The A Building: Unrest on Campus

Coming up on the A Building.

I saw somebody running toward the administration builder talking about there with the lock in that happened to be of Saram Jackson.

Sent Tron died of a heroin overdose, with a lot of my buddies in the house when it happened, and Moreouse covered all of these things up.

The A Building, Episode four, Unrest on Campus.

In the heist, the take is always clear, money, jewelry, gold.

This may have gone too far, Sam, that's Daddy King.

We've locked in here and he's not doing too well.

There is no too far.

We're here.

We need action.

Now, everybody, please, you can't expect us to give in to your demands by force.

Once the students had taken over the boardroom, tension ran high. Negotiations were falling apart.

One of the board members fell, silence struck the boardroom, reality sank in. The students were locked in with dick chains, and one of the board members was having a medical emergency.

That board member was Martin Luther King Senior.

We'll go to this moment a little later, but for now, let's flash forward to the twenty first century. Let's go to a time of twenty four hour news and social media. Let's go to Howard University.

Well, students who took over the Blackbird Center at Howard University last week are still fighting for answers tonight.

Our university students sit in continues into day five today.

In twenty twenty one, some students begin to share photos of poorlythic conditions on campus, mold, rodents, and several other issues.

That would create a campus wide firestorm that would make international news.

Do we understand that it is not a normal college experience to be living with molds and having resperratory issues and safety hazards in our living spaces? Stories with videos like this one just an example of.

What students have been living in at Howard University.

There was a cracks pipe that had been there since my mom went to school here and living in these dorms.

Howard holds a very unique position in higher education. Over the years, Howard has been a major center for black intellectual and cultural life, producing influential alumnis such as Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Subpene Court justice, and Vice president Kamala Harris. The university has excelled in law, medicine, business, and the arts.

In the age of social media. The images went viral and the students demanded improvements to their living conditions. These protests were a sore spot for an institution very aware of its public image.

Unlike the student uprising at Moorhouse in nineteen sixty nine, Howard was led by a young president, an alumni, a leader aware of new technology and the waves of social media. Wayne Frederick served Howard University as president from twenty fourteen to twenty twenty three. His MS, NBA, and medical degree were all earned at Howard. He knows the school inside and out. At the time of these protests in twenty twenty one, he was only forty nine years old.

Despite this, his initial reaction felt a little old school. He released the statement in response to the sit in protest at Blackburn Center on campus.

He writes, there may be areas where we agree to disagree. That's the nature of a vibrant community. However, Howard university's proud tradition of student protest has never been and can never be invoked as a justification for tactics that harm our students. The current occupation of the Armour J. Blackburn

The students responded in kind to the president's letter. They felt unheard or even worse chastised. Like the logne the Moorhouse in nineteen sixty nine, the students at Howard needed another way to draw attention. The students pitch tends outside the dorms, a bold, visual and symbolic gesture.

So, as we said from the beginning, we're not leaving until our for demands are met. There's no comprom They're easy. You know, no school wants to be protested against. But it's not like we're out here because we want hot tubs in our dormitories. It's because we want double commisions.

We are going to be calling for the resignation of Wayne Ai frederation.

These images would draw even more attention to the university.

President Frederick's attempt to keep the issues in house would backfire, and this protest would grow into a national story. Similar stories in the national media would travel about the lock in at Moorhouse in nineteen sixty nine. A consistent word would fill the headlines militant.

What else is there?

What else is there? Why are you talking like that?

We didn't do this?

They did this. Malcolm is dead, Martin is dead.

What are we doing?

What risk are we taking?

Think about the shoulders we stand on.

Listen, I understand all that.

Okay, we're talking about the trustees. We're talking about losing everything.

You're about to graduate.

You ready to give up all that?

Listen to yourself, lose everything more than Malcolm, more than doctor King.

What did they lose? What did their families lose?

Atlanta is going to.

Get left behind?

But the world, the world is going to keep moving faster and faster.

Which side you want to be on, doctor King? Huh? But you want to lock up his daddy. Here's doctor Cornell West on the legacy of doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. Taken from a c SPAN interview with Khalil Gibrad Muhammad.

He's one of the great moments in the tradition of a grand people who, in the face of terror and trauma and stigma, was able to generate levels of love and vision and unbelievable high quality service to the least of these. He is a Christian minister first and foremost.

That is his calling.

You and I know that Brother Martin gets deodorized every January. He gets sanitized and staillized every classified. Yeah, they said to classify the old man with a smile, toys in his bag, handing out gifts. Everybody got a smile on their face. And the FBI is saying he's the most dangerous man in America.

