Speaker 1: The website is Arrow dot net, ar r Oe dot net.
It's more than a website, it's more than a podcast.
It is a podcast network. Where else are you going
to find street Speak with Alexa and Clarence. We're talking
about AI Alexa from Amazon having a conversation with an
AI digital device, and somebody who's actually lived it, comparing
notes living life only on Arrow dot Net. Street Speak
with Alexa and Clarence. Enjoy your exploration. Good morning you two.
I before we even get started, I gotta let you
know I'm so proud of the two of you for
putting the a building together because we're in an age
of trying to make a movement happen again, and a
lot of people think, well, we just got to find
somebody to finance it. No, no, no, What you're going
to unveil is that it took real, honest to God community,
teamwork and a vision of something has to change. How
are we going to do it? It had nothing to
do with a bunch of people coming together with my
and that's what I love about this guys.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think at the core of this story,
particularly at the time nineteen sixty nine, shortly after the
assassination of doctor King, a group of Morehouse College students
took over a board a trustees meeting to talk about
various reforms at Morehouse. One of the students was Samuel Jackson,
and actually one of the hostages on the board was
Martin Luther King Senior. So our podcast it's at eight
part audio docuseries, and we really tell this story from
the planning all the way through the takeover and then
the repercussions that the students received for this event. So
that's kind of the base of the story.
Speaker 1: See, it's that planning that has my attention because that's
what I love to do. I mean, we can create
a movement, but it doesn't just happen, and this didn't
just happen. A lot of things had to be played out.
And even with Samuel L. Jackson, who was a total
nobody at that time, he was the one. I mean,
now that I see this side of his story, it's like,
oh my god, this is the person that we really
need to know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting I think because for the students, they
you know, in this case, they had an academic doctor
Abdullah Kalam kalamant say thank you Melick, doctor Kalamant who
sort of set a philosophical base for the students, who
sort of gave them an understanding, like a framework of paradigm,
and that sort of was the foundation for what they
were planning. So it wasn't haphazard, it wasn't out of
just emotion. It was a connection to history, It was
a connection to philosophy, and it was a point of view.
And I think that's why they were successful. They truly
changed the way HBCUs related to their students.
Speaker 1: For this event in nineteen sixty nine, there was so
much already plaguing the headlines, and everybody was nervous about
what was going to happen in the future. There was
a lot of uncertainty. But what was it about the
Moorhouse College that really stepped forward? This one right here
didn't necessarily become a part of the storm. It created
its own energy source.
Speaker 5: I mean, that's a good thing. Part of it.
Speaker 3: I think part of it was that the students that
more House were frustrated because they you know, they kind
of felt left behind. Yes, while the rest of the
world was changing that at the time the administration was
so conservative and was really in some ways, you know,
felt like they were at the avant garde of education
because they were focusing on educating young black men and
shaping the minds of young black men. But at the
same time, they were almostnously paternously, paternally protective of these
students and trying not to let any outside influence get
to the students, and in some ways that made that negated.
Speaker 5: What they were doing.
Speaker 3: The students were sort of behind the rest of the
world was advancing and how it was thinking about civil
rights and how it was thinking about the role of
people of color in America. And I think that's what
the students wanted. They wanted their administration to keep up
with the world, and in some ways they really push
their institution forward.
Speaker 1: Am I wrong, insane? And please correct me if I am?
But I mean in today's protests and uprisings at different locations,
there is no Jesse Jackson, there is no Samuel L. Jackson,
And it's almost like, where is that one person that
is bringing us all together as a unity or am
I missing something here?
Speaker 4: That's interesting. We talked about this a lot through the
course of the show. We had one of our guests
is a award whining filmmaker named Max Schum and he
did a lot of reporting on the ground at of
the George Floyd uprising, and he talked about in the
age of social media, when it's very easy to kind
of get a lot of people on the same wavelength collectively, right,
but kind of the age of the singular force or
the singular leader has become very difficult, especially an age
of misinformation. And I think what was interesting too about
this time at Morehouse is that doctor King's death we're
talking to getting six months after King dies in sixty eight,
when this lacking happens. Doctor King's death was particularly traumatic
to Morehouse, particularly traumatic to Atlanta. He was an Atlanta man,
He was a Morehouse man, he was a Georgian man.
Speaker 5: So when he dies, it challenges the.
Speaker 4: Entire framework of the pedagogical ideology of being a Morehouse man,
where the institution challenges you to do something when things
are awry. So and again you have in Malcolm dies
sixty five three years before that, So you have a
Black America that is in kind of a constant state,
a kind of a permanent state of mourning and dread
coming out of the sixties civil rights movement. So so
looking at that kind of in the context of modern times.
