Speaker 1: Coming up on the A Building.
Speaker 2: We have broken the status what we've changed. So that's
Speaker 2: one of the reasons why our wins, our protests have
Speaker 2: created this atmosphere right now to take away our history,
Speaker 2: to take away everything from us, because we've won too
Speaker 2: much in their eyes.
Speaker 3: I really hope that there's a future where we can
Speaker 3: still address social ills together.
Speaker 1: The A Building, Episode five, The Takeover.
Speaker 4: Benjamin Mays with the sixth president of Morehouse College. He
Speaker 4: was born to two former slaves in South Carolina. He
Speaker 4: graduated from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, in nineteen twenty
Speaker 4: He came to Atlanta and became a Baptist minister. In
Speaker 4: nineteen twenty two. He concluded a master's degree in New
Speaker 4: Testament studies from the University of Chicago School of Religion
Speaker 4: in nineteen twenty five. He became president of Morehouse. In
Speaker 4: nineteen forty, at the turn of a new decade, Morehouse
Speaker 4: found itself amid a morale problem. Black institutions in the
Speaker 4: Atlanta area were progressing faster in faculty and curriculum. Between
Speaker 4: nineteen thirty and nineteen forty, the faculty and Land University
Speaker 4: increased by two hundred and twenty percent, and the faculty
Speaker 4: at Spelman College increased by eighty percent.
Speaker 1: Most Morehouse classes were taught by Atlanta University and Spellman faculty.
Speaker 1: Uncollected tuition and a small endowment hurt any chance at
Speaker 1: expansion for Morehouse. At the beginning of his tenure as president,
Speaker 1: Mays devised elaborate fundraising campaigns for alumni to increase contributions.
Speaker 1: He also installed programs to collect tuition arrears from students aggressively.
Speaker 1: He earned the nickname bucke Beny around campus.
Speaker 4: During his twenty seven years as president, the land area
Speaker 4: doubled from ten to twenty acres. He was able to
Speaker 4: build five dormitories, a dining hall, a new academic building,
Speaker 4: the Morehouse School of Religion and Music, student and faculty housing.
Speaker 4: After his retirement, he became a President emeritus and a
Speaker 4: member of the Morehouse Board of Trustees. He cast a
Speaker 4: large shadow on the new president, Hugh Gloucester. Both men
Speaker 4: found themselves locked in with students who were very unhappy
Speaker 4: with the corslated Morehouse, and the frustration would go beyond
Speaker 4: the norm of the corps expected of Morehouse men.
Speaker 1: The students expressed their frustration to doctor Mays. They liked them,
Speaker 1: they respected them, but they wanted more. Doctor King's assassination
Speaker 1: had left a dark cloud on the entire campus, and
Speaker 1: in this moment all decorum was gone. Here are doctor
Speaker 1: Mays's contemporaneous notes of the locke In.
Speaker 5: This is April eighteenth, the day of the annual board
Speaker 5: meeting of Morehouse College. I'm writing this article while being
Speaker 5: held hostage, along with other trustees of Morehouse College, by
Speaker 5: a group of students from several of the institutions that
Speaker 5: make up the Atlanta University Center. Members of a committee
Speaker 5: which met with the Morehouse board were four women from Spelman,
Speaker 5: three from Morehouse, one from Clark, one from Morris Brown,
Speaker 5: and a professor from Spelman College.
Speaker 6: At ten a m.
Speaker 5: The Atlanta University Board adjourned and the Morehouse board meeting
Speaker 5: was supposed to begin. It never got started. The committee
Speaker 5: refused to leave the Morehouse board meeting and presented certain demands.
Speaker 5: The teacher from Spelman obviously was in control of the group.
Speaker 5: I came to the meeting at nine thirty this morning.
Speaker 5: It is now three thirty a m. April nineteen, and
Speaker 5: we have been chained in for seventeen and a half hours.
Speaker 4: Mays wrote this letter from the walls of the board
Speaker 4: his frustration with the methods, and added Toude of the
Speaker 4: students was clear he would continue.
Speaker 5: The group outside the room. In the hall numbers about
Speaker 5: fifty or sixty and a morehouse professor. The doors are
Speaker 5: locked and chained. I guess that students in the hall
Speaker 5: are from several institutions in the Center. Some of them
Speaker 5: are not students at all. At noon on the seventeenth,
Speaker 5: a group of students came to the Atlanta University luncheon
Speaker 5: and presented the trustees with a document for each to sign.
Speaker 5: This document read, we the undersigned, resigned from the Board
Speaker 5: of Trustees of the schools within the Atlanta University Center.
