March 28, 2024
Art Littleworth: A person of faith and civic responsibility
RIVERSIDE – (INT) – City and education leaders are mourning the passing of Art Littleworth who leaves a legacy of solid community involvement.

The retired attorney and former school board president died Monday at his Riverside home. He was 98.

Littleworth’s life inspired both a book and a film. But, he considered his leadership to be a matter of faith and civic responsibility.

He spearheaded the integration of Riverside public schools which became the first in the nation to do so without a court order. Littleworth was credited with saving the iconic Mission Inn, the largest mission revival style building in the United States; and to ensure quality regional drinking water.

Littleworth wrote a memoir, No Easy Way, borrowing the title from a column about him by Tom Wicker of The New York Times. Wicker described the challenges Littleworth faced as school board president when on Sept. 7, 1965, a month after the Los Angeles Watts riots, an arsonist firebombed Riverside’s segregated Lowell Elementary School. There were no arrests. The attack prompted boycotts by Black students and amplified already-heightened racial tensions so much it forced Littleworth’s family to relocate because of threats of violence, his daughter, Anne Taylor, recalled.

Last year, the City of Riverside produced a two-hour documentary film, A Good Life, about Littleworth’s contributions, and proclaimed him its “citizen of the century.”
Story Date: October 24, 2021
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