Column | Murder at the Hollywood Bowl: Remembering Long Beach’s Anthony Wilkins

On August 2, 1974, the life of Anthony (Tony) Wilkins’, a Black man from Long Beach, ended at the Hollywood Bowl. Wilkins was shot and killed by an off-duty Los Angeles police officer moonlighting as a security guard. Why? Wilkins had been attempting to prevent some of the Long Beach youth he was chaperoning from changing their seats.

Hollywood Bowl
Wilkins and ten other volunteers from Long Beach were escorting more than 200 Long Beach youth from the Long Beach Neighborhood Youth Corps to an Aretha Franklin concert at the Bowl. Los Angeles police said Wilkins was one of a group of three who pinned officer Robert Clark to the ground in the tower aisles of the Bowl. According to Clark, as his assailants were punching and kicking him, Clark wrestled his gun from one youth and fired once, hitting Wilkins. Witnesses said Wilkins was trying to prevent a group of Youth Corps members from flocking to new higher priced unoccupied seats when a scuffle began. The concert began after a brief delay.

An autopsy showed Wilkins was shot in his left lower back with the bullet emerging at the left side of his neck. This challenged police accounts, showing it would have been impossible for Wilkins to have been kicking anyone at the time he was shot. In addition, there was no distinct evidence of powder residue on Wilkins’ body, indicating he was several feet away from Officer Clark.

A letter to the editor in the Los Angeles Times by David Gregory on August 13th, expressed dismay that three officers who only suffered cuts and bruises should have fired a weapon at an unarmed person. “To my knowledge, neither the federal government nor any state in the union requires punishment by death for “cuts and bruises,” especially in the case of a person unarmed. If that lethal bullet had gone wild, anyone sitting nearby could have been in its path. If this kind of killing rouses no concern; perhaps guns, like opera-glasses, can be rented to all the brave concert-lovers so that they may take part in their own security.”

The Black community of Long Beach was outraged at Wilkins’ killing and asked the Long Beach City Council to endorse a request for an open investigation into the shooting death. City Attorney Leonard Putman, however, said Long Beach had no right to ask Los Angeles for an investigation. The request needed to come from Wilkins’ family. The family made the request. It was denied by Los Angeles authorities.

What was America like for Anthony Wilkins, growing up in Long Beach in the 1960’s? Strides in achieving racial equality had been made following the 1965 Watts riots. In Long Beach, informal meetings between city officials and the Black community opened dialogue between them and city officials. The local Black community listed a number of grievances and bluntly warned the city that it could ignore their Black community’s needs only at its own peril.

Blacks youths protested police harassment of racially mixed couples, and police intrusions into peaceful gatherings. Conditions were so bad it made the uniformed police officer appear to be an enemy of the Black youth.

Though Congress had passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, here in California, Proposition 14 overwhelmingly approved by voters, kept housing segregation in place.

Although Proposition 14 was ruled unconstitutional by the California Supreme Court in 1966 and the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967, it demonstrated the number of Whites that resisted the idea of racial equality and the fear among Blacks that the idea was unattainable. It would not be until Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (the Fair Housing Act), passed four days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., that the actual inclusion of racially restrictive covenants into deeds was deemed illegal.

Wilkins’ Fight for Equality

Wilkins, admitted to Long Beach State College, now California State University, Long Beach, on a football scholarship, wanted to change the world around him. Taking up the fight for racial equality, Wilkins became president of the Black Student Union (BSU). The group saw it was up to them, the younger generation, and the power of protest, to achieve change. On December 17, 1968, Wilkins and the BSU formally presented a list of demands for equality to college President Carl McIntosh, telling McIntosh if the demands were not met the school would have “lost justification for existence.”

The list included the creation of an autonomous, degree granting a Black Studies Department to be in place by the fall semester of 1969, with professors and staff approved by the Black Student Union advisory board; an emergency action on off-campus housing for Black students; office space for BSU; and more Black administrators, faculty, staff and students.

For weeks similar demands, which had resulted in violence, had occurred at San Francisco State College. Black students there began a strike on November 6, 1968. With 200 to 300 activists and up to 2,000 some-time participants, they had kept the college in an uproar. Long Beach’s Black Student Union members had not resorted to violence but emphasized they wanted the same demands made at San Francisco State and other colleges–mainly a separated Black studies department, not black studies courses spread throughout other academic departments.

Dean Carl McIntosh

McIntosh responded saying the main obstruction was budget, but he said he would see what he could do. In January 1969, McIntosh announced progress had been made between administrators and the Black Student Union. Office space had been provided for the BSU; plans were being developed to improve housing for minority students; the college also accepted Black faculty members on a full time basis. McIntosh also promised a Black Studies Program would begin partially the following semester and be in full operation by September.

On February 10, 1969, Dr. Clyde Taylor, an assistant professor of English, long active in Black self-help movements such as Upward Bound, was named acting chairman of the embryonic department. Hiden T. Cox, of the school of letters and science, was given administrative control. With BSU counsel, Taylor began drafting a course of study. The degree offered would be open to all, regardless of race. On March 29, 1969, the Black Studies Program for CSCLB won formal approval for inclusion in the 1969-70 course studies.

Following graduation in 1971, Wilkins continued his quest for racial justice, working for the Compton Urban Corps, the Manpower Training Division of the Long Beach Community Improvement League and the Long Beach Neighborhood Youth Corps. His mission to end injustice came to a close too quickly. His August 1974 death was a tragedy not only for the Black community, but for his family. Wilkins was a husband and the father of two sons, ages three and one. A third child was expected in September 1974.

Let us remember Anthony Wilkins who spent much of his life in peaceful protests against injustice, killed by an off duty Los Angeles policeman at the Hollywood Bowl. His fight continues today as demonstrated with worldwide protests over the murder of 46-year-old African American George Floyd, while in police custody, in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020.

Claudine Burnett has written 10 books about Southern California history. For more about her, and to access her blogs, visit her website here. Also, visit her Facebook page here.