Frank Wills and the Importance of Ordinary Americans Doing the Right Thing |
On June 17, 1972, Frank Wills, a 24-year-old, black security guard, working the night shift at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., detected a piece of tape on a door lock leading to the offices of the headquarters of the National Democratic Committee. He removed the tape and returned later to find another piece holding open the latch. He called the police, and five men were arrested for burglary. That call set in motion events that led to the prosecution of several men in the administration of Richard Nixon and ultimately the end of his Presidency. Because Wills did the right thing, we now remember this day as the anniversary of the Watergate Scandal.
Wills was, for all intents and purposes, an “ordinary American.” While many black people in the post-WWII Southern Civil Rights Movement—such as E.D. Nixon, Claudette Colvin, Amzie Moore, and Ruby Doris Smith Robinson—acted intentionally as part of a concerted effort to challenge the social and political inequalities of the system of Jim Crow, Wills found himself at an historical pivot point somewhat by accident. What he shares with these crucial figures is that, for the most part, they are lost to our nation’s historical........