All Because of a black nationalist flag

As many African American Studies departments celebrated fifty-year anniversaries over the past two years, we have primarily thought about African American Studies in the context of colleges and universities. These academic departments were born out of the Black student movement of the 1960s and 1970s, when Black students and white allies demanded not only increased Black student, faculty, and staff representation on campuses but also demanded that Black Studies be incorporated into U.S. higher education. Martha Biondi has documented this movement on campuses in The Black Revolution on Campus. Fabio Rohas documents how Black Studies moved from a movement to a discipline in From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline. And in White Money/Black Power: The Surprising History of African American Studies and the Crisis of Race, Roliwe Rooks explores the often unrecognized role white philanthropy played in determining the sustainability and agendas of the discipline. These texts, and others like them, provide important documentation in the context of higher education. There was, however, an additional, equally important component, to the movement for Black Studies on campuses and that other component was social responsibility.

Before higher education institutions began talking about “engaged scholars” and “outreach and engagement,” Black Studies students and faculty were talking about the obligation of the discipline to link Black Studies at colleges and universities to local Black communities. There were many ways that this happened, but I want to focus on a specific tactic that the director of the Division of Black Studies at The Ohio State University used during 1970-1971, his first and only year as director. Dr. Charles O. Ross was recruited from the University of Chicago, where he was an Assistant Professor of Social Work. He was hired in April 1970 at Ohio State as an Associate Professor with tenure. He, along with his wife and two young sons moved to Columbus and settled in the South Linden neighborhood, not far from, but very much separated from, the Ohio State campus. The Ross family arrived in Columbus just as the Columbus School system reached a breaking point with what the newspaper headlines would call “racial strife” and “unrest,” while referring to Dr. Ross as a “militant” and “black nationalist separatist.” His neighborhood high school, Linden-McKinley, would find itself at the center of the clamor for Black Studies in local secondary schools.

Dr. Ross, and other scholars nationwide who were re-defining themselves as Black Studies scholars, understood that in order for Black Studies to be sustainable and acceptable in academe, it had to be understood as an academic discipline and not merely a history course here and a poetry course there. Traditional higher education disciplines are taught in primary and secondary schools, introducing students to the foundational subject matter and preparing them to expand their studies in those areas at post-secondary institutions. Thus, Dr. Ross began reaching out to Black high school students at various Columbus schools, but heavily targeting Linden McKinley High School (LMHS). He understood the importance of institutionalizing Black Studies, and he recognized that it was not a project isolated to college campuses but must have deeper roots.

I grew up in the South Linden neighborhood, just a mile or so from LMHS. My parents are LMHS alumni. I remember walking there with my father, as a small child, and playing with my brother while our father ran laps on the track. I also remember hearing about my parents marching from LMHS to Franklin Park, on the East Side of Columbus. I was fascinated by the idea of my parents marching, partly because I could not imagine walking that distance--we drove in our car to Franklin Park, no one would think about walking there from my neighborhood. The other reason is because being born in 1975--after the accepted end of the civil rights movement and the soon-to-be waning of the Black nationalist era--the aftermaths of those movements still hung in the air. It was intriguing, then, that my parents, living in little ole’ Columbus, Ohio, a certifiable “cowtown” at the time, had marched like Dr. King. In retrospect, I had no idea at all why they were marching. None. I only learned this year, and Dr. Ross was at the center of why.

They marched on Wednesday, May 19, 1971 after a school ceremony observing the birthday of slain activist Malcolm X. As the stories go, most white students left school after the assembly, disgruntled and entitled. Most Black students left after the assembly and marched to Franklin Park, where Dr. Ross had organized an all-day birthday observance for Malcolm X that included a speech by Alex Haley, the author of The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

Prior to the marching, racial tensions were already running high at LMHS. The largely working class neighborhood was experiencing rapid racial demographic shifts, resulting in the LMHS that my father’s oldest siblings attended 3-4 years earlier than him shifting  from majority white to a 65% majority black, in what must have felt like overnight for many families. Beginning in 1969, Black students at certain Columbus junior and senior high schools began, sometimes requesting and other times demanding, a recognition of their histories and more cultural inclusivity in curriculum and even cafeteria menus. It would seem many students were vocalizing their awareness of the Black Power movement catalyzed by chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee Stokely Carmichael’s 1966 speech at the University of California, Berkeley. Black History Week was the most popular demand, according to news archives documenting the fallouts when schools resisted, and observing the birthday of Malcolm X was a close second. LMHS was allowed to organize a Black History Week assembly in February 1971, and that performance would ignite a spark that several months later would become a flame that closed the school down for nearly a week and also resulted in Dr. Ross being arrested at LMHS.