In the wake of m OK's assassination, this black leader who's viewed by the FBI as the most dangerous man in America. The More House students were planning their own response.

The more House board meets after the Spellman one.

We have to take that one over.

We'll lock them in and we won't let them out until our demands are met.

I'll talk to Sam and the guys. They're down with it.

Sam is down.

Where is he He's coming.

He's getting the brothers together from Moe Brown. Why do you ask no reason?

Welcome back to the A building. Here's former More House alum and civil rights activist James Early on his own experience of the Locke In and his relationship with Samuel L.

Jackson. So take us like this from your point of view into the events of the of the lock in. So first quick question, did you did you know or do you know at that time? Did you know Sam Jackson personally?

Oh?

Yeah, so yeah, Sam, Sam is I think a year behind me.

Okay, this is a subjective read on my let me let me Understroy that.

I haven't seen Sam probably in thirty years, but I'm in touch with his major running buddy. So they were a year behind me. He and Clark White, doctor Clark White.

Refa marijuana had hit.

So you know we rather we were.

We ran the streets trying to find REFA and and drinking.

Wine, hanging out on that corner. That's how I know Sam. You know we were.

We were not thuggish, We were just not fully status quo. His wife was actually trained as a youngster in the arts by Brandis Johnson Wagan, And so I know Sam from that context. After the takeover, I think during that summer we hung out at the.

Rat Brown Center. You were telling a story about cars, though, is there's something well.

Sam, let's see Clark White Grizznoid.

He had a Volkswagen, as I remember, you know, we could probably get ten twelve guys to a Volkswagen trying to find that reefer, trying to pick up some spell mcgirls to go to a house party. You know, some guys were get together and rent an apartment, find mattresses, take rugs out of the cafeteria and put them on the floor. No electricity running sometimes probably no running water. We would throw these house parties and whatnot. And so

I do a lot on Facebook.

So he makes a note and he always refers to me by my meddle name as Counts. So that's you know, Sam went through a deep period of drugs and rehabilitation, and I.

Suspect I don't know this that you know.

Part of the rehabilitation process is I understand it from drugs, is you don't really want to engage with people you used to do drugs with and Sam I think has a he has a work addiction. You know this guy, he is never not working, Yeah, always, I mean he is never now And you say, wow, does he do that? I mean he has something that that interior motive and I think it's probably to fill his life.

So in that.

Period, then heroin hits, and fortunately the first time I did it it was a dud. And fortunately the second time I did it, I realized, Wow, this high is something that is so exhilarating that I think I want to go as fast as I can in the opposite direction.

So, you know, I was lucky because Centron.

Died of a heroin overdose with a lot of my buddies in the house when it happened. Somebody took his shoes and morehouse covered all of these things up, you know. But again, these are indicators of a changing society and more House as an institution, as a very Valian institution. I don't any way want to undermine the significance.

And the products, but they were status quo oriented.

So so tell us like how you first hear about the lock in, how you end up in there, and what happens when you get in there?

So I don't know.

Who mentioned it to me the evening before the takeover.

I'm not even sure I knew that there was a Board of trustees meeting. Somebody says, you know, there's a meeting tonight and we're going to go to the board and trust see tomorrow. I don't know how they framed it. I don't think the word like we're going to go take over was there. And the meeting was over at Spelman, and I always made my evening rounds at Spelman. You know, I had several dormitories I needed to visit. Then I had my main squeeze that I needed to finally end up.

Another former more housealone, Aaron Stephen Brown, recalls how he heard about the lock in.

All of a sudden one day, standing out on the campus talking to doctor Whalem Wendle Whalem, I saw somebody run by me, running toward the Administration building talking about there at the lock in that happened to be a Sam Jackson. He was running saying they were lucking in people at the Administratives and building. Come on, come on. And I had just gotten there shortly, so I wasn't taking any chances of getting involved in something that might have me kicked out before I got there.

Good.

I watched as some people followed and they went down to the Administration building and there was that lock in. I did know though, that the senior doctor King was one of those I was locked in and he wasn't having it. He was telling them, you could do what you want to, but you're not locking me in. And they respected that because out of everybody else, they let him go.

And now back to James Early.

So my interior evolving self hits another level that I had not planned.

The hit.

I wesht over, climbed up a tree on that south side of the a build, that side that faces the library, and there was a tree that ran right up the side of the building. I climbed the tree into the second floor because the doors had been locked.

I go in. I'm in the hallway.

The hallways packed Abdullah Khalai Matt and a few other students were inside the conference room with the board.