Speaker 5: Our purpose in resigning is to enable the Black community
Speaker 5: to control their own education, and toward this end, an
Speaker 5: entirely new process of control must be established, and so
Speaker 5: we step aside. This act will release us from all
Speaker 5: responsibility and leave the schools in the hands of an
Speaker 5: interim committee of alumni, faculty, and the students, to be
Speaker 5: elected from their respective groups. Of course, no one signed.
Speaker 5: Among the demands are the name of the Atlanta University
Speaker 5: Center to be changed to the Martin Luther King Junior University,
Speaker 5: black control of the colleges in the center, and that
Speaker 5: the trustees support the idea of a single university merging
Speaker 5: the six institutions. They mean by black control that the
Speaker 5: majority of the trustees be black. They really wanted to
Speaker 5: get rid of all white trustees. Doctor Martin Luther King Senior,
Speaker 5: a member of the more House Board, vigorously opposed changing
Speaker 5: the name of the center to the Martin Luther King
Speaker 5: Junior University.
Speaker 7: No, no, my son's name, my name, it won't be
Speaker 7: used for this, not like this.
Speaker 8: This isn't the right way to go about this. And
Speaker 8: y'all know that.
Speaker 5: The Moorhouse Board did vote to include an additional nine
Speaker 5: members on the board, all of home would be black.
Speaker 5: There was no meaning of the minds on the other demands.
Speaker 5: So here we are locked in the boardroom of Harkness Hall.
Speaker 5: We will remain in prison for a total of twenty
Speaker 5: eight and a half hours. Some of the group of
Speaker 5: students are most insulting. They curse and use vulgar language.
Speaker 5: If the methods and demands of this group are implemented,
Speaker 5: the black colleges will soon pass away. I have never
Speaker 5: met a more insulting group in all my years.
Speaker 1: Using maze Is the voice of these contentious negotiations was
Speaker 1: a deliberate choice by the administration. He was certainly more
Speaker 1: popular amongst the student population than the current president, Hugh Gloucester. Therefore,
Speaker 1: his rebuke of the protest and the students spoke to
Speaker 1: the uphill battle and the current morale on campus. Here's
Speaker 1: more from our conversation with Professor Philosophy at Morehouse College,
Speaker 1: doctor Elia Davis.
Speaker 9: You all probably already read many of the nineteen sixty
Speaker 9: nine Maroon Tigers.
Speaker 1: Now, like the Maroon Tigers are are newspaper.
Speaker 9: Yeah, they are replete with story of the story of rebellion.
Speaker 9: It is a ma and I have several of them
Speaker 9: that I downloaded. I mean, these brothers, they're calling each
Speaker 9: other out in ways that I wish my students would today.
Speaker 9: If you look at the articles from sixty nine, if
Speaker 9: you read those articles, you will see they were merely
Speaker 9: acting out what had been written about that whole year.
Speaker 5: November twenty two, nineteen sixty eight, Harold mckelton, This year
Speaker 5: our college needs a reawakening, and such a rebirth can
Speaker 5: only come with e mergence of a new student force
Speaker 5: of creative innovators. No one is beyond criticism, not the
Speaker 5: establishment or we ourselves. The old order seldom stumbles on
Speaker 5: its own accord. Power is either wrestled from their hands
Speaker 5: through destructive revolution, or the creative socratic gas lies pester
Speaker 5: their tails until the annoying bussing is finally acknowledged. December eighteenth,
Speaker 5: nineteen sixty eight. W. Grayson Mitchell. Student power comes out
Speaker 5: of conflict, not a polite exchange of opposing views. It
Speaker 5: comes out of military light confrontation between collegiate and the
Speaker 5: college administration. In keeping with patterns of conventional warfare. The
Speaker 5: side exerting more force and wielding more pressure exits as
Speaker 5: the gallant victor. The students overthrow the system and impose
Speaker 5: self rule. April eighteenth, nineteen sixty nine, Carthur Drake, editor
Speaker 5: of The Maroon Tiger. Too many times I've seen falsely
Speaker 5: led people make false accusations against other peace people's character.
Speaker 8: Too many times.
Speaker 5: I've seen falsely led people make accusations against our black institutions.
Speaker 8: Too many times.
Speaker 5: I've seen falsely led people make unsupported claimed accusations against
Speaker 5: Morehouse College.
Speaker 9: And so I think the Morehouse students picked all of
Speaker 9: this up as my point. I think all of them
Speaker 9: understood acutely that we want to be different, and this
Speaker 9: is the funny day. It's not just about morehouse and
Speaker 9: black schools either. It's a sentiment that I think was
Speaker 9: ubiquitous across college campuses. And that is for those of
Speaker 9: us who care. What is it that we can.
Speaker 4: Do to represent it?
Speaker 9: How do we not find ourselves being guilty of the
Speaker 9: elitism that a generation before us was guilty of.
Speaker 1: One member of the board found himself at the center
Speaker 1: of the conversation.
