bullet for basically saying we should judge our fellow man by the content of his character, not the color of his skin. But wait, some say...King evidently had serious issues with prostitutes. Well, George Washington owned slaves. And Andrew Jackson mistreated Indians. And Ulysses Grant was a drunk. Etc.
Trotting out out MLK's deficiencies FIRST is like the leftist tactic of saying "This nation was founded by slave owners...CASE CLOSED." So we can take turns destroying historical figures for their shortcomings. Or we can say that our country needs heroes. And blacks (and I would add, whites and people of ALL colors) need a good role model. King fits the bill in both cases.
Heston was a man among men. They don’t make them like that anymore.
Isn’t that the truth.
He was a man. With convictions and principles, and good ones, too.
It is primarily with the people who carry his message in his wake.
MLK said: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
THAT is a wonderful sentiment, who could find fault with that?
But unfortunately, that mantle of equality has a mockery made of it by the people who claim to wear it, because to a large number of them, the color of skin is ALL that matters to them.
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