And I go in the room.

Welcome back to the A building.

Here's former More House alum and civil rights activist James Early.

And I go in the room and Abdullah is running Adula Klai Mott, who is a great agitational artor who knows a lot of global.

History and jazz music and all of that, and he.

Was really browbeating them.

I can't remember the particulars, but they were like, you know, they were like shocked. I remember Daddy King saying, I got to get out of here. I have a heart condition, and so they ushered him right away. And I remember doctor may is just sitting very very quietly. I remember Gloucester, you know, it had a just unsettling look on his face. I mean it was it was like shocking to them. And I'm trying to remember the Merrill Lynch guy. I used to know his name. He was on the board.

He was a big donor to Morehouse.

Judge Tuttle from the fifth District Court was was on that board, Daddy King.

So there was some real heavy hitters, oh, heavy heavy hitters right right, and Abdull I.

Mean he was beating them to death with rhetoric, and you can imagine it was just shocking. I mean, these principles in the black community and their white alliances and their donors, and no one had ever propped up in seen anything like this. And you get then you got these students out in the hallway. He's really bombarding this room. And I remember that the guy from Merrill Lynch very quietly at the end of the first day, I don't know, around six thirty seven o'clock in the evening, he takes

Table and then goes asleep. And the next morning it's so surreal.

I know, it was you know again in the moment, you know, I'm twenty one years old.

You know it was our hearts beating, all right, this.

Is kind of an open wound was happening.

And this contextual change going on in society, and I think like a lot of young people are certainly trends of young people. My anti establishment kind of sentiment. It was not like any real formed ideology. It was that I didn't fit.

But the next morning, this guy from Meryl gets up. At some point he announces he would.

Give ten thousand dollars for extudiast department when you went in there, because you were a senior.

Correct. Yeah, so we're talking weeks away from graduation. So are you thinking to yourself, Okay, what's the ramification?

Like, Am I gotta get in trouble for this? No?

No, no, because I think it was a crowd mentality.

You know, we're caught up in the wow that they've taken over the administration building and you know, some of our pizza in there, so let me you know. And you know, there were guys making long distance phone calls. So it was not a very disciplined organized grouping. On that second day, some agreements were written up, I think about black studies, and and then this term of exoneration.

No, no, no, no, they didn't say anything.

It may have been Abdullah came up, Okay, wow, this is going to be now.

Our response to this a punitive response.

And so this term of impunity or whatever, I forget the term we put into the written document. I think I sent you a copy of my letter of my suspension.

Dear mister Early, as a result of your participation in the lock in of members of the trustee boards of Morehouse College and Atlanta University, along with representatives of the Morehouse College Student Government Association on April eighteenth, nineteen nineteen sixty nine, the Advisory Committee has taken the following action. You are hereby suspended from Morehouse College effective May thirty,

The others may have letters, they will all say the same thing.

I suspect we were brought.

In for punitive evaluation, and I think we were brought in in different groups. I don't remember who was in there with me, but I do remember Sam William saying something to the effect about me, you have to take this guy kind of seriously.

He didn't elaborate.

I don't know if that was the saving grace of that my degree was only suspended for a year, rather than I don't know, taking a more drastic measure of not conferring a degree on me. One other thing that happened to me in the context of this directly tied to the takeover.

My favorite teacher contacted me.

She says, I have been told that you have to take a comprehensive exam.

I'd never heard of this. She was crying. Oh and she she's.

A tiny, little serious Cuban scholar.

She was she was torn, and so I went in in a drug stupor.

And she gave me this comprehensive exam. It took like three hours or so.

As I recall, I was never told I needed I would have to take a comprehensive exam.

And the way she called me.

It suggested that neither did she.

Know that, but somehow they had. Anyway, how'd you do on the exam?

I probably didn't do very well on the exam, would be my guest.

But I don't think it was I don't think it was probably even a question of how that was to be evaluated.

I think it was.

I suspect it was a kind of punitive, and I think I probably told you all I can tell you about what happened inside and what I'm aware of what happened afterwards. I heard that students were banned, that letters were sent out to Black College's banning students from transferring from transferring.

Yeah, yeah, And I don't know.

In the case of Sam, I think they went back to Morehouse.

Maybe two years later. Years later, Yeah, he went back to Morehouse. It was, And because what happened to the students who were expelled was that they then had to just reapply and they were admitted back to the institution. So some it was a year, some it was two years. Yeah.

Yeah.

And because then I go off to the ends.