And I think the intense almost the kind of the
recriminalizing of protests and uprising was I think a big
core question of this series, like how, okay, what does
the next twenty twenty five years of protest look like,
you know, and and how how are young people going
to be galvanized if the constant again we're talking about now,
it's like, so you do something, it's it's digitally recorded forever,
it follows you forever. It's not life again, Like, think
about the consequences. I mean, they got suspended for a year,
most of them came back, finished their degrees.
Speaker 5: The consequences with these kids now was way worse.
Speaker 3: And I would say in terms of the having leaders,
I think you know, we you know, hindsight is twenty twenty.
We know things about these leaders, personal things, things about
the way they conducted their personal lives that you know,
people across the country at.
Speaker 5: The time didn't know about these leaders.
Speaker 3: And I think the loss of privacy, the way that
if you become a social media sensation, I mean in
a real sort of organic way, you become a leader,
let's say, in the Black Lives movement or other movements
that all of a sudden, your personal life is scrutinized
to the point that it makes it hard to continue
that leadership. So I think the modern context we do
have to consider that when we feel like we don't
have that that sort of archetype leader that we seem to,
you know, to idealize in the civil rights movement.
Speaker 5: But I think that.
Speaker 3: Students have the power and people have the power today
is really the power of the purse, and I think
the ability to organize collectively and to silently speak where
capitalism hurts most is the tool. I think that people
don't think about using this particular if they continue to
shop at this particular you know, hardware store they use,
they go to this particular coffee shop. But I think
using the mobilizing power of social media to then really
direct our dollars is a way of really hurting the
machine without taking on the sort of personal uh, you know,
there's such a price that you pay personally. Now, like
students are getting banned from college, yes, and now in
Texas they're trying to they're trying to defund high schools
that protest, you know, so the system is become in
some ways a little bit more insidious in the ways reacting.
But I think that there's opportunities for us, for us
to hurt the system as well.
Speaker 5: You know that.
Speaker 3: That's I tell my young students when I teach that
cell phone is one of the most direct ways you
can hurt the system because if you turn that thing off,
if you leave it home, and that data stops sending
data to those servers, that is a disaster. If you
guys do that en mask, that is a disaster to
the system that the system feels immediately.
Speaker 1: Please do not move. There's more with middle Eck and
Hans coming right up. The name of the podcast, The
A Building. We are back with middlek and Hans. I
want listeners to check out the A Building. And the
reason why is because you guys are not archaeologists. You're
not historians in the way that historians act. You are
a presence in our place of now, because cities do.
When something happens in Atlanta, we here in Charlotte will
probably have a gathering as well, and they'll do it
in Seattle. I don't remember reading that in those days
of the nineteen sixties, especially the latter part, where cities
came together to create a nation of people. And that's
what I love about this podcast is all the way
through what I'm saying there going holy crap, this is
going on right now, these guys are leading us on
how to do it in a better way.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, what's interesting in this moment and looking
back on kind of the world they were staring at
right the decisions that.
Speaker 5: They were having to make.
Speaker 4: We have.
Speaker 5: One of the big breakthroughs in our show was booking in.
Speaker 4: This guy's name is James Early, Yes, and he was
there and he was a close friend of Sam's, and
he was six months away from graduation, like this a
big deal to get your bachelor's degree in nineteen sixty
nine from Morehouse College. And I asked him during the show,
I said, did you have any hesitation about going into
that into that boardroom and locking? He said, no, that
was the moment, Like that was the thing. And when
he joined the protests that had already started, he had
to climb a tree. He climbed a tree to get
into a window to go in there because they had
already chained the door. Like that's how committed he was
to the time, to the moment.
Speaker 5: So these are the this type of kind of.
Speaker 4: Direct activism where you see a moment, you see a situation,
and you're not even given any thought to the potential consequence.
And we actually we you know, we have an actor
read the suspension letter that he received, and that that
that everyone received who was a part of this event.
And it's funny because the letter is both, you know,
pejorative but also encouraging. It's like a you know, it's
like an aunt that doesn't want to give you a beating.
Speaker 5: Why are you making me do this?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, you know, come on back when this is
over and we'll let you finish your degree. You know,
even the letter itself kind of takes you back into
Even the letter has kind of a cultural specificity of
the time, like, look, we were doing this because we
have to, but it's not really that big a deal.
