MONDAY
E-mail a friendSamuel L. Jackson
airdate August 9, 2006
With a worldwide box office over $3.8 billion, Samuel L. Jackson is the highest-grossing actor in movie history. His credits include Jungle Fever, Pulp Fiction, which earned him an Oscar nod, and Freedomland. Jackson studied architecture at Atlanta's Morehouse College. In an effort to help his stutter, he auditioned for a musical and ended up changing his major. After graduation, he moved to NY to pursue his craft. He has extensive stage experience, including originating roles in two August Wilson plays.
Samuel L. Jackson
Tavis: I knew this story of your - I'm trying to find the right word here - of your involvement in a particular protest at Morehouse. I knew of the story. I'd heard the story before. I did not know that you all had taken hostages during this protest. And I did not know that one of the hostages you took was Dr. King's daddy. Is it a true story?
Jackson: Yeah.
Tavis: All right, tell me what happened. You can't take Dr. King's - I can't even say it. I can't even say it. You can't take Dr. King's daddy hostage, Samuel L. Jackson.
Jackson: Well, we did. But...
Tavis: (Laugh) What happened?
Jackson: I'm a student at Morehouse College. (Laugh) We had no Black Studies department. We had no Black studies, period. There was no real African-American representation on the board of trustees. There was no student representation. There was no community representation. We lived in the middle of some projects. And the students at Morehouse were constantly getting beat up by kids in the projects, and robbed, and whatever.
But we wanted to talk to them about that and see if we could fix it, and they were having a meeting, and we petitioned, and they said, no, we don't have time. So at the time, they had these chains on the walkway to keep us off the grass. So we took one of the chains off the walkway, somebody went to the hardware store and bought a padlock. We went inside the building, padlocked the doors, and said, okay, you wanna talk to us now.
And it just so happened that Dr. King's father was there, (laugh) 'cause he was a de facto member. He didn't really have a vote. Nobody Black in there really had a vote. Hugh Gloster, president of the school, a lot of other people. Charles Merrill was in there. He was, like, the head of the board of trustees, and there were a couple of federal judges. Stuff we didn't really know.
But we locked them in there, and when we got in the room, all of a sudden Dr. King's dad started having some chest pains. So I find a ladder, get him out of here, 'cause nobody wants to be charged with murder. So we put him on a ladder and sent him down, and we kept the rest of them for, like, a day and a half. (Laugh)
Tavis: (Laugh) I'm speechless, and I rarely am.
Jackson: It was great, though, because Diana Ross' brother was in there with us, T-Boy, and she actually sent to Pasqual's and bought, like, fried chicken and potato salad and stuff, and they bussed food in to us. Somebody was about to call in the National Guard because of the federal judges, and the federal judges were like, no, they're just kids. They just wanna talk.
Tavis: So I feel like Chuck Woolery now. How'd the date end?
Jackson: Ended well. They agreed to do something about the things, so they got some African-American studies, and student representation, and more Black people on the board. And they got people from the community to come in and get involved in dealing with how Morehouse related to the community, whatever. And they granted us amnesty. Students voted to grant us amnesty.
And as soon as school was out, (laugh) the judicial board of the school, which had no students on it, it was all the old heads in Morehouse, sent all of us registered letters and told us to come back so they could kick us out. And that's what they did. (Laugh) So it was one of those kind of things where the first year you go to Morehouse, you had this big freshman lecture where - Dr. Mays was still president when I got there.
And he said, 'Look to your left; look to your right. That person will not be here next year.' You're kind of, like, 'Damn.' And sure enough, I made it through three years before I was not that person that was there next year.
Tavis: Did you realize - I'm glad you went there, 'cause I quote him all the time. As a student, did you understand, appreciate, the towering figure that Benjamin Mays was at that time?
Jackson: Well, yeah. We knew, but he was affectionately known to us as Buck Benny (laugh). He'd come in the cafeteria and everything would stop. And he'd address us all and talk to us. And I actually spent some time around him, 'cause I lived right next door to the president's house in Grace Hall, so I would see he and Sadie a lot, he and his wife. And he engaged you in conversation when he ran into you. So, yeah, he was a very, very powerful and interesting man.
Tavis: I always wanted to meet him, and never did.
Jackson: Yeah, being at Morehouse at that time was a very interesting kind of place to be, because I got to Morehouse in September of ‘66. So, Dr. King used to come over there and speak, and Stokie Carmichael would come in there and speak, and they would actually have debates. And we would be sitting there like, wow, King and Carmichael. Rap Brown would come in and speak.
So there were all kinds of figures moving in and out of that community. Julian Bond was still a big part of it. Lerone Bennett would come down and talk to us. So we met and engaged a lot of very famous Black people. I actually was an usher at Dr. King's funeral. Because it was right in the middle of Morehouse's campus. And we went to Sister Chapel at Spellman to see the body that was lying in state. And Bill Cosby and Robert Culp got a plane, and a bunch of us - I met LaTanya on that plane. First time I actually saw her.
Tavis: Your wife.
Jackson: Yeah, we were on a plane from Atlanta to Memphis to go and march in the march the day after Dr. King got killed. And we flew up there in and marched, and they flew us back.
Tavis: Samuel L. Jackson, deep. That's living history.
Jackson: Yeah, it's interesting, yeah. There's actually a photo of me in the Ebony pictorial 'History of Black America,' where I'm sitting on the steps of (laugh) the administration building while they're locked up up upstairs, with a big cane and a fatigue jacket and a big Afro giving a speech, yelling at the students. And so, I actually couldn't deny that I was there. (Laugh)
Tavis: That's our show for tonight. Catch me on the weekends on PRI, Public Radio International, check your local listings. See you back here next time on PBS. Until then, goodnight from L.A., thanks for watching, and as always, keep the faith.
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