00:00:00.960 - 00:00:08.670

I wanted to come to AU because I wanted to come to Washington, D.C. I had family here. I didn't want to go to Howard because other family members had been there already.

00:00:09.360 - 00:00:24.090

So this was a nice place to come. Go ahead, Les. The reason I came to D.C. I came from New York originally and came to D.C. to AU is because my parents were residing in

00:00:24.130 - 00:00:30.630

Baltimore, Maryland. My father was working here. AU was one of my choices. And fortunately, being able to get

00:00:30.650 - 00:00:47.790

accepted, I figured with a school of business, Kogod School of Business, I could get my education here and further my career. But that was the main reason for me coming to D.C. instead of going places like Wayne State or other locations outside of New York.

00:00:49.260 - 00:00:59.230

Well, it was a fairly late decision for me. I wanted to go to medical school, and I didn't understand the process. And the counselor recommended that

00:00:59.270 - 00:01:11.730

I come to AU to get started. So that's how I ended up coming to AU in 1966. Were you a gentleman at Apollo?

00:01:12.080 - 00:01:24.240

Were you in D.C.? I was born and raised here. Since I was born and raised, you knew about it? I was born and raised here. I was born and raised in New York,

00:01:24.460 - 00:01:35.680

but this was the place for me. I went through the books looking for places that I could go to. This was a good one.

00:01:37.100 - 00:01:53.390

It met all my criteria. It met all my criteria. So So what was the experience like when you first came on campus? My experience first coming on campus was I kept looking for

00:01:53.410 - 00:02:08.750

familiar faces and didn't see a lot. But it was probably the best four years of high school I ever spent anywhere. I love that.

00:02:10.500 - 00:02:23.520

At the time, AU was a commuter school. People would be here between Monday and Friday, and they'd be gone all weekend, and they'd come back. And as I've told people over the years, my high school was much

00:02:23.560 - 00:02:38.330

more challenging than AU at that particular time. AU was seen as a place where people came that they wanted to go to another school that they didn't get into. So they'd come here for a year, and then they'd disappear.

00:02:39.320 - 00:02:55.750

But that wasn't my reason for coming here again. My reason was I loved DC, and then this was a nice spot for it. Well, my experience was so different. I came here to major in biology, and as I said earlier, it was a

00:02:55.790 - 00:03:01.840

good program. It helped me. It prepared me to get into medical school. I was a commuter.

00:03:03.100 - 00:03:13.570

We commuted here every day. I did for the whole four years I was a student here. Did they require you to live on campus? Never did.

00:03:13.570 - 00:03:18.550

did. Never did. Never did. I thought they had put the requirement for freshmen to be on

00:03:18.590 - 00:03:33.880

campus for one year, but I don't know when that started. Yeah, I think that came along a little bit later. Well, if it was that much of a commuter school and sort of it sounds very sort of disconnected from your description, how did the

00:03:33.900 - 00:03:57.010

three of you connect? For me, it was a cultural desert here, so it wasn't hard to find folks that looked like me. Most of the Black folks here worked here on the staff. At that time, they had people who would come and make up your bed

00:03:57.050 - 00:04:08.940

for you, so it was really kind of funny. But we would go and we'd get the linens and I'd make up my own bed and stuff. We just found ourselves because we

00:04:08.960 - 00:04:24.870

were the only ones in the dorm. The three of us, were we on the same floor? Our second year we were, either second semester or our second year, we were you and Moussa and

00:04:24.930 - 00:04:35.530

myself. Because you were on the basketball team, they gave us a quad suite in the athletic dorm, which was two rooms that had its own private bathroom.

00:04:36.180 - 00:04:54.250

It had one room that was set aside for desk and closets and and another room set aside with two bunk beds and a bathroom. And our fourth roommate didn't stay in the room. His girlfriend lived off campus, so he stayed off campus.

00:04:54.780 - 00:05:13.870

So we always had an extra bed and we always had extra space. It was just ironic that Moussa and Atiba and myself had a dorm room, which was accessible from the inside and from the outside. And it just made it very convenient for us to be in contact

00:05:13.890 - 00:05:24.300

with anybody coming on campus, especially the ones that were commuters like yourself or anybody else that were in the classes that we saw coming in. Because I don't think they

00:05:24.380 - 00:05:41.250

realized what a lifestyle we were living on campus. Because basically we could do anything we wanted to do, but within the restrictions and still get an education here. We had a good time.

00:05:42.180 - 00:05:56.640

Well, I was a commuter, so I think I met people socially in Mary Graydon Center. You know, people would meet between classes. And, you know, like in any new situation, you migrate to people

00:05:56.680 - 00:06:07.780

that look like you or from your community to see who they are, not to the exclusion of anyone else, but that's how I got to know the Black students that were up here at the time and the year ahead at the time and the year ahead of me.

00:06:09.280 - 00:06:20.850

And also I think my group had expanded out from the number of Black students that that were in your class, maybe double or triple the number. Were you the first year of the Frederick Douglass program?

