The A Building: Historically Black

Coming up on the A Building.

This is your time.

The light of new realization shines on you today.

This was an era of terror. It was not a term network.

This is an era of terrorism, of lynchings, of rape, of impunity.

I knew doctor Gloucester very well.

Yeah, what kind of man was he?

Well, he was a more rigid He kept telling me to shave my beard.

The A Building, Episode three, Historically Black.

Atlanta, nineteen ninety six gold medalist Muhammad Ali lights the torch to start the Olympic Games. His body, now controlled by Parkins's disease, could barely hold steady as he lights the torch. He manages to light the flame and he raises the torch, his arms shaking from the disease. It made the once invincible boxing champion into a mortal man with a frail body. However, in that moment, he reminded the world why he was still the greatest champion of

The decision goes to Cassius Play of the United States Masterful Boxing Exhibition.

Nineteen sixty nine, just nine years after I Leave won gold in Rome, Atlantis sat Amid another historic moment, but unlike Olympic sports, victory would be much harder to prove.

At an HBCU halftime is game time. The sounds of the big band carry through a stadium with pulse and energy. There is no place like a historically black college on Saturday.

Dion Saturdays took the road of college football by storm when he took the head coaching position at Jackson State University in Mississippi in eighteen seventy seven. Jackson State was originally called Natchez Seminary. The school was established to educate recently free slaves and prepare them for a new world of American possibility. Jackson State is just one example of a storied history of historically black colleges and universities. As

I'm pretty certain this is why God led me to Jackson State University, to HBCU, to the Swag. I'm pretty certain that's why I tried to tell you. Everybody nobody wanted.

To listen to.

You thought I was just just running the mouth, and it was not that. I truly believe. You know, we stand by that word. I believe and we truly believe that it's going to be a change. Everything I've done in my life, I provoke change.

Change At an HBCU, change is more than cliche. It is a way of life. And they knew that at Morehouse. Here's a young graduate and more House man Otto Taylor discussing his reasons for attending me.

It was always, you know, what is my why when I get discouraged? What I go back to to keep me going even if I don't feel like going to class or doing my work? Got standing behind me. Doctor Martin Luther King Junior DATD Team Warehouse College. But a lot of enough people don't know about his mentor Doctor Benjamin lager Mas very intricate part of the Moorhouse mystique, and I see that today on campus.

A lot of people have left at Marco Morehouse and now Elwood Robinson talks about the mission and value of HBCUs in the US.

HBCUs have strived to be driven by something more than the market economy. There has been the vision that a university would be an inescapable social.

Force for good.

This has attracted a caguary of faculty, staff, and administrative to these institutions who came because of a strong sense of mission and providing an excellent educational experience to those who have been denied access because of racial, social, cultural, or economic barriers.

In the core of the HBCU experience. As I mentioned earlier, HBCUs account for three percent of collegies and universities in the United States.

But they play an outsizeer role and the success of this black leaders and politics, sports, business, and the arts. Here are just a few.

We love road called y'all.

Lionel Richie, everybody see everybody, Advanced tu Ski University, Taraji p Henson.

There are no colored bathrooms in this building.

Howard University. Thirdgood Marshall, I'm getting Nolan coming apart. Howard University.

Oprah Winfrey, Who's proud to vote again and again and again, because I'm an American, and that's what Americans do.

Tennessee State University, Common Fletsco, Florida A and.

M University, Jerry Rice, I.

Always gave one.

Mississippi Valley State, Walter Payton.

Life is short. It's also sweet.

Jack The State University, Steve McNair.

It's been ups and downs. I learned from the good and I learned from the bad.

Our Course State University, Erkabadu A warm and Sunday Grahmy State University, Chadwick Boseman. This is your time.

The light of new realization shines on you today.

Howard University, Felicia Rishard.

Doctor King was assassinated in my sophomore year.

I watched these things happen.

So much unfolded on that campus.

Howard University, Kamala Harris.

And together, let us write the next great chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told.

Howard University, Spike Lee.

Let's do the right thing. Do you know how to get that.

Any Morehouse College, Samuel L. Jackson.

The dream has been shared with my partner in crime, my critic and residents, my rock solid foundation, and my best friend.

Tell you Morehouse College, Latanya, Richardson Jackson.

If there's something we can do.

We get to it.

Spelman College, Stacy Abrams.

We were dreaming here in Georgia.

We were dreaming about a president and a vice president who could look at us and actually see us.

Spelman College, and the list goes on and on.

