Samuel L Jackson Was Expelled From Morehouse In The 60s For Holding Martin Luther King Jr.’s Father Hostage
Jackson enrolled at the historically black Morehouse College in Atlanta, the alma mater of Martin Luther King Jr. In 1968, when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Kings body was brought to Atlanta to lie in state at Spelman College, the historically black woman’s school adjacent to Morehouse. Jackson attended King’s funeral as one of the ushers and then flew to Memphis to join an equal rights protest march that radicalized him and changed the way he thought. “I was angry about the assassination, but I wasn’t shocked by it. I knew that change was going to take something different – not sit-ins, not peaceful coexistence,” he stated in an interview with Parade about his reactions to King’s death.
In 1969, he and a group of radical Morehouse students held the college’s board of trustees hostage, demanding that changes be made in the curriculum of the school and stating that they wanted more blacks on the governing board of the institution. Morehouse eventually gave in and agreed to change but Jackson was expelled for his actions.