00:06:21.240 - 00:06:33.610

That came about two or three years later. I think that came in 68. That was one of the things we all worked to make happen, like some of the outreach into Washington

00:06:33.670 - 00:06:47.470

and to the inner city schools, including the book program at Wilson and the programs with other things that you were doing in Washington, D.C. Well, in particular, I remember a

00:06:48.210 - 00:06:58.560

lot of students came in through the Pride Incorporated program under Marion Berry. And that was the first time I had ever heard of anybody being able to get a GED that hadn't had one

00:06:58.580 - 00:07:08.750

and wanted to get one, and then go on to do undergraduate work and then go on and do their master's or law degree at the same university. I'd never heard of anything like

00:07:08.770 - 00:07:21.690

that in any other place. And that was beneficial for us here, and that was beneficial for this community here. A, it was interesting in the sense that there were a lot of things

00:07:21.750 - 00:07:34.170

going on parallel to each other that we didn't necessarily know about. My first agenda item was to come here and experience the college dream.

00:07:35.000 - 00:07:43.650

Now, I wasn't the first one in my family to go to college, and I wasn't the last. But the point was that we had different opportunities that were there.

00:07:45.480 - 00:08:06.930

One was I was a walk-on basketball player, which was fine. That led to a job that led to, in fact, AU at that time had a downtown center where GW is now. And we used to have to drive down

00:08:06.970 - 00:08:14.030

there because they did graduate studies there, I think, in business. So we'd have to drive and take stuff down back and forth.

00:08:15.260 - 00:08:27.370

So there was a lot of different opportunities here that I took advantage of, but one of them was looking for other Black folks. And there were brilliant Black

00:08:27.370 - 00:08:32.840

folks who were here. A lot of them were in sports before we got here. You talk about Peter Chen, who was

00:08:32.860 - 00:08:50.710

the first Black person I ever knew who ever did pole vaulting, and Butch Bell, who just missed the Olympics. And we had had a great basketball season. I think two years before I got here, there were some folks who

00:08:51.010 - 00:09:10.000

had come from other places. But there were those types of opportunities, you know, Diane Waugh, Diane Gunter, and some other folks, too, that, again, we were all smart.

00:09:10.400 - 00:09:23.530

We met lots of brilliant Black kids here, and we were all trying to find our way individually. But initially, and initially that's what we were doing, didn't coalesce and come together.

00:09:25.520 - 00:09:47.490

That happened as a result of the cultural desert aspect that I was talking about, and trying to make life much more accessible, not accessible, but much more palatable. Because here we are in D.C., and one of the things that was so

00:09:47.650 - 00:10:03.030

ironic, during the first session when we had the orientation, during orientation, they had a go-go band and show. I think it was Rare Essence or something like that. And you never saw anything like that on the campus.

00:10:04.040 - 00:10:21.150

They took us down to one of the Hyatt's or something like that, and there was, I think, some group band and show. But that was the extent that you would see Black folks. What we needed to do, what we ended up doing, was coming

00:10:21.210 - 00:10:40.120

together to do more than play cards in the punch-out, you know, in Mary Graydon Center. So, you know, it was akin to really, really moving from what one psychologist used to call the

00:10:40.140 - 00:10:56.140

Negro to Black Experience, where we came in as race people trying to make sure we upheld the race, don't embarrass nobody. We were definitely prepared. We knew how to use knives and

00:10:56.220 - 00:11:11.660

forks. But, you know, I guess it would be easiest to say that we represented the talented tenth. We had been pushed that way.

00:11:12.630 - 00:11:19.990

We didn't act that way once we got here. And by that I mean we didn't act snooty, we didn't act anything like that.

00:11:20.000 - 00:11:34.320

We were all accepting. We were so glad to see anybody who looked like us, because at that time, you know, I would suggest that anybody who doesn't know the poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, We

00:11:34.340 - 00:11:52.090

Wear the Mask, that's where we were when we first came in in terms of our whole identity of upholding, you know, the first stanzas like, We wear the mask that grins and lies. It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes.

00:11:53.140 - 00:12:12.810

The debt we pay to human guile with torn and bleeding hearts we smile and mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be ever wise in counting all our years, our tears and sighs? No, let them see only see us while

00:12:12.870 - 00:12:25.290

we wear the mask. We smile but oh great Christ our cries to thee from tortured souls arise. We sing but oh the day is vile beneath our feet and long the

00:12:25.330 - 00:12:33.910

mile. But let the world dream otherwise we wear the mask. So that we came in as folks

00:12:34.350 - 00:12:42.170

upholding the race, the good Negroes, all of that kind of thing. And this was a place to do it at that time, coming out of high school, you know, boom.

00:12:42.170 - 00:12:54.090

A lot of people didn't think that Black folks could make it, but we knew it, we knew better than that. Well that was one of the things that we tried to keep, you know, in the minds of high school

00:12:54.130 - 00:13:06.150

students here in the metropolitan area. Everybody always, it seemed to me that high school counselors wanted to push everybody to Georgetown, GW, Catholic or whatever, Montgomery College or whatever.

00:13:06.940 - 00:13:16.800

And my thought was, why not come to AU? You know, we got the same programs here, we got qualified instructors, and you can get an education here.

00:13:16.800 - 00:13:27.480

And they always said, well what about the money, we don't have the funds to go to AU. Well, unbeknownst to a lot of folks, there's still funds available here at AU, and were then.

