Last in a series
Re “Forte Shows How Far Humility Brings a Man”
[Editor’s Note: Fifty years ago this morning, July 7, 1967, 27-year-old James Forte broke the color barrier in the Culver City Police Dept.]
Gentle James Forte, who ended the all-white monopoly of the Police Dept. and Fire Dept. in Culver City, was talking about handing over a legacy to their three children as he and Jobie celebrated 59 blissful married years.
Back home in northeast Texas, his church-going parents had taught him to “love everybody. We are all the same.”
He never has wavered in his conviction of the veracity of that lesson.
One reason is, he remains a faithful, believing churchgoer, as fervently as when he was growing up as one of a half-dozen Forte sons.
That was then.
After seeking to ingrain the gold of that philosophy in his children, Mr. Forte says today:
“Well, they all were born here in California. They have a different idea about relationships than I had because I came from Texas. I remember the different types of water drinking fountains, (racially segregated) seating in theatres, going in the back door and all of that. So it didn’t bother me.”
A few weeks before his 78th birthday, Mr. Forte was asked if the wide-swinging cultural hurricanes of the last years have wrought change within him.
“I have not changed from the basic doctrines I learned from my parents,” he replied. “This is because it all has worked out by staying focused, knowing who you are and where you are going.”
Mr. Forte is as fit, as slender, as Mr.active as he was at his 1995 retirement from the Police Dept., 28½ years after joining the city.
Mr. Forte has spent many of the 22 intervening years with family and traveling. However, for the last two years, he and Jobie have been overseeing the welfare of their daughter, who suffered a brain aneurysm.
“Today she is doing quite well,” Mr. Forte said.
That seemed a right place to leave it.