Speaker 4: Martin Luther King Senior, often referred to as Daddy King,
Speaker 4: was a taling figure in the American civil rights movement
Speaker 4: and a steadfast leader in the Christian community. Born Michael
Speaker 4: King on December eighteenth, eighteen ninety nine in Stottbridge, Georgia,
Speaker 4: he later changed his name to Martin Luther King to
Speaker 4: honor the Protestant reformer Martin Luther. His legacy is deeply
Speaker 4: intertwined with that of his son, doctor Martin Luther King Junior,
Speaker 4: but he was a significant leader in his own right,
Speaker 4: shaping the moral and spiritual fabric of the time.
Speaker 10: Not old preacher was right, You know what that old
Speaker 10: pushers after lone, you heard my drim hit.
Speaker 8: Long as I live and travel around, I'll hasten to
Speaker 8: the throne.
Speaker 4: He was right.
Speaker 8: Are you listening?
Speaker 4: I love him, God loves I do.
Speaker 1: In pursuit of higher education, he attended Dillard University in
Speaker 1: New Orleans, Louisiana, before transferring to Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Morehouse,
Speaker 1: with its strong reputation for producing African American leaders, played
Speaker 1: a crucial role in jping king seniors theological.
Speaker 4: And social perspectives.
Speaker 1: At Morehouse, he was mentored by influential figures such as
Speaker 1: doctor John Hope and doctor Benjamin Mays, both of whom
Speaker 1: emphasized the importance of education, service, and advocacy in the
Speaker 1: African American community. His time at Morehouse reinforced his commitment
Speaker 1: to fighting racial injustice and uplifted his aspirations for ministry
Speaker 1: and social change.
Speaker 4: After completing his studies, King Senior became a minister and
Speaker 4: took on a leadership role at the Ebenezer Baptist Church
Speaker 4: in Atlanta. He married Alberta Williams, the daughter of Riven
Speaker 4: Adam Daniel Williams, the church's senior pastor. Following his father
Speaker 4: in law's passing, King Senior became the lead pastor of Ebenezer,
Speaker 4: a position he would hold for over four decades. His
Speaker 4: passionate sermons an unwavering commitment to justice made him a
Speaker 4: respected figure in Atlanta's religious and civic communities. Throughout his ministry,
Speaker 4: King Senior advocated for racial equality and cannely uplifting it.
Speaker 4: He was a firm believer in economic empowerment, voter rights,
Speaker 4: and educational access for African Americans. His leadership extended beyond
Speaker 4: the poolpit, as he played an active role in the
Speaker 4: NAACP and other organizations pushing for desegregation and equal rights.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy four, his wife, Alberta, was killed inside
Speaker 1: the Ebenezer Baptist Church during a service. He was the target.
Speaker 1: His legacy as a man of faith and social activism
Speaker 1: connects him to the great legacy of American resistance.
Speaker 4: Here's a moment we've previously heard from Alvida King, granddaughter
Speaker 4: to Daddy King. Dude, do you recall, as you all
Speaker 4: called in, Daddy King's reaction to that lock in, or
Speaker 4: his reaction to being essentially held hostage in that way you.
Speaker 11: Know he was like these young folks. That's what he
Speaker 11: would have said, you know, his own son. He didn't
Speaker 11: agree with all my uncle and Daddy's tactics. He would
Speaker 11: ask them to come back off, to not be so
Speaker 11: forceful with it. It was too dangerous. There's got to
Speaker 11: be a better way. That was Granddaddy's perspective. So he
Speaker 11: would have had to have looked at it to say,
Speaker 11: these are the young folks. He would never have discredited
Speaker 11: their concerns. He never would, but he may not have
Speaker 11: agreed with their method.
Speaker 8: No, but sir, here us out. We only need to know.
Speaker 7: No, my son's name, my name, it won't be used
Speaker 7: for this, not like this.
Speaker 8: This isn't the right way to go about this.
Speaker 7: And y'all know that we're prisoners in here and we're
Speaker 7: supposed to listen to you.
Speaker 8: This isn't what more House men would do.
Speaker 4: All due respect sir, but I think this is exactly
Speaker 4: what a more House man would do.
Speaker 8: So, Sam Vivid, where does that leave us?
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the A building.
Speaker 4: The following is a timeline presented by the Morehouse College
Speaker 4: Bulletin in the summer of nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: Three pm. April eighteen, several hundred More House students advanced
Speaker 1: toward the administration building to liberate the trustees and the
Speaker 1: SGA representatives, but are dissuaded because of possible injury to
Speaker 1: themselves and students occupying the building.