00:13:27.480 - 00:13:39.590

Because that was one of the things with the community, starting programs that had access to funds to get people coming, minorities to come to AU. It wasn't just international

00:13:39.650 - 00:13:52.420

students coming in as sons and daughters of diplomats and ambassadors and things that were coming here, you know, to come for international studies, because AU was, to me, was known as a school for international studies.

00:13:52.420 - 00:14:04.450

Right. But it seemed once we started working here, you know, towards our goals, it became more than just that. It became whatever field that you were interested in, you could get

00:14:04.510 - 00:14:15.850

an education in, you could get furthered in. And the scholarships and the money was available. With AU having been on this list, they had a quota system with the federal government.

00:14:16.960 - 00:14:27.470

And they had a thing called freshman forgiveness. That students that didn't make grades, if you were in a minority, they would let you come back on

00:14:27.510 - 00:14:33.860

probation. If you got your grades, then you could continue on your education. I don't know of any other schools

00:14:33.900 - 00:14:50.290

in this area that has that kind of program or institutes that kind of thing for students, especially minority students. But from what I understand, that's been beneficial. And it taught people that if you punch out the first time and you

00:14:50.330 - 00:15:02.740

really want to go to school, you won't punch out a second time if you get the opportunity. So it wasn't this sort of cultural awareness that you're talking about and the cultural visits and

00:15:02.780 - 00:15:10.150

those kind of things. Is Is that what sort of prompted, what was the history of the South? So So that period of time was electric.

00:15:10.620 - 00:15:23.560

And we were advancing, as Atiba said, from this notion of being polite Negroes, which we were referred to when we had interactions with the administration about some concerns we had about representation here.

00:15:23.560 - 00:15:37.990

That's here. That's the word we use now. But we were also concerned about defining who we are as a people. As Stokely Carmichael said, we are an African people, and we were

00:15:38.030 - 00:15:55.770

making that transition to what that really means. And the implications, not just for us, but our families and this community, greater Washington, D.C., and the students that were coming behind us, all students, all the students here as part of

00:15:55.790 - 00:16:09.100

their education really needed to understand African people. And we were part of trying to get people to understand that. Yeah, it was more than electric. D.C. was at that time, and to some

00:16:09.160 - 00:16:27.410

extent still is, a place with a lot of people. There was a lot of infusion of energy, of culture, of consciousness. And we were the only black student

00:16:27.490 - 00:16:43.950

union in the city that had African in its name. OSATAU was an organization of African and African-American students at the university, at the American university. And we did that purposely because when students from Africa came

00:16:44.010 - 00:17:02.630

here, they saw us as, you know, from enslaved and how come we didn't fight to rid ourselves of our white oppressors. And we saw them as ones who sold us out, sold us down the river. So we had this bumping, and one of the things that we were trying to

00:17:02.690 - 00:17:14.350

do was to come together to find out what the real story was all about. So that was part of it. Then there were mentors like Dr.

00:17:14.390 - 00:17:28.630

V, Dr. Villacazzi, who was from South Africa, who was faculty there, and I think he was in SIS. International service, yes. And his son and daughter went to

00:17:28.770 - 00:17:44.410

AU, Cecilia and Hugh. So, you know, we were able to begin to make personal connections. But we knew that in dealing with the student government at that

00:17:44.470 - 00:17:56.140

time, before we were organized, that that wasn't enough just to be a nice person. We had to, if we wanted services, we had to organize ourselves, which we did.

00:17:59.300 - 00:18:16.480

During that period, I think one of the things, as a freshman coming in, one of the things that impressed me most about the three of you and four of you, sort of the leadership of OSATAU, was the respect you had from the administration.

00:18:17.200 - 00:18:32.330

I remember one instance in particular where the administration actually went to you to ask you to help basically police the rest of the university. Do you remember that, when we were

00:18:32.430 - 00:18:52.000

in? Yeah, I remember it. There was the takeover, and folks from SDS had come down to DC. And we had discussions with them, letting them know that, yes, we were going to go ahead, we were going to take over the building.

00:18:52.400 - 00:19:03.130

But no, we weren't going to tear nothing up, because we lived here, and we had no reason to. We just wanted our demands met, and we wanted to demonstrate that we could articulate what those

00:19:03.170 - 00:19:20.690

demands were, as well as have a program. So we told folks, it's one thing to demonstrate, but then you have to follow up with a program that meets the needs that you have. And And we had a constituency here, and so we knew what we

00:19:20.730 - 00:19:32.910

wanted, and we got it. It was basically during that period of time when the riots broke out in DC. This was a sanctuary for us.

00:19:35.920 - 00:19:47.970

Students didn't want to destroy anything that we had established or wanted to establish here. There were a lot of students, as you say, were involved in SDS, that wanted to burn all the records in the student government

00:19:48.030 - 00:20:00.970

office. But these were our records also, so why destroy that? Organizations from other universities wanted to come on campus and help us police our

00:20:01.090 - 00:20:12.250

actions. Metropolitan Police wanted to come on and help us police our actions, but none of that was necessary. We were able to do that among ourselves, where we were asked to

00:20:12.290 - 00:20:29.100

go other places to help them police actions on their campuses. We were very fortunate that we didn't have to go through any kind of riot training here, other than what we believed was right and what we could institute to other people here on the campus.

00:20:30.500 - 00:20:46.850

We made it through that period without having anything destroyed. I can remember the vehicles coming down Nebraska Avenue, and people talking about, they're talking about, they're coming from Chevy Chase, they're going into DC, but they bypassed AU.

