Rick Tuttle (born January 5, 1940) is an American politician, university administrator and educator from Los Angeles, California. Early life Rick Tuttle was born in New Haven, Connecticut, one of four children of Frederick Burton Tuttle and his wife, Mary Emily. His father was a descendant of a longtime New England family that originally settled in New Haven in 1638. His mother's family came from Arkansas. Due to his father's service in the U.S. Marine Corps, the family moved to Arkansas, then back to Connecticut and afterwards to Rhode Island before finally settling in Plattsburgh, New York, where he graduated high school. In civilian life, Frederick, Tuttle's father, was a high school track coach before becoming a school principal in a predominantly African-American New Haven neighborhood. He was also a member of the NAACP, and his involvement in civic affairs made a strong impression on his son. Education Tuttle received a Ph.D. in 1975 and an M.A. in history in 1964 from UCLA, as well as a B.A. in history, with honors and distinction, from Wesleyan University in 1962. He worked his way through college by working on various jobs, including at construction sites and as a farm hand. While an undergraduate at Wesleyan, Tuttle was a member of the university's Civil Rights Committee. Raised as an Episcopalian and Methodist, he served as president of its Alpha Chi Rho chapter and led a campaign to end what was then the fraternity's official policy of restricting membership to Christians. Civil rights era activism While a graduate student at UCLA, Tuttle participated in the Freedom Rides in 1961 and was recruited to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1963. He went to Greenwood, Mississippi to work on voter registration drives and also briefly spied on white supremacist and Ku Klux Klan meetings. After being driven out of Mississippi by threats, he joined the Chatham County Crusade for Voters in Savannah, Georgia, where he was arrested, without a proper warrant, for disturbing the peace and jailed for six weeks. Tuttle called Medgar Evers from jail to solicit his assistance a few hours before Evers was killed. He was ultimately released by a local judge after a prominent Savannah physician offered his property as bond in exchange for Tuttle's agreement to leave the county. Public service Tuttle was elected to four four-year terms in non-partisan elections as Los Angeles City Controller, serving