[Editor’s Note: This is the third and final installment in a series describing Culver City’s doubleheader Martin Luther King Day birthday celebration on Saturday night at 7:30 and Sunday afternoon at 2 o’clock at the Senior Center, and profiling one of the major organizers, the producer Bill Wynn. Part 1, “Dr. King Day Headliner Is Rich in Cinematic Accomplishments,” Jan. 14, and Part 2, “Backstage with Bill Wynn Before Culver City’s King Day Program,” Jan. 15.]
Bill Wynn, the Vice Chair of this weekend’s Martin Luther King Day celebration (culvercity.org), was a teenager in the U.S. Marines, far from his New Jersey home, in 1957 before he came face to face with deeply embedded racial prejudice.
In those personally innocent times, racial activism was an unknown concept to Mr. Wynn as an 18-year-old Northerner.
Mature awareness of the racial fissures in America came much later in his 68-year-old life.
Returning to 51 years ago: When the driver of the bus assigned to transport Marines from the base directed young Mr. Wynn to step to the back of the bus — for the first and last time in his life — he complied without hesitating.
Question: Do you wish you had given a different response?
“No,” said Mr. Wynn. “Yes was the proper answer. I was not aware in those days. I didn’t know then about Rosa Parks and about how she had refused to move to the back of the bus.
“Now I am reading about a lady in Virginia who was involved in a similar incident. But when she refused, she was arrested. On a charge of civil disobedience.
“This was more than 10 years before Rosa Parks. But the lady in Virginia did not get reported in the national press, and there was no national movement behind her.”
Question: You were in the Marines for three years, 1956 to 1959. How would you summarize your treatment?
“The treatment was…
“I was a Marine. So I was one of them.
“I didn’t feel any discrimination. I had African American drill instructors that I looked up to. I was a Marine. I was proud of them and they were proud of me.
“Being an 18-year-old kid, I wanted to be part of them. Because once you are a Marine, you know, you are always a Marine.
“I came to the service in the middle period, between Korea and Vietnam. Those drill instructors had served in Korea.”
Question: When you left the Marine base in Memphis, you entered a different world. Equality was over, right?
“ Yes, I was treated differently (in town). But luckily, I was only there for a short time, and then I w as relocated to Camp Pendleton.
“There was prejudice here, but not on the base. I was treated as an equal by my peers. In fact, I was encouraged to live up to the Marine motto, to be the best that you could. It was a fraternity.
“Remember, I had never belonged to a fraternity before. I was a kid who had dropped out of high school and joined the Marines.
“This was my first experience of being welcomed, being treated and saying ‘You’re a Marine. You’re like that guy over there. You do the best you can.’”
Question: How did these experiences affect you psychologically?
“In a positive way.
“After I got out of the service, I went back to school, I got my diploma and I started helping myself. Then finding out about computers, learning, and that was my career for the next 30 years.” The first 15 years, he worked for various businesses, the last 15 at Fox Studios.
Another Dimension
Tall, lanky, outgoing in a quiet way, gentle and passionate, Bill Wynn, in the afternoon of his productive life, has evolved into a free-lance producer, with a special interest in the black experience in America.
Freely and buoyantly, he talks about how generous fate has been to him. But a closer look shows that he has worked diligently to put himself in a position to seem accidentally fortunate.
The tragedy of Sept. 11 drew back new curtains in his life, and suddenly urgent concerns seem to have empowered him to become more participatory in communal affairs.
This is Mr. Wynn’s second year on the King Day Committee, which Mary Ann Green chairs.
He played a major role in developing Saturday night’s program at the Senior Center and Sunday afternoon’s varied four-hour program at the Senior Center that features the producer Oliver Bagwell and two of his King-oriented documentaries.