00:20:47.860 - 00:20:54.910

You had to go right past AU to get down to where they were. But nobody stopped in here. Metropolitan Police never came on campus.

00:20:55.560 - 00:21:11.150

We were able to do our own policing and protection of our students here. And I think that gave us a lot more respect with the university too, because the university didn't have to depend on outside military

00:21:11.270 - 00:21:27.750

or civil forces to come in and regulate their campus. And I think all that speaks to what we were really interested in, developing community, developing an awareness of who we are and what we were about, and moving that forward.

00:21:28.100 - 00:21:34.110

We weren't interested in tearing anything down or tearing anything up. We weren't interested in harming or hurting anyone.

00:21:34.540 - 00:21:45.990

What we were interested in is establishing that we are here and who we are as we are here and what that means. And that was an inclusive and

00:21:46.190 - 00:21:54.170

open-ended approach that allowed other people to try to understand that. That would be the point. It's an educational institution.

00:21:54.690 - 00:22:06.250

It's an educational process. That's what we were trying to do. So what you're describing, although it wasn't all that at the time, but you were changemakers.

00:22:08.300 - 00:22:16.090

How would you... Nah, nah, you... Nah, nah, nah. We weren't about changemakers in

00:22:16.130 - 00:22:25.650

that sense. Changemakers is more of a sociological term that didn't reflect what we were. We considered ourselves revolutionaries at that time.

00:22:27.000 - 00:22:39.650

Revolutionary in the sense that we wanted to make change. It was going to be planned change, but we didn't view it sociologically in that sense. What we were talking about, it was

00:22:39.830 - 00:22:52.130

very, very concrete. What do our brothers and sisters need here to be successful? For example, I had various opportunities I took advantage of.

00:22:53.260 - 00:23:11.970

I was on the basketball team. They had a little music program I played in for a year. They had some things, but we wanted to make it... Since more people of African descent were coming in from D.C.,

00:23:14.100 - 00:23:33.370

we had to try to be relevant to them as well. Our understanding of leadership was that you bring people in, you give them something to do, and then you get out of the way. Because they were smart, they were intelligent young people.

00:23:34.160 - 00:23:50.350

Just as we had been mentored, then we mentored them. It was this infusion of good ideas. It It was an infusion of other people taking advantage. It was the idea that we weren't going to be the only ones

00:23:50.490 - 00:23:56.830

benefiting by that. The that. The three of us or the four of us were not going to be getting all the goodies and then...

00:23:57.720 - 00:24:08.200

Leaving everybody out. Screwing everybody up. Right, right. Changemaker, I think we have to be careful with labels.

00:24:09.080 - 00:24:20.240

Changemaker is one of those 21st century terms that sort of agree with what you're saying. When you're in the middle of trying to make things better, you're not thinking like that.

00:24:20.280 - 00:24:32.750

You're thinking, how can I make things better? How can we mentor people so they don't make the mistakes that we make? How can we give them the insight to realize their full potential as young African Americans and

00:24:32.870 - 00:24:42.450

Africans on this campus and in the world? That's what we were trying to do. I never saw it as anything more than that.

00:24:43.160 - 00:24:50.950

A lot has happened and a lot has evolved, and I think that's fantastic. We were foundational. I think I like that term a little

00:24:51.010 - 00:25:04.190

better with what we were trying to do. I think we were changemakers from the inside of making more people in the Washington metropolitan area aware of American University and what benefits it held for them.

00:25:05.960 - 00:25:19.050

Being here, they used to call this being up on the hill. Nobody wanted to come up Mass on Nebraska Avenue. We were an isolated situation. To us, I didn't think we were

00:25:19.110 - 00:25:36.320

isolated, but it just worked out to be a boon to draw more people in. More and more every year, the incoming classes increased in minorities, and it got to a point

00:25:36.360 - 00:25:51.370

where AU became a choice instead of an alternative for a lot of students that I've talked to over the years. That's one thing that I've pushed is for people to come together to apply to AU, that there are avenues for their education here

00:25:51.670 - 00:25:59.670

than to go into other local schools if you have a choice, especially if you've got any kind of grades, any kind of good grades. Apply Apply to AU.

00:26:00.290 - 00:26:06.650

See what happens. They always talk about money. If you've got grades, somebody will provide the money. Somebody will provide the funding.

00:26:07.180 - 00:26:22.090

Whether it's AU or whether it's the government or your parents, it'll happen, but you've got to want to come, and that's the one thing where I deal with kids in high school, local high schools here, that that's why I push.

00:26:22.220 - 00:26:31.810

Everybody tells me, I want to go to GW. I want to go to Georgetown, or I want to go to Catholic. No, come to AU. You'll see the foundation.

00:26:32.180 - 00:26:39.900

Then I show them the picture of Asato, and they go, we didn't know they had people up there. Nobody ever told us that. I said, us that.

00:26:39.900 - 00:26:47.790

I said, well, you know, this is part of the education that you're getting, okay, and you need to pass that on. You need to spread that on to your

00:26:47.850 - 00:26:55.550

counselors. Have them investigate what's available for you, because that's where the change will come once you get in.