As the February Black History performance took place, from above the stage in the balcony, a rain of pamphlets with hate speech flooded the auditorium stage (some witnesses say it was a call for a segregated senior prom, but others admit they never knew for certain the content--just that it was racist). The white students fled with black students on their heels; an escape car was waiting. The identity of the primary perpetrator not only was never a mystery--they all knew it was a white kid named Rick--but it was accepted with a certain nonchalance. Nearly fifty years later, as I sat around a table speaking to several Black LMHS alumni, they said they had played sports with Rick since little league and never knew he felt that way. Their tone was almost neutral, perhaps even forgiving. But what could not be forgiven is what came later, on the tailwinds of the march and Malcolm X’s birthday observance. It was catalyzed not by racial strife but fear of change--fear of the privilege and loss that is necessitated by equality.

The day of the march, some students marched back to LMHS that evening, took down the U.S. flag hanging on the flagpole in front of the school, and replaced it with a Black Nationalist flag, similar to, if not a replica of the red, black, and green striped flag designed by Marcus Garvey in 1921. To emphasize their point, they secured the flagpole rope to the roof of the school building, making it impossible to move the flag without first gaining access to the building. The police were already nearby, having followed the marchers from the park; they had been stalled by a blockade of cars students had abandoned in the middle of Cleveland Avenue, stopping traffic (and the police). Try as they might, the police could not get the flag down until after 11:00pm when a school janitor was called to open the building. Meanwhile, white people began calling the police and threatening, as one group claiming to be LMHS alumni said, they would tear the flag down. In the North Linden neighborhood some white households began flying the U.S. flag in counter-protest to Black student demands.

Refusing defeat and insisting upon representation, unidentified Black students hung two  Black Nationalist flags in the school auditorium on Thursday, May 20, 1971, catalyzing what the press called a “showdown” between white and black students. Multiple platoons of police officers, who were nearby on high alert, stormed the school, and two Ohio State professors showed up, presumably by invitation of students. Dr. Ross was accompanied by Dr. Richard Kelsey of the Education Department. Dr. Ross was arrested on a number of charges stemming from his refusal to leave the building. In addition to his Municipal court hearing, Dr. Ross was subjected to a university hearing under the one-year-old Ohio House Bill 1219 on campus disruptions. William Kunstler was lead counsel. The charges were dismissed after the hearing officer held off-campus activities could not be construed as campus disruption. Dr. Ross was nonetheless removed as director of Black Studies.

And LMHS? The school remained closed for nearly one week. Ninety-two teachers (15 Black teachers) voted to allow both a U.S. and Black Nationalist Flag to be displayed at LMHS. Up to 200 white students, represented by a group of 6 students, received a police-escorted motorcade to central administrative offices where Columbus Schools Superintendent Eibling affirmed requests for assurance that they could attend school safely and only the “American” flag would be flown. There were never any discussions regarding the safety of Black students, and the city of Columbus never issued an apology to the Black students who were indiscriminately beaten and assaulted by police officers on May 20th. A Black assistant principal, who was beat by police, and then arrested along with two white teachers who came to his aid, was moved to a new school. A Black administrator was named for the 1971-1972 academic year at LMHS. Beginning in 1972, Columbus Community Relations Director, Clifford Tyree, a Black man, led a campaign to eliminate Black History Week in Columbus schools, arguing it was a point of contention and should be taught year-round. The trials and tribulations of Black History Week would culminate in the class action legal case Goss v. Lopez  (1973) that addressed Black students being suspended and expelled without due process--many of those students had conflicts with either administrators or white students in regards to Black History Week assemblies and Malcolm X’s birthday.

Meanwhile, Black Studies at Ohio State would grow its faculty, launch a master’s program, and become, for many years, one of the highest-regarded departments in the nation. But along the way it would struggle with the disciplinary recognition that early pioneers like Dr. Ross anticipated--this struggle is evidenced by archives indicating persistent under-resourcing, insufficient budgets, and limited self-governance. Perhaps Dr. Ross was a separatist. Maybe he was [too] militant. Clearly, wearing a Dashiki to the university hearing was too Black and making an annual salary of $24,500, as was often commented upon by the press, was too much for a Black man, and especially a militant one. But he was not wrong about the “get-Ross” campaign he insisted the local police and university conspired to enact, and he was not wrong when insisting Black Studies be treated as a discipline of higher education in spite of the persistent refusal of administrators nationwide to accept it as such then and now.