Steven McNichols, a UCLA Freedom Rider and a lifelong advocate for civil rights and social justice, died last week after battling two forms of cancer. He was 74.
“He was a fighter,” said Bob Singleton, a friend of McNichols and a fellow UCLA Freedom Rider who protested interstate segregation by riding trains in the 1960s. “He believed very much in social justice and equality for all. You could always count on him to get involved in these movements.”
McNichols was a well-known student activist when he was at UCLA.
He was a leader of Platform, a political party for undergraduate student government that aimed to educate the UCLA campus about national issues in the early 1960s.
“Steve represented a spear tip of (a) generation that began to change the attitude of students to get them more engaged in the world around them,” said Rick Tuttle, a UCLA professor of public policy and a friend of McNichols.
In the summer of 1961, McNichols went on a Freedom Ride from UCLA to Houston with 17 other students, protesting interstate segregation. When the Freedom Riders arrived in Houston, they were arrested and sent to the Harris County Jail after demonstrating a sit-in at the Union Station Coffee Shop.
McNichols and three other college students were put into the white male “tank,” where they were beaten badly by the white inmates.
“In the black male cells, the inmates welcomed (the Freedom Riders) when they realized why we were arrested,” said Bob Farrell, who was on the same Freedom Ride with McNichols. “But in the white male cells, there was a lot of antagonism, and the white male inmates took their frustration out on the four young men.”
McNichols and the three students were released from jail when their lawyer realized how severely beaten they were when he came to visit them.
“McNichols was badly hurt when he got kicked in the back, an injury he carried for the rest of his life,” Singleton said.
After McNichols returned to UCLA, he served on the UCLA Student Council for the term 1963 to 1964 as the representative of the National Student Association, a national organization that consisted of university and college student governments.
McNichols and other students also worked together to help create the Community Service Commission, a student-led community service organization, and changed the structure of the Student Council to the Commission system that exists today.
At the same time, McNichols worked to end the discriminatory policies against minority students in housing and public services at UCLA and in Westwood by talking to the chancellor and making sure that the Student Council took down jobs that were posted by employers who were prejudice against minority students, Singleton said. He also participated in the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“Steve was one of those guys who was 100 percent reliable,” Singleton said. “Whatever we were trying to do, he was always ready to put himself into the battle.”
McNichols graduated from UCLA in September 1968.
In the ’70s, he worked for Mayor Tom Bradley in the City Hall Community Development Department where he focused on immigration policies, prison reform, and workers’ rights. Years later, he moved to San Francisco and worked as an attorney for public employees.
“A lot of people stopped caring after the problems (of civil rights) were solved,” Singleton said. “But Steve was always fighting for the cause all his life.”