00:26:56.060 - 00:27:09.690

Then you can continue to make the change by getting that education and furthering it and going on in business and doing the same thing that we're able to do. Is that what describes how the process of starting OSATAU?

00:27:13.700 - 00:27:27.110

No, it wasn't that. It was more of an organic process. It was people getting together, brothers getting together. It was brothers standing up for sisters.

00:27:28.380 - 00:27:41.600

The nature of AU's campus was that anybody could come in and out and do anything they wanted to do. And so there were some racial, racist things happening to the sisters on the campus when on the

00:27:41.600 - 00:27:55.410

campus when we first got here. And one of the things after the brothers stood up and said, this has got to stop, it stopped. So we saw that there was a value in organization as well as it

00:27:56.090 - 00:28:06.440

being part of the larger things that things that were going on in the country. Folks were organized in the country to deal with white supremacy, with segregation.

00:28:06.440 - 00:28:17.440

It It was the end of Jim Crow, end of segregation. And you still had that. You still had, in Prince George's County at that time, they were shooting down brothers with

00:28:17.510 - 00:28:23.310

dum-dum bullets back in the 60s. It wasn't a matter of black folks killing each other. It was other.

00:28:23.310 - 00:28:37.860

It was the cops making white spaces and enforcing the old segregationist policies. My grandfather didn't want me to go no further south than D.C., even though he was from North

00:28:37.880 - 00:28:44.250

Carolina. But the point was that it was us making a space. We were part of the civil rights

00:28:44.290 - 00:28:52.850

movement. We were moving in other areas, dealing with civil rights in Washington, D.C., the last colony, as we used to call it.

00:28:54.560 - 00:29:05.880

We were in a transition from being Negroes to being African people. And part of that transition was to define what it meant to be an African person or a person of

00:29:06.020 - 00:29:15.810

African descent. Why that was important is a point of identity. Like every racial and ethnic group

00:29:16.050 - 00:29:29.080

in this world, identity is the first thing towards developing your sense of self and your sense of worth, having a history that you can be proud of. Those were the things we were

00:29:29.120 - 00:29:46.600

starting to understand. I mean, the pan-African philosophy was evolving at that time, Kwame Nkrumah, Stokely Carmichael, the leaders on the African continent at that time, the leaders here

00:29:46.840 - 00:29:50.740

were speaking to that. Lester Mandela was still in jail at the time. Still Still in jail.

00:29:50.840 - 00:29:59.110

And it had a history that no one knew about. We were just talking about that. Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Du Bois.

00:30:01.080 - 00:30:12.010

We were the fumes of all of those struggles. We were embracing that and moving on and applying that in our situation here.

00:30:13.000 - 00:30:29.410

What is it that you need to do in order to get the kinds of things, resources, acknowledgement, faculty, courses, organized? You had to organize, organize, and organize. And so that's what we did.

00:30:31.040 - 00:30:45.260

And sometimes it just looked like these were jive brothers running running after black women all of the time, which I guess we could understand. But the point was that they saw that we were more than just people

00:30:45.320 - 00:30:58.510

trying to take advantage of anybody, that there was a spot for everybody, and that for the benefit of the collective, we all had to come together and we all had to have somebody to articulate that direction.

00:30:59.000 - 00:31:06.910

And normally the upperclassmen do that. And so that's what we did. And as I said before, there were other brilliant black folks that

00:31:07.050 - 00:31:24.570

had preceded us, but there weren't the numbers for them to come together as a collective to try to articulate those kinds of issues. How did this thinking influence what you did upon leaving American University? It's a myth to think that we as

00:31:24.650 - 00:31:35.650

students had no sense of direction. We had a plan. We had purpose. We saw we had relatives who had laid out things.

00:31:37.340 - 00:31:51.890

Oh, you got an undergraduate degree? That's all you got? You got a master's degree? That's all you got? Okay, so we were following the footsteps of our elders and leading up to the expectations

00:31:52.470 - 00:32:05.930

that we were going to do well. So we weren't going to fall down and go lightly into the darkness, but we had to find ways to make the struggle appropriate for us here.

00:32:07.000 - 00:32:21.010

And as I said, I had plenty of opportunities. And once I was about to graduate, there was a program that opened up in terms of a master's program. And then I was offered a slot in

00:32:21.050 - 00:32:26.730

there. It was a graduate program. It was a fellowship program. It was free, and it kept me from

00:32:26.790 - 00:32:36.270

going to Vietnam. So naturally I took advantage of that. And so I got two degrees in five

00:32:36.310 - 00:32:49.110

years. And that was something that allowed us, that came out of our struggle here, our organizing here, because we were offered it because we went to the School of

00:32:49.190 - 00:32:59.170

Education at that time. It It wasn't really a school at the time, but there was an education faculty and told them what was wrong with their courses and what they needed to add.

00:32:59.380 - 00:33:14.010

And so they had some respect for that. Well, these colored folks seemed to know something about education. If nothing else, we knew something about education. Well, that's the one thing that helped progress us.

