In February 1973, the Rev. Jesse Jackson – not yet a household name, but a significant figure in the modern civil rights movement – undertook a speaking tour of Southern colleges.
Jackson’s presence on that fateful Memphis hotel balcony the day his mentor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated had been the catalyst for his own high-profile ministry. Jackson had recently split from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and rebranded his Chicago-based Operation Breadbasket as the national organization Operation PUSH – People United to Save (later, “Serve”) Humanity and was eager to get the word out.
Somehow, on February 14, 1973, Jackson landed at a conservative Baptist school in Waco, Texas, Baylor University… but only after behind-the-scenes prodding from a newly formed organization of African American students, Agiza Funika.
In the early ‘70s, Baylor was facing changes of its own. Led by a strong, politically active Department of History and other faculty, students and staff, some — though certainly not all! — had advocated for voting rights of African Americans, demonstrated against the war in Vietnam, and argued loudly that it was time to embrace, not despoil, the environment.
Jackson’s visit was part of Baylor’s new “Ethnic Emphasis Week” during February 14-23, an initiative of the Public Forum Committee (PFC) of the SUB Board (formerly the Student Union Program Council). According to Jim Hudson (BBA accounting, ’74), the larger 30-member SUB Board was primarily concerned with bringing middle-of-the-road musical artists to campus, including the Carpenters, the Lettermen, John Denver and others, leaving the PFC to coordinate the speakers.
The PFC worked closely with Dr. Bill Wimpee and University Forum, which was now supported by the recently enacted $5 “Chapel Fee” – created to underwrite presentations and sermons by well-known public figures, as well as preachers.
Beverly (Narum) Ross (BA journalism and environmental studies, ’74) said that the changes were long overdue. “I think a lot of people thought Chapel/University Forum was a little bit stodgy, a little boring,” she said. “And it was a real push to try to get some more interesting people. And Jesse Jackson must have been part of that push.”
But the Baylor administration had initially been hesitant to bring Jackson. Enter Agiza Funika (Swahili for “Blacks Involved”), which had been instrumental in bringing civil rights hero Julian Bond to campus the previous year.
Agiza Funika formed in 1970, though the first mention in The Lariat was September 21, 1971. Senior Mike Heiskell (BA political science ’72, J.D., ’74), one of the founders of Agiza, served as coordinator.
In an email, Heiskell, a former Baylor regent and a founding partner in the prestigious law firm of Johnson, Vaughn & Heiskell, said many African Americans were “still feeling the effects” of Nixon’s landslide victory over McGovern in November 1972, despite the brewing Watergate controversy. Also on the minds of many African Americans, Heiskell said, was Rep. Shirley Chisholm’s campaign to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee in ‘72.
“Therefore, political discourse was hot and heavy among Black folks and Black students in particular,” Heiskell said. “Baylor students had watched from afar as protest erupted over the preceding years and we wanted to be a part of the conversation that led to the protest. Which is why we lobbied to get Rev. Jackson and Julian Bond to come and address us and the entire student body.”
Heiskell said that Bond had even scheduled time to meet privately with Agiza Funika members to ask how Black students were being treated at Baylor.
“We (Agiza Funika) lobbied for Jackson’s presence through meetings with Herbert Reynolds, the Executive Vice President of Baylor at the time,” Heiskell recalled. “Reynolds relented and the invitation was extended. Reynolds was our liaison with university administrators who we often turned to when there were issues Black students confronted.”
Myrtle Clay, SUB Board member and chair of the Public Forum Committee, also served as coordinator of Ethnic Emphasis Week. “In this time of violence and instability,” Clay told The Lariat. “We must learn from one another, reason together and build bridges for a better tomorrow.”
Jackson was formally invited to speak at both University Forum and again at a 1 p.m. “rap session” in the Barfield Drawing Room later that day. Carlos Parades, from the Division of Evangelism for the Baptist General Convention of Texas, also spoke at University Forum later that week. In addition to a screening of the movie Billy Jack and a lecture by the history department’s Dr. Stanley Campbell, Clay said that various other discussions on the topic of race would be held, including “Racial Discrimination at Baylor: A Personal Look” rap session.
“As Blacks, we feel that there is a lot of prejudice on campus,” Clay said. “And we feel we should talk about it.”
In addition to Agiza Funika, El Nuevo Progreso, a social-service club for Mexican American students, served as the week’s co-host.
Jackson was accompanied on the Waco Hall stage by three football players: Pittsburgh Steeler “Mean” Joe Greene, famed Oakland Raider Ernie Ladd, and Kansas City Chiefs’ legend, Abner Hayes.
Ross, assigned the formidable challenge of covering Jackson’s Forum talk, said it was her first semester as a The Lariat reporter after serving as a night editor – and the first “celebrity” she ever interviewed. “I was still learning, so I was nervous,” she recalled. “Of course, I was flattered that The Lariat editors gave me the assignment because he was a pretty important person.”
“I also felt lucky because he was really impressive as a speaker,” Ross continued. “Of course, we can all see that now, but he was pretty young in his career still and he had some notoriety, but not the notoriety he would eventually reach.”