Come on back when the suspension is over.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things that I feel deep
inside my heart, I'm always comparing things to Bible stories
and things and so bad. This feels like the creation
of the upper room. Once we closed that door, knowing
everything that was on the inside, what you once had
out there, does no longer exist because what you're doing
in here is you're going to move the people, and
even though it may look bad in the headlines, you're
going to move the people. And I just feel so
empowered by the stories of the A Building.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think there's just this time period, I
would say from the nineteen forties to the nineteen seventies
in terms of people organizing all over the country. There's
you know, in the nineteen fifties, in particular rule North Carolina,
people were organizing boycotts, were trying to get voting rights,
and a lot of those heroes are unsung because they
were organizing in rural areas and they really set the
foundation for what was happening in some of the bigger
cities in the South. And you know, I really encourage
people to when if you're you know, you look at
today and you feel sort of discouraged and you feel like,
how are we going to overcome? We've got so many challenges,
We've got all this this technology that's invasive and is
violating our privacy. The conditions that people were organizing in
and and succeeding, right, and it wasn't fast, but they
were succeeding. It's it gives you hope because they were
doing this under.
Speaker 5: Really difficult condition.
Speaker 3: And I think so I think history always will sort
of emotionally bail us out.
Speaker 5: It'll keep us from being in despair.
Speaker 3: And I think that's why it's important to sort of
look back at how did people not the stories, not
the rumors, but how did it actually happen? And sometimes
as simple as speaking to your elders, you know, Madick
and I were really lucky enough to be able to
catch the people who were actually there, who are getting
up there in age, and in some ways hadn't some
of them hadn't thought about this story. Some of them,
you know, would casually mention the story to people, but
you know, they appreciate the fact that somebody really wants
to delve in and get this story out there. So
that's kind of what I would encourage people that if
you really like the A building, just continue to study
history because it will provide a roadmap for what you
need to do in the future.
Speaker 1: In all of your research. Though, I mean, I mean,
because I'm sure you have. You found yourself in late
night libraries doing the microfilm and you were going through
that stuff that we all used to use as a
tool to get to the history. Did you ever feel
all of that stuff that was placed on that little
piece of film? Was it? Was it some sort of
a you know, like a bait magic or in other words,
where they're trying to bait you away from what was
really going on.
Speaker 5: Oh, that's a great question.
Speaker 4: Do you know what was interesting about how it was
reported after after the event happened, It made national news in
a variety of newspapers, associated press, and there was this
one word that consistently came up as it was supported militants, militants.
And we kept, I kept we shout out to Dona Santi,
who researcher, and he kept finding these articles and this
this one word kept coming up again and again and again,
and I was like, what does this mean?
Speaker 5: Militants?
Speaker 4: And it's like these are just you know, these are
sociology majors from from philosophy majors like these were the
humanity students that were doing this. It was the theater kids,
it was the humanities kids. These were the ones that
were in there. So this idea of this kind of
organized militaristic force was was interesting. Then what we discovered
and we'll see this in a couple of weeks when
we when we talked to Frank Furguzli, who was an
FBI agent for twenty five years counter terrorism. He talked
about in those days, buzzwords like that were used as
like surveillance nets. So basically it was a way to say, hey,
target these.
Speaker 3: Equals a passport to surveil people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was exactly, it was a passport to surveillance.
So basically, and and Sam was a part of this.
This happened to James Thomas Brock, a lot of people
we interviewed. They became targeted by the FBI after this
event as potential militant anti you know, establishment, anti establishment
figures figures. Yeah, they got permission from the state to
be surveilled. And the press was a part of it.
Like it's like you start to look at stuff like
this and it's like you're kind of seeing almost like
the births of where conspiracy theories exactly, you know what
I mean, exactly.
Speaker 1: Wow, eighteen minutes with you guys is not enough. Holy crap, man,
you got to come back to this show where we
can dig even deeper, because I'm very excited to find
out what's your next podcast? Because you talked about it.
There are a lot of unspoken stories here in the South,
and why aren't we hearing them here?
Speaker 5: You come.
Speaker 1: I just have this feeling in my heart that you
are just getting started.
Speaker 5: No, thank you for the time. Greatly appreciated.
Speaker 3: And if you guys listen to the podcast, be sure
to give us a rating and a review.
Speaker 5: It helps it spread.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it's It's available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, onheartradio,
or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 5: The a building.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for raising the bar of journalism because
this is what it's all about. It's about telling the
entire story and not trying to stuff it into a
two minute bit for the five pm news. Thank you
be brilliant today YouTube.
Speaker 5: Okay, absolutely