00:33:16.000 - 00:33:34.650

I know when I graduated from here, I didn't initially pursue any kind of graduate degree, but interest in workforce. And from my experiences here working at American University, I learned management skills, which I was able to take on further into

00:33:34.690 - 00:33:48.530

my career. And because of that, the opportunities that evolved for other folks behind me where the programs started to become available for them to not just get

00:33:49.290 - 00:34:08.220

their undergraduate degrees, but their master's degrees, their PhDs, their doctorates, their law degrees. And it just amazes me that the fact that as many members that that were from the original OSATAU group, how many have gone on to

00:34:09.130 - 00:34:23.050

pursue careers that nobody probably ever envisioned for them. Nobody but our parents. Parents, you know. When we were coming in, they didn't expect that we would go on

00:34:23.090 - 00:34:31.830

to become, you know, that I would get a PhD. I had no idea that I would. Joe had an idea that he was going to med school, so he was clear.

00:34:32.420 - 00:34:47.450

They didn't have a sense that the members of OSATAU were coming together in a cabal-like situation and planning for the future, not only of individuals, not only of the collective, but for the race.

00:34:48.800 - 00:35:04.230

Yeah, so I was able to take this education in basic sciences, but also the social education, the cultural education. And I keep emphasizing this sense

00:35:04.270 - 00:35:21.490

of self and foundation so that when you enter new arenas and new challenges, you know who you are and no one can throw you off your game by challenging your identity and your right to be in that space, as you just described.

00:35:22.200 - 00:35:44.060

So that was very impactful. It enabled me to evolve a purpose in life of getting to underserved communities, not so much on the service end but on the education end, influencing the young minds in medicine and health care to

00:35:44.080 - 00:36:00.630

understand what the real issues are, what the real problems are, and how do we try to get to solutions that impact and improve services, care, education in these underserved communities, which are overwhelmingly represented by people of color.

00:36:03.660 - 00:36:21.960

One of the things that was most beneficial from AU was learning, one, how to speak to people who were in power, how to not be afraid, how to have a plan, how to be able to say that we are going to, this is what we want to do.

00:36:23.000 - 00:36:33.640

Took those when I graduated in my master's program and became a teacher, saw the importance of identity. A guy was working with kids who

00:36:33.850 - 00:36:50.570

supposedly had behavioral and emotional problems, and most of the times there was a lack of self, lack of knowledge of self, of who they were as young African-American children. And so what we did was we created an interdisciplinary program

00:36:51.040 - 00:37:10.480

within the institution that I worked in, a mental health center, five-day residential setting, with my art teacher, and we had music, and created that kind of foundation for kids with problems. And that helped chill a lot of them out because, again, they were

00:37:10.500 - 00:37:34.130

getting knowledge and information about who they were as young African-American children in elementary school. One final question, and again, we can debate the definition of change makers, but my definition is right.

00:37:36.220 - 00:37:53.740

Except the fact that we are changing in terms of changing how people thought here, those kinds of things. So what now? We grew up in a very different age that seems to be repeating itself right now, but what advice would

00:37:53.780 - 00:38:20.870

you give young people here at American in terms of using your path, what they can learn from what you did? Well, I would advise them to find out who they really are. And what I would say to the African-American students is your

00:38:20.950 - 00:38:34.850

history and your culture didn't begin in slavery. There were an African people with an immense civilization that preceded that, and that's what you need to understand to know who you are.

00:38:36.000 - 00:38:43.070

That's a foundation. It's not the end all and be all. Once you establish that, then you take on the challenge and the rigors.

00:38:44.000 - 00:38:50.030

This is not a free lunch. There are no easy paths in this life. Everybody has challenges.

00:38:51.000 - 00:38:59.650

Everybody. You just have to understand that. The people that overcome the challenges are the people that become successful and get to where they want to be.

00:39:01.000 - 00:39:09.550

Everyone's going to have roadblocks. That's just a part of life. You've got to get through that to where you want to be, not where somebody else wants you to be or

00:39:09.590 - 00:39:26.540

where they want to keep you. Yeah, I would say, again, culture is the key, knowing self, hanging in there with your family, understanding that your path to greater self-expression is to go

00:39:26.580 - 00:39:39.370

back and help the community, go back and help family members. Build that aspect of it using the tools that you have, which were a lot more now than what we had. There's had.

00:39:39.370 - 00:39:49.520

There's a lot more information than we have now. You mentioned before you went to Egypt with Dr. Ben, and you saw the great things that we have done. I've have done.

00:39:49.520 - 00:39:52.530

I've been to the west coast of Africa. I've of Africa. I've been to South Africa.

00:39:53.600 - 00:40:08.370

The point is that once you leave this country, you can find out who you are. You go over to Africa, and you see, hey, that looks like Jojo from down the street, and Jojo don't understand what you're

00:40:08.390 - 00:40:21.240

saying, and that ain't Jojo from down the street, but you begin to understand where you are in the world and the connectedness of African people. So the thing that I would say is,

00:40:21.850 - 00:40:35.990

again, know your history, know yourself, work to find out what your skill set needs to be and how you can get there, and understanding that you have ancestors who have walked this path before.

00:40:36.060 - 00:40:43.810

You're not cutting out a brand-new path. You just got to go back and find out who were the pacesetters, and hopefully you can catch up to

00:40:43.850 - 00:40:57.630

them, because they're there. They are there, and their example will help you address the issues that you thought are so insurmountable, but they're not.