Welcome back to the A Building. The impact of HBCU alumni goes far beyond the Richard famous. You can find HBCU alumni in every industry and work in large corporations that work as teachers. Their impact is directly connected to the American experience. Despite a nationwide decline in college enrollment, many HBCUs saw an increase in student applications and enrollment

In response to growing interest, HBCUs expanded academic programs in stem science, technology, engineering and mathematics, healthcare, and entrepreneurship. Schools such as Howard University, North Carolina A and T State University and Spelman College saw growth in their engineering and medical programs, partnering with major corporations to provide students with

Back in nineteen sixty nine, the students of Morehouse College wanted more from the HBCU experience. HBCUs were often too conservative for the wide raising protests of the sixties. In those days, the class and political divide was drawn by education. This created conflict between an old school administration at Morehouse and the new generation that would be drawn to leaders like h. Ray Brown, Up Newton and ADAMLA. Davis. Battle lines have been drawn, but what are the stakes and

Well, firstly, I you know, I had a lot of sympathy both for the president and for the students. Sure, you know what, the late sixties were a fraught time, and elect state government, you know, would have its young rotc kids really fire on students who were their own

Well, okay, what's your view on the board lock in? In nineteen sixty nine.

I could understand a president or members of a board. Anyone being locked in would be upset because it is resisting authority, and it makes it difficult to carry on a conversation, to really listen to each other and to say is there a path forward that we could do together to address the concern that you have. As I listened to the story of the lock in at Morehouse, I kind of admire both sides for that story. I

Here's more from doctor Lomax, president and CEO of the United Ingo College Fund and former president of Duluk University, Doctor Lomax, If you're in charge doing that lock in sixty eight or sixty nine, do you expel those students? I mean, don't.

I don't want to say in one sense, I don't want to say. Guest Hugh Gloucester, he handed me my degree. Yeah, because I was in the first graduated class and I knew.

Doctor Gloucester very well.

Yeah. What kind of man was he?

Well, he was a more rigid.

He kept telling me to shave my beard so I would play you.

You know, I was called in weeks a week before graduation by the dean of the college, a guy named Brailsford Brazil, who had been given the authority to do this, I'm sure, by Hugh Gloucester. And doctor Brazil said, uh, you know you're going to graduate. We can't stop you, but you need to shave that beard off because you look like a goriller. And you know I love doctor Brazil, And I said, you know, but you know I was graduating second in the class Phi Beta Kappa, and I.

Said, well, you know what, I guess I've just got to look like a gorilla.

The things that they thought were important in my life how I appeared had nothing to do with who I was, So I know I would say if doctor Gloucester had asked me, i'd have said I definitely would not have expelled them. When I had a student graduated the year that I had John Lewis as the speaker, and we gave honorary degrees to him and to Julian Bond. And we had a policy at at Dillard you could march even if you hadn't completed everything, if you had something

I was a little bit surprised. But what was the reaction.

Well, we didn't expel her. We didn't say she could never get her degree. We just required her to take a course in anger management before she I haven't seen that young lady since, but she now a dinograt and she got her degree.

She to anger imagine maclass.

That was a requirement.

Welcome back to the A building. More with our conversation with doctor Lomex.

Let me ask you, then, what do you think about the jeers that did? I watch several clips of these jeers.

Hans is talking about the commission address for President Claire Shipman at Columbia.

We firmly believe that our international students have the same rights to freedom and speech as everyone else's market are playing the government for exercising that right.

I watched the facial expression of the President and it felt at some point that she was either surprised or disappointment at the length of the.

Jeers with those presidents is what do you expect? I mean, what do you expect? You don't know the students, you don't engage with the students. And I'm going to just say this about what I saw happening on those campuses from October eighth on. I went to Columbia academic year in nineteen sixty eight sixty nine, the year after their lockup.

I will say this.

Always embraced me, always celebrated my achievements, and never allowed how I looked or what I thought to diminish the respect that I received. And I think we have to learn to do that. And I believe that we've learned to do that at HBCUs. We have to continue to cultivate that and we have to share that with the world. That is one of our gifts to American higher education. But there's a dark side to the world of HBCUs.

Quote.

The lawsuit accused Maryland of underfunding these institutions while developing programs at traditionally white schools that directly compete with them, draining away prospective students. In twenty thirteen, a federal judge ruled that the state maintained a dual and segregated education system that violated the Constitution end quote.

In September of twenty thirteen, the US Secretary of Education and US Secretary of Agriculture sent letters to sixteen governors across the country serving their disparity in funding between laggrad HBCUs and their mind HBCU Land grand peers. These disparities affect schools like Tennessee State University, which in September of twenty twenty four support to be underfunded by the state by as much as two billion dollars. GCU is reportedly

While students at HBCUs feel the financial pressure at their respective schools. In twenty twenty three, the Supreme Court reversed a long standing affirmative action ruling, gutting race based admission considerations. During the unrests of the pandemic, black students and students of color documented and protested their struggles with equal treatment at predominantly white institutions.

In the fall of twenty twenty one, a protest erupted on the campus of Howard University. The situation was more complex because the president, doctor Wayne Frederick, not only held three degrees from Howard University, but was relatively young in his late forties.

The students were protesting housing conditions on campus. Things took a turn when students pitched tents on campus. The visuals embarrassed the university not sit in.

At Howard University, about a dozen demonstrators are still occupying Blackburn Universeverity Center. The students are demanding representation on the university's board of trustees. They're also calling for action to address living conditions in student dorms.