Speaker 5: Evening April eighteen, Doctor Gloucester submitted his resignation as president
Speaker 5: of Morehouse College, effective on a day to be agreed
Speaker 5: upon by the Board in himself, because he would not
Speaker 5: participate in a meeting in which members of the Board
Speaker 5: of Trustees are confined in this conference room by force
Speaker 5: and are subjected to insult and intimidation. He said that
Speaker 5: he would not sign any document or vote on any
Speaker 5: motion presented in such a meeting, that he would not
Speaker 5: be a party to concessions made under duress.
Speaker 4: After reading his letter to the board, Doctor Gloster went
Speaker 4: on the balcony and read it to Morehouse students, who
Speaker 4: once more were dissuaded from entering the building by force.
Speaker 1: At the request of President Gloucester, Jared Manly and four
Speaker 1: other Morehouse board members were freed from the locke in
Speaker 1: because of age and or illness. Morning April nineteenth, several
Speaker 1: hundred Morehouse students again advanced towards the Administration building to
Speaker 1: liberate the trustees and their SGA representatives, but their SGA
Speaker 1: president advised them to refrain from entering the building in
Speaker 1: order to avoid violence. Doctor Mays and doctor Gloucester agreed
Speaker 1: to go outside the building to discourage students from entering
Speaker 1: by force. Four pm April nineteen, under duress, six of
Speaker 1: the nine board members present vote to approve the following concessions.
Speaker 1: The addition of nine black trustees, including students and faculty members,
Speaker 1: and the limitation of all trustees to not more than
Speaker 1: two successive.
Speaker 4: Terms in office.
Speaker 1: The endorsement of the idea of the consolidation of the
Speaker 1: six institutions in the Atlanta University Center and of recommending
Speaker 1: this idea to boards of other Center schools. The granting
Speaker 1: of amisted at Morehouse students participating in the locke in.
Speaker 1: The lock in was terminated and both trustees and the
Speaker 1: SGA representatives were freed. During the lock in, students not
Speaker 1: only seized and occupied the administration building and attained and
Speaker 1: imprisoned the trustees and Student Government Association representatives, but also
Speaker 1: broke into and occupied the office of the President, damaged
Speaker 1: school property, placed unauthorized long distance phone calls and made
Speaker 1: unauthorized use of the school supplies. During a meeting with
Speaker 1: the trustees in sale Hall Chatter, the student body overwhelmingly
Speaker 1: floated to reject the resignation of doctor Gloucester and the
Speaker 1: concessions made by board members to their captors.
Speaker 4: On May sixth, the Faculty of Morehouse Will released the
Speaker 4: following mimo to the Board.
Speaker 5: To the Board of Trustees of Morehouse College from the
Speaker 5: Faculty of Morehouse College, subject lock in of Trustees and
Speaker 5: SGA representatives on April eighteen and nineteen, We the Faculty
Speaker 5: of Morehouse College, do hereby disapprove, deplore and condemn the humiliations,
Speaker 5: insults in terror tactics committed by certain students and teachers
Speaker 5: on April eighteen and nineteen. We further resent the implicit
Speaker 5: and explicit racist overtones and the activities of the aforesaid
Speaker 5: group on the above dates. We affirm our support of
Speaker 5: the attached Statement of Student Rights and Freedoms which was
Speaker 5: adopted by the faculty on February sixth, nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 5: Since the Board of Trustees has nullified the concessions made
Speaker 5: under dress on April nineteen, we are assuming that our
Speaker 5: Faculty Student Advisory Committee, the duly established judiciary body at
Speaker 5: Morehouse College, may proceed to take any disciplinary action which
Speaker 5: it deems necessary and proper. The above statement was adopted
Speaker 5: by the faculty during its regular student meeting on May sixth,
Speaker 5: nineteen sixty nine, for transmittal to the Board of Trustees.
Speaker 5: Samuel W. Williams, Secretary of the Faculty.
Speaker 4: We spoke with reporter Arthur and white House, correspondent for
Speaker 4: the GRIL, April Ryan about her alma mater, Morga State
Speaker 4: University and protests as a means for change. There.
Speaker 2: There's something familiar about an HBC. It's family, it's home.
Speaker 4: What was campus activism like at the time, Oh my god.
Speaker 2: People were sick of the food, they were sick of tuition.
Speaker 2: At Morgan, we are part of the community. We don't
Speaker 2: have barriers. You can walk on campus. Anyone is allowed
Speaker 2: on campus, and unfortunately some of those elements from the
Speaker 2: outside bleed into the campus. They have and so at
Speaker 2: the time, I remember the students were upset because they
Speaker 2: felt like it wasn't safe. And we've had these problems
Speaker 2: for years. But there's more of a concerted effort now.