00:40:58.380 - 00:41:14.470

African students that aren't at an American university or coming into an American university that are minority students, they need to, once they get here, learn what our history has been, what we went through, because they're not going

00:41:14.490 - 00:41:22.160

to have to go through some of the same things, but the ideology is going to be some of the same things that they're going to have to deal with. For them to progress in this

00:41:22.220 - 00:41:37.950

world, the way it's going now, is you have to be aware of what your surroundings are and apply the knowledge that you obtained so you can progress further, and then pass that on to somebody coming behind you, whether it's younger brothers and sisters in your

00:41:38.010 - 00:41:51.070

family, whether it's cousins, whether it's friends, whether it's anybody that you know, because the more intelligent information that you give them, the more intelligent information they're going to be able to process to live their lives correctly.

00:41:52.000 - 00:42:04.470

They won't have to deal with looking over their shoulders and saying, is this guy a good cop or is he a bad cop? Somebody got a camera on or not have a camera on? These shouldn't be things that we need to worry about every single

00:42:04.510 - 00:42:20.120

day. That happens to us every day. And therefore, what inspired and gave me such satisfaction is, two years ago, we had a black alumni reunion, and there were four

00:42:20.280 - 00:42:44.150

decades of AU students at that reunion. And that means more to me than anything. One of the other things I want to make sure that people understand, that we know, is the role of sisters in OSATAU.

00:42:45.420 - 00:43:07.130

While you see the brothers here who may have had some influence in starting it, there was the support of black women who kept us going, not in a patriarchal sense, but in an African sense, a complementarity, where there was the sharing of roles and

00:43:07.170 - 00:43:16.150

responsibilities, leadership opportunities, development, all of that. And that's what separated us, I think, from a lot.

00:43:18.000 - 00:43:32.250

I want to read this other poem that talks about what I think our role with women was. It's called Our Women Keep Our Skies From Falling. Our women keep our skies from falling, our days from dying, our

00:43:32.310 - 00:43:52.230

nights from crying, carrying deep within themselves the sacred sun loaves of African-American lives, embers which fire black generations are securely embedded betwixt broad bail-bobbin hips and gleam sparkling forth from deep lakes of blue, black, brown, dark

00:43:52.330 - 00:44:03.070

ebony eyes. Their song is a healing song and calling song and culture song, and though no one can stop the rain, our women keep the skies from falling.

00:44:04.420 - 00:44:21.850

So one of the things that we always had was the connection with our women and the support of them, not just to push us forward, because initially there were some things that only men could do in terms of making this campus safe.

00:44:22.880 - 00:44:42.240

And one of the things that brothers found out later after OSATAU was the African-American experience, and we utilized that, was that we made it safe for some brothers who wanted to date white girls, able to date white girls,

00:44:43.080 - 00:45:04.280

even if there was this broad sea of beautiful black women there. We made it safe, and all of those insults, all of the kinds of microaggressions that used to happen to black women before we were organized, before there was OSATAU, before there was the

00:45:05.540 - 00:45:22.610

standard that you cannot, white supremacy cannot make us afraid. It will be dealt with, and it's the role of the brothers to deal with that. And so we did, and that's why

00:45:22.610 - 00:45:36.870

OSATAU came together. Can we have one more minute? If each of you can please answer this question, finish the sentence, actually.

00:45:38.840 - 00:46:00.670

What is a changemaker? A changemaker is a person that makes things better than they were when he or she came into the situation. To me, a changemaker is someone that makes other individuals aware

00:46:00.830 - 00:46:17.850

of what situations they're in and what situations they're going to encounter in the future and be prepared to deal with those things, if it's positive or negative. But if you're aware and you can deal with it.

00:46:22.200 - 00:46:42.330

A changemaker is a cultural warrior, a cultural healer, someone who takes their people to the next level. They have a sense of vision, and they have a sense of understanding that they're here for a purpose that, first of all, trying to help

00:46:42.570 - 00:46:58.690

heal all the things that have happened to them, their families, their communities, and that's their responsibility. And they should take that as their solemn duty and their solemn oath and not worry about anything else, because everything else will fall

00:46:59.150 - 00:47:13.550

into place. And it's through the help of being connected to the spirit and the divine that undergirds all of this, that sets us apart, because that's our culture.

00:47:14.600 - 00:47:33.050

That's our way of seeing and viewing the world. OSATAU is the Organization of African and African-American Students at the American University. I still got an OSATAU t-shirt.

00:47:33.090 - 00:47:44.130

I need to find it. I can get it reprinted. Yeah, in terms of making sure that we included Africa.

00:47:47.000 - 00:47:51.660

Okay, that's what I thought I heard, but I just... Oh, for sure. Okay, great.

00:47:52.280 - 00:48:02.830

Well, that's what I was saying. That evolution into the concept of pan-Africanism and us as an African people. Remember, Stokely Carmichael did,

00:48:03.010 - 00:48:15.170

towards the African Revolution at Howard University, he was the keynote speaker, and the theme was, we are an African people. We are an African people. Are we still rolling?

00:48:16.020 - 00:48:28.790

Just throw this in. So Steve Scalise made this comment about Western civilization being threatened by people of color. Somebody explain to Steve Scalise.

00:48:29.460 - 00:48:40.910

Let's have him read Csikszentmihalyi's book, The African Origins of Western Civilization, Myth or Reality. He presented that information at

00:48:41.090 - 00:48:45.750

UNESCO. He was supposed to get a Ph.D. at first. I think it was in France.

