We actually petitioned the Morehouse board in 1969 to meet with them, but the black people who were around them said, “No way, you can’t come in here. There was no student involvement on the board. We didn’t even have a black studies class. We had no connection to the people that we lived around. I didn’t want to be just another Negro in the, you know, advancement of America card. You would be a great doctor, a great lawyer, maybe a great scientist. The Morehouse College administration was rooted in some old-school things that the majority of us students didn’t believe.
I came to a realization that we were being groomed to be something that I didn’t necessarily want to be. These guys were studying and would get really angry: “You’re gonna be dead if you don’t buckle down and get with these books, because as soon as your status is wrong, next thing you know, you’ll be in the war.” We were like, “What war?” And then my cousin, who was my age, got killed in 1967. We were in the halls running around late at night, playing cards and music. When I went to college in 1966, that’s where I met the first guys that had been to Vietnam. I read about the ones going on around the country and talked to my grandparents and my mom. We didn’t have a lot of civil rights protests in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where I grew up. Especially knowing that King was killed for something as simple as, in that moment, a garbagemen’s strike. That we could do something that’s going to make these people’s lives better. We weren’t thinking of it in any historical context, but we were glad there was something we could do other than burn, loot and destroy our own neighborhood. It was cool that they’d take us to Memphis and foot the bill for it. Culp and Cosby were trying to give us instructions on how to carry ourselves and enact King’s dream of being nonviolent. We all thought it was probably going to be something physical, even though the National Guard was there. We didn’t know what to expect when we got to Memphis. Came to find out he was already in the streets with a whole bunch of other people, tearing up and burning up our neighborhood.Ī couple of days later, these guys told us Bill Cosby and Robert Culp wanted us to get on a plane with them and fly to Memphis to march with the garbage workers. I went back to my dorm and couldn’t find my roommate. King was dead and we need to do something. In the middle of it, this guy came in and said that Dr. That’s the only reason I remember that movie.
I went to the movie - it was John Goldfarb, Please Come Home. King got shot.” I said, “Is he dead?” And he said, “No, not yet.” When I first heard, I was actually in the liquor store buying a quart of beer, because it was campus movie night.
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