Speaker 2: I mean And here's the thing, because of some of
Speaker 2: those protests, we now have a police station literally right
Speaker 2: next to the basically on some of the campus grounds,
Speaker 2: just carved out, you know, a Baltimore City police station
Speaker 2: right there. You know, it's never risen to a point
Speaker 2: where we just shut the school down, but we've always
Speaker 2: had faculty and staff that listened, and that's always been
Speaker 2: the case. They did take over Truth Hall at one time.
Speaker 2: That was after I got out of school. We also
Speaker 2: Morgan is also historic because it was right around the
Speaker 2: corner from this place called Northwood Northwood shopping Center, and
Speaker 2: Northwood built a wall behind the shopping center so we
Speaker 2: couldn't get in. But now the school owns that shot
Speaker 2: center and they've taken the wall down. Morgan has been
Speaker 2: a part of so much history. They sat in at
Speaker 2: Northwood at some of those lunch counters in the sixties
Speaker 2: when people were sitting in. Morgan is a small part
Speaker 2: of the broader protesting of the sixties. You cannot be
Speaker 2: black and be a black institution and not feel the
Speaker 2: brunt of the broader society. And each time from Reagan
Speaker 2: when Reagan was president, I was a student and I
Speaker 2: see this Martin Luther King Day celebration. And guess who
Speaker 2: happened to be there? Rosa Parks. Rosa Parks, the mother
Speaker 2: of the civil rights movement, was sitting there at this
Speaker 2: Martin Luther King celebration during the Reagan years, right Stevie
Speaker 2: Wonder saying, and this was just a few years out
Speaker 2: of us getting the national holiday. The place was on
Speaker 2: such a high, it was the most amazing moment ever.
Speaker 2: Our institutions are places that teach us to break the
Speaker 2: status quo, just like Harvard and Yale and Georgetown and Princeton.
Speaker 2: But we're taught it differently. You know, they were taught
Speaker 2: and probably still are, that they were going to be
Speaker 2: the ones to lead the country. But guess what HBCUs
Speaker 2: have taught us that we break the status quo. We
Speaker 2: have broken the status quote. You had a Vice President
Speaker 2: of the United States.
Speaker 8: It's an HBC.
Speaker 2: You are. You have one of the most powerful men
Speaker 2: in Washington, Collageman James Clyburn is an HBC. Youre Cedric Richmond,
Speaker 2: who had the ear of the President of the United States,
Speaker 2: was an HBC. Europ You know April Ryan, the longest
Speaker 2: serving Black White House correspondent in the nation's history is
Speaker 2: a proud hbc ere. We have broken the status quot
Speaker 2: We've changed, and that's one of the reasons why our wins,
Speaker 2: our protests have created this atmosphere right now to take
Speaker 2: away our history, to take away everything from us, because
Speaker 2: we've won too much. In their eyes, we've gained too much.
Speaker 2: Why do you think they're going after anti woken, anti
Speaker 2: dei I woke miss back in the sixties, I woke.
Speaker 2: This now creates change, it effectuates change.
Speaker 1: And now here's more from Mentalex conversation with Emmy Award
Speaker 1: winning documentary filmmaker Mike Schumm on the complications of protests
Speaker 1: today in the world of social media and the risk
Speaker 1: to those who protest.
Speaker 10: And so now you can literally now literally control what
Speaker 10: you see.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's why.
Speaker 10: People were shocked when Trump won the first time, because
Speaker 10: it was like, hold on what the people that actually
Speaker 10: voted for Democrat but it's like, yeah, because they literally
Speaker 10: didn't see here read engage anything that wasn't outside of
Speaker 10: their political purview, right right, Like that's that's fascinating that
Speaker 10: it's creating like this intellectual isolation. That's that's actually anathetical
Speaker 10: to anything when it comes to like this basic interaction, right,
Speaker 10: like what was supposed to be a tool to truly
Speaker 10: enhance our human connectivity.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I think it's the reverse, the reverse, and that
Speaker 3: is that part is fascinating, you know, and that and
Speaker 3: that's the thing that scares me. I'll say, I'm afraid
Speaker 3: of how protests or what the future holds in.
Speaker 6: The way of coming together and mobilizing. I don't know how.
Speaker 3: I don't know the future of that because I see
Speaker 3: a lot of consequence that is the loudest one on
Speaker 3: social media is dictating the narrative of of of of
Speaker 3: of protest or dictating the role of disrupting the way
Speaker 3: people are thinking. I think we've created the conditions and
Speaker 3: isolating conditions for us to not work together. I think,
Speaker 3: uh that our identities tagged to this sort of virtual perspective.
Speaker 6: That's really concerning, and.
Speaker 3: I don't quite I don't quite know how to think
Speaker 3: about it clearly. But I hope still that maybe if
Speaker 3: it's not social media a reminder on some level that
Speaker 3: we can stay connected and humanized moving forward.
Speaker 6: I don't know. Yeah, I'm struggled about this.
Speaker 4: That's a rough one, because then you have to say Okay,
Speaker 4: what is the future of resistance in that in that context,
Speaker 4: if you can't even really agree on what's what right right?
Speaker 3: I think that's the part where we've relegated ourselves so
Speaker 3: closely to how we appear in this virtual space that
Speaker 3: I really hope that there's a future where we can
Speaker 3: still recognize each other as human beings struggling to address
Speaker 3: social ills together. I think there's something there, and I
Speaker 3: feel like we've lost a bit of that spirit of
Speaker 3: coming together. I think the more we lean into social media,
Speaker 3: I think I think we create more barriers for ourselves
Speaker 3: and hence not as effective resistance towards unchecked power.
Speaker 4: Yeah. It's almost as if you get to clock in
Speaker 4: and hey, see, look I did my resisting on Twitter already,
Speaker 4: so I'm good.
Speaker 3: You know how many likes did I get to fulfill
Speaker 3: my resistance today?
Speaker 4: Yeah? That I feel my resistance quota for the day.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And being behind a social media handle that there are
Speaker 3: a few there are little stakes for that person. I
Speaker 3: think it comes back to this idea of of.
Speaker 6: Malcolm and Martin Luther King.
Speaker 3: I think both of them struggled with knowing that when
Speaker 3: they pursued protests in these movements, They struggled with the
Speaker 3: consequences of.
Speaker 6: Each of these moments.
Speaker 3: How many people died, how many people were assaulted.
Speaker 4: Arrested, arrested.
Speaker 3: They had to deal with that in their communities, in
Speaker 3: these churches.
Speaker 6: And yet tap them up at night, kept them up
Speaker 6: at night.
Speaker 3: And that's the thrust and the importance of what it
Speaker 3: takes to resist, and that is to have to deal
Speaker 3: with those consequences. What does it look like when everything
Speaker 3: is burned to the ground the next day?
Speaker 6: How do you pick up the pieces?
Speaker 3: These are things that we don't talk about as much anymore,
Speaker 3: I don't think at least.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to the a building.
Speaker 4: Okay, back to our story of the lock in at Morehouse.
Speaker 4: So now that we kind of have, you know, we've
Speaker 4: finally gone through the whole timeline of the protest, what
Speaker 4: they went through, what the consequences are like, what do
Speaker 4: you think really about like the cost of protests, you know,
Speaker 4: not just for a college student, what we've seen here
Speaker 4: in this story, this lock in, but kind of like
Speaker 4: the cost of protests for society at large, for the republic.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that in this country there's a
Speaker 1: generation that remembers that to attend a college or university
Speaker 1: is to be on a space where you get to
Speaker 1: protest and you get to voice you're unhappiness with certain
Speaker 1: things happening in society. I think over the last twenty
Speaker 1: years we've sort of a culturated couple generations of young
Speaker 1: people to not use that or to demonize that that
Speaker 1: use of the voice, specifically on college and university campuses.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting is, I think we've seen the consequences
Speaker 1: of that turned against college and universities because now that
Speaker 1: college and universities are under attack, there are now no
Speaker 1: societal foot soldiers to protect them. So if you haven't
Speaker 1: a situation like at Columbia where the school itself turns
Speaker 1: against its students to appease outside people, and then it
Speaker 1: further appeases a bully in the form of the federal
Speaker 1: administration paying money acquiescing. There is no student protest outcry.
Speaker 1: There's no outcry in other college campuses. And you saw
Speaker 1: during the George Floyd period that there'd be an outcry
Speaker 1: in one part of the country and the rest of
Speaker 1: the country would sort of respond. But we sort of
Speaker 1: taken that out. We demonized the NFL players for protesting
Speaker 1: we demonize the basketball players for protesting. And then now
Speaker 1: you have a situation where the administration has attacked the
Speaker 1: University of Virginia. It has attacked George Mason University. The
Speaker 1: president of the University of Virginia resigned in order to
Speaker 1: protect the school. And the idea is that the governor
Speaker 1: governing y INCN is going to recommend a president who
Speaker 1: is more ideologically inligned with his thoughts, and he's attempting
Speaker 1: to do the same thing with George Mason University, which
Speaker 1: is probably one of the most diverse schools in the country,
Speaker 1: and they're using the through line this idea that there's
Speaker 1: anti Semitism on George Mason's campus. What's interesting is during
Speaker 1: the sort of uprisings and protests that were happening on
Speaker 1: campuses protesting the October seventh conflict in the Middle East,
Speaker 1: George Mason was one of the places where there was
Speaker 1: almost no activity on campus. George Mason has a significant
Speaker 1: population of students from the Middle East, from all of
Speaker 1: the Middle East, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine, you name it, Saudi Arabia, Iran,
Speaker 1: you name it. We have a significant population of students
Speaker 1: from who have backgrounds from that part of the world,
Speaker 1: but we didn't have we didn't have protests on campus.
Speaker 1: The school's administration kind of discouraged seriously students voicing their
Speaker 1: displeasure with what was happening between the Israeli government and
Speaker 1: the residents of Palestine. I think what's interesting is, in turn,
Speaker 1: now that the administration has specifically targeted the president of
Speaker 1: George Mason University, there's no foot soldiers to protect the president.
Speaker 1: There's no foot soldiers to protect the school. There is
Speaker 1: no outcry. There are no parents who can put pressure
Speaker 1: on the governor of Virginia, who can embarrass the administration
Speaker 1: because their kids are putting their lives on the line.
Speaker 1: If we think back to the protests in Alabama, when
Speaker 1: when young kids were protesting in the streets in Birmingham,
Speaker 1: the parents feeling about that put a lot of pressure
Speaker 1: on King to make those protests work. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of pressure when kids put their lives on the line.
Speaker 1: Everybody gets tense. Everybody you have to be careful. You
Speaker 1: can't if you put hoses on those kids, you are
Speaker 1: now forever. You're labeled forever because of that. Right, and
Speaker 1: you're looking at George Mason, there's no protest, there's no
Speaker 1: response from local residents, from students, because I think we've
Speaker 1: demonized protests in a way, and so I think for me,
Speaker 1: it's a lesson that you have to be careful in
Speaker 1: a space, in this academic space, you have to be
Speaker 1: careful in quote unquote punishment, right. I think in this
Speaker 1: case at Morehouse, it's interesting because those students, they were
Speaker 1: making phone calls, they destroyed some property. Maybe they should
Speaker 1: have been punished for that, but you know, for the
Speaker 1: act of demanding, making these demands that the administration essentially
Speaker 1: not only agreed upon, but the school made those some
Speaker 1: of those changes, and the school became better for it.
Speaker 1: I think there's something to be said about that. I
Speaker 1: think young people are usually right, and those of us
Speaker 1: who are not as young as these young people, we
Speaker 1: don't like to listen to them. We get annoyed because
Speaker 1: they want to change things, but they tend to be right.
Speaker 1: They make us uncomfortable. They tend to be right, and
Speaker 1: I think when you stamp that out of them, I
Speaker 1: think society loses a lot. A lot of the changes
Speaker 1: that have happened in this particular country have happened because
Speaker 1: young people will go to the forefront of these changes.
Speaker 1: Maybe they weren't the ones who enacted the demands, but
Speaker 1: they see the future and they give of them themselves
Speaker 1: and want to make these changes, and they happen. And
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the country right now and I'm seeing
Speaker 1: what's happened. It's affecting young people directly, and where's their voice?
Speaker 1: Totally suppressed. It's suppressed. But it's our fault, right we
Speaker 1: demonize young folks for protesting. For the last thirty years,
Speaker 1: we've blunted protests. We've put police forces on campus. We've
Speaker 1: been punitive when people simply disagree with their administration, when
Speaker 1: they say we don't like the leadership. We've been more
Speaker 1: punitive now than we've ever been. At the end of
Speaker 1: the day, these students were expelled that they you know,
Speaker 1: there was a connection between these students and the administration.
Speaker 1: I think we've been more punitive than we've ever been.
Speaker 1: And now that there's an attack on higher education from
Speaker 1: outside the university system, where are the students to protect
Speaker 1: their schools? Because if the students put theirselves on the line,
Speaker 1: guess what their parents would be forced in order to
Speaker 1: protect their kids. Their parents would be forced into the
Speaker 1: issue and would pre pressure. Even if the parents didn't agree,
Speaker 1: they would still want to protect their kids.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: We've seen that in the past, So I think it's
Speaker 1: a I think it. I think there's a through line
Speaker 1: to be made. I think it's an irony. Imagine if
Speaker 1: we encourage protests. If you knew that when young people
Speaker 1: decide they don't like an issue, they're going to make
Speaker 1: a stink, They're gonna stop spending mone honey, they're gonna
Speaker 1: disruct things on campus, They're gonna they're gonna do this thing.
Speaker 1: I think the attacks on higher education, it would happen differently.
Speaker 4: I guess it would have to.
Speaker 1: Right, absolutely, that generational recognition is something that we're missing
Speaker 1: fundamentally in this country.
Speaker 4: And Hans, when have college students ever been okay with
Speaker 4: war to this degree?
Speaker 8: And can you believe these kids aren't for this war?
Speaker 8: Who no like yeah, yeah, look history at all.
Speaker 1: Not only can't they not believe that they disagree, but
Speaker 1: they're like and they're being rude. An entire generation of
Speaker 1: young of college students turn their backs on the armed forces.