00:48:46.640 - 00:48:53.490

They said this is nonsense, and they finally allowed it to happen. He got happen. He got four Ph.D.s. So there you go.

00:48:54.060 - 00:49:07.110

So read They Came Before Columbus, Ivan Van Surterma. Read, what was the other one we were just talking about? Chancellor, oh, this was the other

00:49:07.150 - 00:49:11.520

thing, too. Chancellor Williams was on faculty here. We didn't know it.

00:49:12.020 - 00:49:23.640

The Destruction of Black Civilizations. So that was another important read. Anything, well, anything by Frantz Fanon. Frantz Fanon's books.

00:49:24.060 - 00:49:27.890

And these were the books that we got to read. Black Reconstruction. Reconstruction.

00:49:27.890 - 00:49:29.630

Black Reconstruction. Black Reconstruction. Anything by W.E.B. Du Bois.

00:49:31.520 - 00:49:41.050

We had, we read those as juniors. Of Stolen Legacy. Stolen Legacy. Read that.

00:49:41.060 - 00:49:57.150

George and James. Let's have Steve Scalise and anyone who's a nonbeliever just read any of that documented, well-researched information. And Malefica Sante, well, you can read anything by Malefica Sante.

00:49:59.600 - 00:50:05.410

But. Or if you're here in Washington, is Anthony Browder still here? Tony Browder's still here. So he here.

00:50:05.410 - 00:50:12.420

So he has a book, the, what is it? I know the book. I can see it in my face. Right.

00:50:13.000 - 00:50:28.290

But it speaks to the African, Nile Valley African symbols that are the underpinnings. Hello? The underpinnings of the founding of this country with all of the symbols in the capital of this

00:50:28.370 - 00:50:37.350

country that speak to that. We're not making this up as we go along. One of the beauties of this is.

00:50:37.350 - 00:50:39.590

We never did. is. We never did. And we still don't. We still still don't.

00:50:39.590 - 00:50:54.210

We still don't. This has exceptional intellectual rigor and it is researched coming and going. Read anything by, they came before Columbus.

00:50:54.210 - 00:51:01.950

That's That's Van Serderman. Ivan Van Serderman. But he also has a number of books out that deal with Africans throughout the world.

00:51:02.000 - 00:51:08.830

The world. The African presence in the Far East. Right. Far East and early Europe.

00:51:10.360 - 00:51:18.050

Right. He has a book on the intellectuals and African and African American intellectuals. So So again.

00:51:18.740 - 00:51:23.570

Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. Crisis. Crisis. That was one that we read there as well.

00:51:23.570 - 00:51:26.710

Right here. as well. Right here. That was a key piece.

00:51:27.880 - 00:51:39.250

A lot of this is on YouTube. You can Google these names and the tapes will come up. So you can see and get the

00:51:39.310 - 00:51:45.560

information. It's well referenced. They'll give you other texts and things you can read to get the information.

00:51:45.560 - 00:51:51.270

And any information. And any black class that you have. Or you should have by now. African American literature.

00:51:53.940 - 00:52:07.450

The other way of looking at it is that Brother Wade Nobles, who is a psychologist, raised the issue of to be African or not to be. And that's one of the issues that

00:52:07.590 - 00:52:16.610

is. San Francisco State. That is still serving as an evolutionary force for people of African descent.

00:52:17.240 - 00:52:27.830

Dealing with that conversion from Negro to black. To African. Because it is different levels of understanding.

00:52:28.100 - 00:52:46.430

And it's not just a linear kind of process. And we understand also that it's the winds that buffeted our knowledge and understanding of this. Because a lot of this is hidden in plain sight these days.

00:52:46.460 - 00:52:50.780

Thank you. It's hidden in plain sight. Exactly. We can put these books out on the

00:52:50.820 - 00:53:01.070

table and people say, where did you find that? You can find it on YouTube. You can find it on Amazon. You can find it Politics and Prose.

00:53:01.720 - 00:53:21.520

So the point is that stuff that we had to scratch and claw for is out there on the present. But for people to want to be and deeply check out their African-ness is a major piece.

00:53:22.000 - 00:53:35.060

And one of the things that I do now that's still an outcrop from things that started at AU was rites of passage for young adolescent African-American males. And I've been doing this for over

00:53:35.060 - 00:53:43.340

30 years. So that's something that we do here in the Washington, D.C. area. And that was one of the areas of

00:53:43.480 - 00:54:06.220

expertise of my late wife, Nzinga Warfield Coppock, who did rites of passage for African-American girls and women. And she also, she had her undergrad here in psychology, got her master's here in the same program, and went on to Fielding

00:54:06.260 - 00:54:26.150

Institute in Santa Barbara to get her Ph.D. in organizational psych. So we all used those skills when there were times in which you were struggling, trying trying to articulate to people that no, we're not dumb.

00:54:26.660 - 00:54:46.320

No, we understand that our history began before slavery and that we had civilization, we had ways of organizing and doing things before colonization, before folks from Arabs came in and others.

00:54:46.620 - 00:55:01.070

But that's stuff that's available now, and that's what they should be struggling for, struggle to help you find out who you are and how you can best help your community.

00:55:02.040 - 00:55:03.720

Yes, absolutely.