16 January 1968: Interview with Charlton Heston

Hollywood legend Charlton Heston reflects on the rise of Black Power and his role in the American civil rights movement.

This Tyne Tees TV interview reveals another side to Charlton Heston, the Hollywood icon once described as a “rugged American frontiersman”. The actor famed for epic film roles as Ben Hur and Moses is on a visit to Newcastle promoting his new cowboy movie, Will Penny. Later notorious as a gun-loving President of the National Rifle Association, the younger Heston proudly reflects on his role in the landmark civil rights March on Washington with Martin Luther King in 1963.

Charlton Heston, whose grandfather John B ‘Jack’ Carter had worked down Tyneside mines as a boy of eight or nine, was once a staunch supporter of civil rights and labour movements, before he embraced far-right Republicanism and gun ownership in the 80s and 90s. He led the ‘Hollywood delegation’, along with Harry and Julia Belafonte and Marlon Brando, towards the Lincoln Memorial to hear King’s historic speech, and later served as president of the Screen Actors Guild. Ironically, this interview reveals his disillusion with the new militancy in the civil rights movement under SNCC leader Stokeley Carmichael and the rise of black nationalism, perhaps an early sign of his turn away from liberalism.