Still, Ross’s lead sentence on the article did her professors proud: “He did not just talk about building bridges. He is a bridge builder.”
Jackson, who titled his talk “Building Bridges,” told the University Forum audience about the importance of “Black awareness” and quoted from John 8:32: “And ye shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.” “Many of us don’t want to know truth because it would force us to change,” Jackson said.
Ross also included a vivid description of Jackson’s physical appearance:
The Biblical references, his voice intonations, his gestures were reminiscent of a revival preacher. His appearance was impressive – a physique that might be expected of one who was offered a contract to played professional baseball, and his words reflected the education that he chose instead.
With a green corduroy suit, he wore a large gold medallion with an impression of the late Rev. Martin Luther King, the man he worked with for many years.
During the course of his presentation, Jackson frequently referenced the Nixon administration. “With his first comments on the inadequacies of the white leadership in this country,” Ross wrote in her article, “one or two students left Waco Hall. The more he talked of this prejudice, the more people left – not a sizable number, but enough to notice.”
Although no recording of Jackson’s speech has been located, among those in attendance on Valentine’s Day 1973 was Jesse Cruz. Cruz was interviewed by the Oral History Institute a year after the event and said that Waco Hall was “packed” with both students and African Americans from the Waco community.
According to Cruz, Jackson spent much of his time “building up” African Americans, saying that they had the potential to be much more than just football stars. According to Cruz, Jackson said:
“Why can’t we be an athletic director? Why can’t we be more than just a good baseball player? Why can’t we be general manager or coach of the team? “
Also present in University Forum that day was Rick Hale (BA journalism, ’75). Hale called on his training as a journalist for a couple of “sketchy” memories of the event. “There were definitely two different responses to his being there,” Hale said. “For whatever possible reason, I remember vocal opposition to him. I was upstairs and at one point thought, ‘Interesting. The ‘antis’ are on the right side of the room and the pro-Jackson crowd is on the left side of the room.'”
During his comments on the current administration, Jackson made the prediction Nixon would be remembered as the president who stopped the war in Vietnam but left the United States “divided.”
“Your job as children of the most high King,” Ross quoted Jackson as saying to students, “is to feed the people. A new leadership must emerge.”
Heiskell’s memories of the event 50 years later are still surprisingly vivid. “The Baylor Black community was excited and thrilled to have Jackson speak,” Heiskell said. “He didn’t hold back and his statements of the pervasive racism that existed and stymied progress were welcomed by us. Obviously, the conservative white students in attendance were not pleased.”
Ross also reported on Jackson’s subsequent question and answer session. Jackson said that King’s primary concerns in his final years were an end to the war in Vietnam and addressing widespread hunger in the United States. “Everyone is concerned with the economic ceiling,” Jackson said. “Not with the economic basement.”
Jackson also said that in the upcoming election, the “struggle for Black brown, poor and women would be tougher than in the previous year – a continuing power conflict with the white establishment.”
On February 22, a week later, Ross wrote a summary of the events of Ethnic Awareness Week, noting that “participation in the activities was far from overwhelming.”
Ross quoted Clay, who said that the speakers, Jackson, Paredes, and Alfred Baker, national treasurer emeritus of the NAACP, all provided “real insight into the theme … of reasoning together to build bridges for a better tomorrow,” but admitted her “disappointment” at the meager participation in many of the events.
The Waco newspapers chose not to cover the speakers of Ethnic Awareness Week, but the student yearbook, the 1973 Round Up devoted two pages of coverage to the event, also noting that a “number of white students walked out in the middle of the speech.”
“Once again, Baylor students had a chance to show their concern for racial problems in the world and on their campus,” the unnamed Round Up writer concluded, “and once again they ignored it.”
Jackson’s response to his lone visit to Baylor University is not known, though he continued his speaking tour, which culminated March 4 with a speech at Hunter Street Baptist Church Atlanta with the Rev. Ralph Abernathy where they announced a change in the tactics of the civil rights movement in light of the recent Nixon administration budget cuts to focus more on the needs of poor Americans.
In preparation for our interview, Ross said she re-read her articles on Jackson’s visit for the first time in many, many years and only then remembered that some students had disapproved of Jackson’s comments.
“I thought it was pretty rude,” she said. “Especially for way back then. People weren’t so rude like they are now.”
But what did stick with her of that day was Jackson’s “commanding” voice and presence:
“And I think the one thing that struck me in rereading the articles part of what he said needed to change, still hasn’t changed – a continuing power conflict with the old, white tightly vested interests. That hasn’t changed a whole lot.
But Jackson also talked about how Black people needed to change. He talked about, “ If they (white people) challenge us in a basketball game, we say, ‘right on.’ But if they challenge us in the physics lab, we say, ‘Why are they picking on us?’
That has changed.
And I had to wonder if that change had to be in part because of people like him. Jesse Jackson helped make that change because he was such a model, choosing education, choosing to talk, choosing to speak to so articulately and intelligently.“
Including to an audience of a thousand or so mostly white Baylor students in Waco Hall on Valentine’s Day in 1973…