Speaker 1: If you served, they had no respect for you, if
Speaker 1: he served in Vietnam because they disagreed with war, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like like they have always done
Speaker 1: it in the roughest way they could. They they didn't
Speaker 1: lift a finger and punch people. They just said, I
Speaker 1: will not honor you because I know you have blood
Speaker 1: on your hands, even though it wasn't your fault. Right,
Speaker 1: And in some cases they turn those veterans against the country,
Speaker 1: against the war, you know, they honored those veterans. I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right, this was wrong. So I'm saying that to say,
Speaker 1: of course there's gonna be some rudeness. There's gonna be
Speaker 1: some things that are not nice that comes out of
Speaker 1: that discourse.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: This idea that you can have this discourse but nobody's
Speaker 1: feelings could be hurt is insane.
Speaker 4: And hows that's what's interesting about this episode when you
Speaker 4: listen to all of this, nobody in power is like,
Speaker 4: you know, if these are terrible ideas you see on
Speaker 4: the only real kind of practical resistance is from Daddy King,
Speaker 4: who doesn't want the name, but from our conversation with
Speaker 4: Alvida King, and also just from kind of understanding his
Speaker 4: basic ideas on civil rights, he probably agreed with everything
Speaker 4: else philosophically. Yeah, but what was the issue, how dare you?
Speaker 8: How did you like me using you're cussing at us?
Speaker 4: You know, And obviously this whole thing happened at George
Speaker 4: Mason probably hits home for you because you work there.
Speaker 4: I mean, you're on the faculty there.
Speaker 1: I'm a tenured faculty member, yes, and I've been there
Speaker 1: for ten years. And in some ways I've never really
Speaker 1: taken my job as an academic seriously in terms of
Speaker 1: like I don't see the job itself was hallowed. I
Speaker 1: think being and not having an opportunity to influence students
Speaker 1: is important, but I think this attack on higher education
Speaker 1: is quite fascinating. Like there's a proposal in Texas to
Speaker 1: take away tenure, which is an opportunity to silence voices
Speaker 1: that you don't like. So it's it's interesting and it
Speaker 1: is personal. What is it that doesn't mean for for
Speaker 1: somebody to silence my voice? This podcast could run me
Speaker 1: into some trouble. Some of the film I decide to
Speaker 1: show could run me into some trouble because there's no
Speaker 1: freedom to express my ideas to my students, and there's
Speaker 1: in turn, I think there'll be no freedom for the
Speaker 1: students to disagree with me, right that's the whole point.
Speaker 1: I get to express ideas, but the students get to
Speaker 1: fundamentally disagree, and that that conflict is what makes learning
Speaker 1: because something happens at the end of that interaction. Something
Speaker 1: happens at the end of that discourse. Men like you
Speaker 1: understand this because you are a frequent lecture at different
Speaker 1: schools and universities. Yeah, certainly you understand this dynamic. So
Speaker 1: the idea that you could intimidate faculty universe by removing
Speaker 1: a president under false pretenses, or removing tenure, or removing
Speaker 1: financial support for students in the form of student loans
Speaker 1: and grants is It's a very interesting move. And what's
Speaker 1: interesting about this story is that at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, the institution valued the students. It valued this
Speaker 1: interaction between itself and the students. It may have not
Speaker 1: liked the way it happened, but it valued it. It
Speaker 1: valued the conflict. And we're approaching a situation in this
Speaker 1: country where we're no longer valuing the conflict, the conflict
Speaker 1: of ideas, not action, just ideas. I don't like your idea,
Speaker 1: therefore I will restrict your right.
Speaker 4: To express it.
Speaker 1: It's a fascinating moment in this country.
Speaker 4: Next time on the A Building. And that was part
Speaker 4: of the reason that I got expelled from school my
Speaker 4: junior year because when we locked up the board of
Speaker 4: trustees in that building. Wait a minute.
Speaker 1: The A Building is produced by Imagine Audio for iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: It is written and hosted by me Hans Charles and
Speaker 1: my co host Menelike Lamoumba.
Speaker 4: It is executive produced by Karral Welker and Nathan Coloke,
Speaker 4: me Manelike Lamumba and Hans Charles.
Speaker 1: Executive producers at iHeart Podcasts are Katrina Norville and Nikki Torre.
Speaker 1: Marketing lead is David Wasserman.
Speaker 4: It is produced, directed, and edited by Timothy Fernara, with
Speaker 4: producer John Asanti, Sound design and music by Alloy.
Speaker 1: Tracks, and special thanks to April Ryan, Doctor, Elia Davis,
Speaker 1: Kim Feci, Ada, Bobby Know and James Early. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed this episode, be sure to rate and review The
Speaker 1: A Building on Apple podcast or wherever you get your
Speaker 1: podcast