Of the Black World and and to that arena, and then you know, off to Howard and I'm on another trajectory, but that trajectory is of my personal and professional life is tied directly to the takeover. And then Vincent Harding, hearing that I needed a job, he sent a message to me saying, come see me.

I have a job for you at the Martin Luther King documentation project. And I got around these black intellectuals. So there is a tie.

But I you know, I'm not really.

A part of the the Moorhouse community per se.

Just as James Early described the change in his life through this protest, many students down the years have had the same experience standing up for something worth fighting for.

In twenty fifteen, the University of Missouri found itself at the center of a racial controversy. The protests were fueled by incidents on campus in funeral dissatisfaction with the university's response.

Black students reported multiple racist incidents on campus, including racial slurs and cyberbullying. This would lead to the creation of Concerned Student nineteen fifty, a student activist group named after the year Massoo first admitted black students. They demanded university leadership take action against racism.

The campus issues would reach a fever pick from the entire football team announced they would not practice or play until president Timothy Wolfe resigned from this post.

Thirty African American football players at the University of Missouri say they're on strike and they won't play again until the university's president, Tim Wolfe resigns or is removed.

The move thrust Any into the national spotlight.

This morning's Board of Curators meetings started with wolf at the podium, collet it quits. He used my resignation to heal and start talking again, to make the change is necessary, and let's focus on changing what we can change today and in the future.

President of the university lost his job. That's certainly not a cause for celebration. It's sad that it had to

Or you exited your post.

That a university football team with at least thirty two African Americans decided, with the support of their coaches, to protest and join this group Concerned Student nineteen fifty.

This brought international attention to Columbia, Missouri. The protest became much bigger than a single moment back in nineteen sixty nine. The students of Morehouse and Spelman felt exactly the same way.

Right now, as a student body president, I am meeting with students. We are discussing what in fact, trying to take the situation out of the confused state. We're trying to discover what an fact all the things that we want. There was a lot of mixed feeling going on, you know, in fact, there were many students who desired change, who didn't felt that the right way was being used to get these changes, et cetera. Were right now sitting down

The board members are now trapped in the room. Patience is weren't things the students weren't answers, But what are their demands?

We need to be unified as one school. They don't even have black studies at Morehouse.

Listen, listen, please, we can work together. I understand what you're trying to say. These demands you learn these ideas from my son Martin. They're not unreasonable, but we can't give in to them. This is not the way to handle this. There is another way.

The moment would extend far beyond the students in the boardroom. Hundreds of students assembled outside of Harkness Hall to show solidarity, and the moment would continue to grow.

MLKA University was tagged all over campus with white graffiti. They called themselves the Concerned Students. This simple label would be a far cry from the militant label that would be plastered on headlines all over the country.

These board meetings were generally pretty standard for Morehouse President Hugh Gloucester. He was only two years since his twenty years of service as president during the lock in. He was the seventh president in the history of Morehouse College and would be responsible for establishing the Morehouse School of Medicine but in this day, at this moment, he was offering his resignation.

Doctor Gloucester submitted his resignation as president of Morehouse College, effective on a day to be agreed upon by the board in himself, because he would not participate in a meeting in which members of the Board of Trustees are confined in this conference room by force and I was subjected to insult and intimidation. He said that he would not sign any document or vote on any motion presented in such a meeting, and that he would not be

In this moment, in nineteen sixty nine, Atlanta had become the epicenter of a cultural shift. The impact of this locking will be felt for decades. More House was more than a stage. It was a battlefield, a battlefield of ideas. You should get some sleep. Sleep feels like I haven't slept in ages.

Well, everything changes tomorrow.

You scared?

Terrified?

You? Okay? Good? Glad I ain't the only one no turning back now.

You're not.

Been singing Yeah the old Morehouse.

I hope I feel that way tomorrow night.

Spellman Morehouse will feel this way forever, no matter what happens tomorrow.

Next time on the A Building.

We have broken the status, but we've changed.

So that's one of the reasons why our winds, our protests have created this atmosphere right now, to take away our history, to take away everything from us, because we've won too much.

In the eyes.

I really hope that we can still address social ills together.

The A Building is produced by Imagine Audio for iHeart Podcasts. It is written and hosted by me Hans Charles and my co host menelec La Mumba.

It is executive produced by Karl Welker and Nathan Klope, me Mandelich, Wlamomba, 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 Fernarra with producer John Asanti, Sound design and music by Alloy.

Tracks, and special thanks to April Ryan, Doctor, Elia Davis, Kim Feci Ada Bobby know and James Early. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and review the A Building on Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.