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Alexander Demitri "Alex" Shimkin〔Shimkin's nickname sometimes appears as "Alec", as in (Lynda Zimmer, "Urbana Class of '62 reunites; alum on trail of classmates," ''The News-Gazette'', Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, July 26, 2008 ).〕 (October 11, 1944 - July 12, 1972) was an American war correspondent who was killed in Vietnam. He is notable for his investigation of non-combatant casualties in Operation Speedy Express. ==Early life and civil rights work== Born in Washington, D.C., Shimkin moved with his family in 1960 to Urbana, Illinois, where his parents, anthropologists Demitri B. Shimkin (1916–1992) and Edith Manning Shimkin (1912–1984), had joined the faculty of the University of Illinois.〔Shimkin's father was born in Siberia and emigrated with his family after the October Revolution. See (Demitri Shimkin obituary, ''New York Times'', December 25, 1992 ), and (L. Daniel Myers, "Memorial to Demitri Boris Shimkin," ''Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology'', (17)1, University of California Merced, 1995, pp. 1-4. ) Shimkin's paternal uncle was cancer researcher Dr. Michael B. Shimkin (1913-1989). See (Dr. Michael B. Shimkin obituary, ''New York Times'', January 20, 1989 ), and (Michael B. Shimkin, University of California: In Memoriam, 1989. )〕 Although he was baptized an Episcopalian, Shimkin and his family were members of a Methodist church in Urbana.〔Oral history interview. Shimkin was interviewed in 1965 in Jackson, Mississippi, about his civil rights experience by KZSU, Stanford University's student radio station.〕 Intensely interested in military history, he made notebooks listing the order of battle for World War I armies.〔Turse, ''Kill Anything That Moves'', p. 248.〕 Shimkin graduated from Urbana High School in 1962,〔(In Memoriam: Urbana Class of 1962. )〕 then attended the University of Michigan where he majored in history.〔Oral history interview.〕 He left college in 1965 and became a civil rights worker, first with the Northern Student Movement in Alabama, then with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP).〔 In Alabama, he was in the "Turnaround Tuesday" march led by Martin Luther King, Jr., from Selma to the Edmund Pettus Bridge〔Oral history interview. Shimkin called this "the great U-turn that Dr. King led."〕 and was arrested twice in Montgomery.〔Information that accompanies Shimkin's archived (booking photo ) in the Alabama Department of Archives and History indicates his affiliation with the Northern Student Movement and that he was arrested on March 18, and March 22, 1965, each time for disobeying police orders.〕 In Mississippi, he was among 140 demonstrators arrested in Natchez on October 2, 1965, and detained three days at Parchman State Prison Farm, where he and others were kept naked in cold cells with no bedding.〔Bierstein.〕 He wrote an eight-page "Natchez Political Handbook" outlining the local political structure and the right to demonstrate.〔(Description: University of Georgia, Civil Rights Digital Library, Record Number 1111. ) (Facsimile: University of Southern Mississippi Digital Collections. ) Shimkin wrote a similar voter guide for the 1967 elections in Holmes County. Sojourner, pp. 231-232.〕 Shimkin was a full-time MFDP staff member in Quitman County in 1966.〔(''Freedom Information Service Mississippi Newsletter'', no. 1, June 22, 1966, p.3. ) Facsimile accessed October 23, 2012, through the University of Georgia Civil Rights Digital Library.〕 On June 9, 1966, he joined the March Against Fear organized by activist James Meredith who had been shot and injured a few days before.〔Goudsouzian, pp. 51-53. One of Shimkin's companions from Quitman County, a 58-year-old African American named Armistead Phipps, died of heart failure during the march. "He was a decent Christian man," Shimkin said of Phipps. "I feel honestly that if he'd known he was about to die he would have done it this way."〕 In Holmes County, he helped organize a Head Start program and a voter registration drive that registered over 6,000 African Americans for the 1967 election.〔Logan and Frate in E. Shimkin et al., p. 9, and D. Shimkin in Eaton, p. 96. Logan and Frate cite a 1968 report of the United States Commission on Civil Rights that shows a jump in nonwhite voter registration in Holmes County from 20 to 6,332 following enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The registration effort contributed to the election of Robert G. Clark, Jr., the first African American in the Mississippi House of Representatives since Reconstruction.〕 Together with his father, Shimkin organized a project through which 18 African American students from Holmes County were selected to attend the University of Illinois.〔Logan and Frate in E. Shimkin et al., p. 11. This was called the "Mississippi Pilot Project." All but three of the students completed their undergraduate work. Shimkin also launched a drive on the University of Illinois campus that raised $1,325 for needy Mississippi children. 〕 In a note that he left behind in Mississippi, Shimkin wrote, "Since I was barely twenty, I've devoted almost every moment of my life to the (rights ) movement...."〔Sojourner, p. 254.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Alexander D. Shimkin」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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