So, students, I've been facing a lot of issues on campus, everything from housing to tuition increases to safety issues on campus, and we feel as though administration is not listening to us.

Back in nineteen sixty nine, HBCU students were experiencing some of the same issues. We spoke to doctor Alvita King, niece to Martin Luther King Junior and granddaughter to Daddy King. Who better to give us perspective on the climate of Atlanta at the time and the thinking of both men.

When is the first time you heard the story of the lockout?

Actually, during the time that it happened, I didn't know. Samuel L.

Jackson became a famous actor and all that and a big voice that everybody listens to. But back in those days, I heard about it, but I was on a different front of protests, you see. I wasn't Black power all of this. I tried to do that, but my daddy before he was killed. Dad was killed the next year A d King, Martin's brother was killed and throwing the swimming pool no water in his lungs. But until Daddy died, he made sure that I didn't join the Black power

Do you recall, as you all called in Daddy King's reaction to that locking or his reaction to being essentially held hostage in that way.

You know, he was like these young folks, That's what he would have said, you know, his own son. He didn't agree with all my uncle and Daddy's tactics. He would ask them to come back off, to not be so forceful with that. This were too dangerous. There's got to be a better way. That was Granddaddy's perspective. So he would have had to have looked at it. What was he in his forties then, maybe fifties alm, But he would have had to say, these are the young folks.

In our question to deep in this event, the first person we found who was willing to speak about the lock in and was actually participant was James Counts Early, a cultural educator in Morehouse alone class of sixty nine. Here's what he had to say, starting with Benjamin Mays.

The only real image I have of him is the quiet doctor Mace when we took over the administration building and.

He was sitting there.

He sat basically quiet.

I don't remember him saying anything in the whole meeting, at least those parts of the meeting that I was engaged in.

He was a stately looking man. He was quiet. Gloucester was really on the pin head of consideration.

That was for the sort of clash with executive authority at Morehouse. But I don't have any larger I never read doctor.

Mays, you know.

I knew he was a highly touted and highly respected figure, and I accepted that there was a historical reasons for that, but it was never He was never a point of reference for me. So I don't have any more familiar kinds of intersections with him.

James, tell us a little bit about the institution of the Black World, and to follow up on that, a little bit about the man who, from your perspective, led the lock in.

Abdullah Calamonde INSWO the Black World is a major catalyst for the Black Studies movement.

They organized major conferences. Abdullah Klimite is still one of the principles and the evolution and ongoing issues and new generations of people who were doing black studies.

That was a sign of a changing moment, a major sign of a changing moment, because he was connected to doctor King, Missus King, to all of those upper class, middle class people in Atlanta who were fighting vigorously to break American apartheid, a metaphor we now use in hindsight to break American segregation.

Another key figure here was a Spellman student, doctor Bernie Johnson Reagan. She had gone to college at sixteen.

Was its spell from Albany State.

Because she organized a protest against white man trying to pick up black students, and the black community was very unsettled.

I mean, we must try to think about this. This was a day. This was an era of terror. It was not a terminenty.

This was an era of terrorism, of lynchings, of rape, of impunity in which black people would move off the sidewalk when white people were coming.

You didn't look him in the eye.

And my generation, I'm now almost seventy nine years old, but you know, as an eighteen year old while I live that, I'm.

Not sure we didn't understand the cavity of that.

Sure, and So the integrationist move was to find an equality, which is to be positively acknowledged.

You know.

Now we critique it as you know King, and as before he died Harry Belafonte, with whom I became very close to, we used to say how King would say, you know, I think we're integrating a burning house.

But that was an evolution in King's thinking as he was as he was about it.

You're attracted to this particular professor. You hear about this particular course of this book that somebody shared that, you know, the way people would talk around in dorm rooms and spaces, and this is perculating, right.

And plus King has been killed. Yes, so this is a globe.

This is an Atlanta shock, it's a Moorhouse shock, it's a national shock, it's.

A global shock.

The whole society was unsettled, The whole liberal society was unsettled because King was not just an individualized black figure. He was a contextual figure of massive change.

American history lives in the echoes of education. These echoes speak to the fights of the past and the promise of the future. Education provides stability in the potential of economics, prosperity, Is that enough? Next time on the A Building.

I climbed the tree into the second floor because the doors have been locked.

I go in.

I'm in the hallway.

The hallway is packed.

Abdu La kale Made and a few other students were inside the conference room with the board.

And I go in the room. The A Building is produced by Imagine Audio for iHeart Podcasts. It is written and hosted by me Hans Charles and my co host menelike La Mumba.

It is executive produced by Karl Wa Poker and Nathan Klok me manelik Wamomba and Hans Charles.

Executive producers at iHeart Podcasts are Katrina Norville and Nikki Torre. Marketing lead is David Wasserman.

It is produced, directed, and edited by Timothy Fernara with producer John Asanti, Sound design and music by Alloy Trex.

And special thanks to April Ryan, Doctor, Elia Davis, Kim vs Ada, Bobby Know and James Early. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and review The A Building on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast