(Crickets chirping) (Sound of rushing water) (Somber vocals) VOICE 1: C'mon, hurry up!

(Footsteps rustling) VOICE 2: Just wait.

VOICE 1: Quickly!

We need to do something to get across this creek.

(Sound of dogs barking) VOICE 1: Shhhh!

(“Wade In the Water” plays) ♪ Wade in the water ♪ Wade in the water, people ♪ Wade in the water (Song continues) DR. DAVID WILSON: In 1850, a very cruel act was passed that made it legal for slaves who had run away from plantations-- be hunted like animals because they simply wanted to be free.

It was out of this unspeakable cruelty of the future of the slave act and the abolitionist movement and the resulting civil war that the quest for freedom, the quest for equality, the quest for educational opportunity for slaves and former slaves was born.

♪ Save me now ♪ Save me now ♪ Save me now (Song fades) (Sound of film reel whirring) (Military bugle sounds) (Gunfire) NARRATOR: On December 25th, 1866, just a year after the 13th amendment to the constitution ended slavery in this country, a small group of Black men pitched an idea to the leaders of Maryland's Methodist Episcopal Church.

The proposal called for the creation of a school in Baltimore that would be dedicated to the moral and intellectual elevation of Black men.

Men who would become future leaders in the church.

(Chatter of conversation, voices cheering) DR. DAVID WILSON: The All African American Washington Conference of the Methodist Church, which was situated primarily at the Sharp Street Church here in Baltimore was established and it was encouraged by the general council to begin to discuss this idea of founding an academy and institute to train freed men and former slaves for the ministry in the church.

And so, the names of five of those leaders that came together to start that discussion are recorded in church histories.

And those five were destined to become the visionary founders of what was to become the Seminary Biblical Institute.

and later Morgan State University.

DALE GREEN: These five formerly enslaved African American men were also clergymen.

They were-- Reverend Benjamin Brown.

Reverend James Peck.

Reverend Elijah Grissom, Reverend James Harper and Reverend Samuel Green, senior, who happens to be my six times great grandfather.

(Whirring of film reel) NARRATOR: Samuel Green was born into slavery on Maryland's Eastern Shore in 1802.

The same year that free Blacks in Baltimore built the Sharp Street Methodist Episcopal Church.

Green was able to purchase his freedom shortly after the Maryland farmer who enslaved him died in 1834.

Ten years later, he paid $100 to free his wife from her enslavement.

But when his efforts to free his son and daughter failed; his son, Samuel Green Jr., escaped to Canada, aided by Green's cousin, Harriet Tubman.

Local officials suspected that Green had a hand in his son's escape.

VOICE: C'mon, hurry!

NARRATOR: When the sheriff went to Green's house in April 1857 looking for evidence of his complicity, the sheriff found a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin, an anti-slavery book by Harriet Beecher Stowe that had sold more than a million copies.

Green was arrested; not for aiding his son's escape, but for violating an 1842 book banning law that made it illegal for any free Negro or mulatto in Maryland to possess a publication that might create discontent among people of color.

After a quick trial, Green was sentenced to 10 years in Maryland's penitentiary.

Five years later, he was pardoned by Maryland Governor Augustus Bradford.

DALE: He pardoned Reverend Samuel Green Sr. two years prior to signing the Maryland Emancipation Proclamation, and so that gave Reverend Samuel Green Sr. two years to collaborate, uh, with the four other formerly enslaved African American clergymen.

DR. EDWIN JOHNSON: Well, when you look at the history of Morgan State University, of course, we started off as the Centenary Biblical Institute.

We only admitted young African American men to pursue training in the ministry, to be clergy in the Methodist church.

By 1874, we began to admit women.

And then by 1879, we began to realize that we needed more teachers than we needed preachers in the African American community.

So, we became a normal school.

(Triumphant orchestral music) NARRATOR: The end of the Civil War brought a surge in Baltimore's Black population.

By 1880, the migration of newly freed slaves from the deep South and rural parts of Maryland swelled Baltimore's Black population to 54,000 people.

Because many of them were illiterate, Black activists and their white supporters rushed to open schools in Baltimore.

DALE: The Centenary Biblical Institute started with nine students in the basement of a church with one professor.

Uh, but very quickly, the institution grew.

(Whirring of film reel) NARRATOR: In 1872, the Centenary Biblical Institute moved from the Sharp Street Methodist church to a narrow three story building it purchased at 44 East Saratoga Street.

As Baltimore's Black population kept growing, so too, did the need for classroom space.

By 1879, the Saratoga Street building was overcrowded.

That year, John F. Goucher, a Methodist minister and missionary, and his wife Mary, gave the Centenary Biblical Institute a plot of land in West Baltimore at the intersection of Edmonson and Fulton Avenues, which was large enough to construct a four story building that in 1881 became the school's third home in 14 years.

NARRATOR: Three years after moving into its West Baltimore building, the Centenary Biblical Institute produced its first female graduate.

Susie Carr, a native of Lynchburg, Virginia was described as a headstrong and determined student.

Attributes often assigned to women of that time who were self reliant and unflappable.

SPEAKER: And then in 1890, it was renamed Morgan College in honor of Littleton F. Morgan, who was a former chair of the Board of Trustees who had donated generously to the Institute.

And then, Morgan awarded his first degree to George McMechan in 1895.

And by then, we also established two branch campuses: one as Princess Anne Academy on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the forerunner of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.

And then, we open another campus in Lynchburg, Virginia as the Virginia Collegiate and Industrial Institute.

In essence, Morgan was not standing still.

(Bustling street sounds, people conversing) (Pensive piano music) NARRATOR: At the turn of the 20th century, Baltimore was a city of great contradictions for its Black residents.

It was a magnet for Blacks who were looking for a better life, but it was also a lingering bastion of housing segregation, economic isolation, and political disenfranchisement.

(Sound of horse hooves) DR. IDA JONES: By the 1890's, we have the failure of reconstruction, which means the South is now basically an open minefield for African Americans.

Maryland was one of those contested spaces.

Although, Maryland itself did not declare itself in opposition to the Union, it was very clear that it was confederate in its heart and in its mind.

NARRATOR: It was against this backdrop that Morgan College entered the 20th century and in 1902, chose as its fourth president, Doctor John Oakley Spencer, who for the next 35 years would lead the school through good times and bad.

Shortly after taking the helm at Morgan, Spencer discovered the school was nearly out of money.

The school's financial situation began to turn around in 1907 when Spencer convinced Andrew Carnegie, one of the richest men in America to give Morgan $50,000 to construct a badly needed new building.

The gift came with conditions.

DALE: Tycoon Andrew Carnegie who provides a conditional philanthropy to Morgan which really requires them to build a building, name it in his honor, and also to find a new location because Andrew Carnegie's architect had surveyed the grounds and determined that this was an institution who would uh, quickly outgrow that location.

(Uptempo piano music) DR. JONES: When the campus continued to proliferate and grow, they had to find another space to really drop anchor and stop moving, and being so transient.

So, they saw this lovely piece of property here on the corner of Hill and, and Cold Spring Lane and they thought this would be a lovely place for us to be.

And the neighbors were very unwelcoming and actually went to the State to have the charter of the university pulled because they did not want the Negro presence on such pristine and bucolic areas.

But Spencer purchases the land, the students have been here two weeks to a month before the neighbors realized the Negroes are there.

DR. JOHNSON: Even after President Spencer successfully negotiated purchase of this site, we spent our first nine months, um, from January of 1918 into the summer fighting um, for our right to actually be here; is really interesting when you look at the um, Baltimore Sun headlines from that time period.

They're really sensational.

There was the belief that when Blacks came; cholera and typhoid and...and all of these um, diseases came with us and property values would plummet.

(Jazzy piano music) NARRATOR: An important part of Morgan's Baltimore campus was its Academy, a preparatory school that provided students the basic education they needed to gain admission into Morgan College or other higher education institutions.

For at least two young Blacks who entered it shortly after the turn of the 20th century, Morgan's Academy proved to be a vital gateway.

In 1909, Edgar Amos Love whose mother was Susie Carr, graduated from the Morgan Academy.

Two years later, while a student at Howard University, he co founded the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity and became its first Grand Basilus.

And in 1918, after misleading school officials about her age, a 28 year old Zora Neale Hurston, who would become a noted anthropologist and Harlem Renaissance writer, earned her high school degree from the Morgan Academy.

But as the second decade of the 20th century bled into the third, events started to chip away at Morgan College.

(Rumble of explosions) (Whirring of film reel) NARRATOR: In Lynchburg, Virginia, on the brutally cold morning of December 10th, 1917 sparks from the flue of a fireplace ignited a blaze that engulfed the Morgan College annex.

In a little over an hour, intense flames consumed the three story building, leaving little standing beyond the stone walls of the structure which was a replica of the building that Morgan College was occupied in West Baltimore at the corner of Edmonson and Fulton Avenues.

Another loss came in 1927, when Morgan closed its Academy.

The confluence of three events in 1935, brought about Morgan's last big downsizing.

Curley Byrd, a white segregationist, was appointed president of the University of Maryland.

Donald Murray, a Black resident of Baltimore filed a lawsuit that successfully challenged the exclusion of Blacks from the University of Maryland's Law School and the State of Maryland purchased the Princess Anne Academy from Morgan College for $100,000.

Since 1896, the Supreme Court's separate but equal decision which allowed states to maintain racially segregated institutions as long as they were equal, was the law of the land.

Byrd hoped that by acquiring the Princess Anne Academy and making some limited improvements to “that Black school,” he could keep the University of Maryland's main campus in College Park, Maryland from being forced to desegregate.

“Unless we can affect something better for Negroes, we can't keep Negroes out of College Park,” Byrd told a committee of the Maryland legislature on February 4th, 1937.

That same year race was a major factor in another important higher education decision.

(Whirring of film reel) (Jazzy bluesy piano music) DR. JONES: It was a great conversation between Morris Soper and our outgoing President John Spencer on: should the next man be a colored?

Should the next president be Negro?

We had Fisk and Howard in the 1920's who had replaced their white leadership with Black African American leadership and the students were also kind of talking amongst themselves and there were some grumblings about we need to be administrators over our own causes.

DR. JOHNSON: The debate over whether or not African Americans had the capacity and the intellectual ability to govern themselves and lead themselves, had been a debate that had been ongoing since most people agreed that African Americans could be educated.

(Uptempo 1930's inspired piano music) NARRATOR: On the night of Friday, November 18th, 1937, Judge Morris Soper of the United States Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals and Vice Chairman of Morgan's Board of Trustees, stepped onto the stage of Frederick Douglass High School to preside over the installation of Doctor Dwight Oliver Wendell Holmes, as Morgan College's first Black President.

(Applause) NARRATOR: Holmes had big shoes to fill.

Under Spencer's leadership, Morgan grew from 150 students in 1902 to 522 students in 1937.

The faculty rose from 5 to 42 members over that same time.

Most impressive, all but one of the principals and vice principals of the colored high schools and junior high schools in Baltimore, graduated from Morgan during his presidency, as did 262, which was nearly all of the city's colored school teachers.

DR. JONES: Holmes steps in as the first African American president, so he comes in but he has a great history.

He is highly educated.

His parents were freeborn, they were not enslaved.

He brings to Morgan as the scholar gentleman athlete.

His doctoral dissertation talked about the survivability of the Negro college, what that should look like.

So, he already had an idea of what that experience needed to be, not just in the moment but for the next succeeding generations of students coming.

NARRATOR: But less than two years after Holmes became Morgan's president, it was the vision of others that set the school on a path that would determine its course for decades to come.

On November 9th, 1939 after months of negotiation with the school's Board of Trustees, Maryland officials decided to make Morgan College a state school.

(Uptempo Jazz music) (TV static) NEWSCAST: State officials bought Morgan College for $225,000 after a court said they must offer colored residents a comparable college education at a Negro school or integrate the University of Maryland.

Morgan College was renamed Morgan State College.

NARRATOR: Shortly after Morgan became a state higher education institution, Maryland officials appointed four Blacks to the college's new nine member Board of Trustees, the Afro American newspaper reported on December 2nd.

They were attorney Josiah Henry.

Willard Allen, President of the Southern Life Insurance company.

Carrington Davis, principal of the Dunbar Junior Senior High School and Carl Murphy, President of the Afro American Newspapers, which was one of the nation's largest and most influential Black owned publications.

(Sound of machinery) NARRATOR: Murphy had used the pages of his newspaper to call for the appointment of six Blacks and three whites to the new college's governing board.

“For the past eight years, the trend of state administrations has been in the direction of giving colored people a larger share in the control of their own state institutions,” Murphy wrote in an April 1st 1939 front page article.

(Jazzy “Harlem Renaissance” piano music) NARRATOR: Morgan became a public higher education institution in the waning days of the Harlem Renaissance: Black America's great artistic and intellectual awakening.

(Music continues) DR. JOHNSON: When you look at the, the Harlem Renaissance, the Harlem Renaissance was about the new Negro.

It was about Black expression.

It was about Blacks unapologetically taking on a new place, a new space, and a new role in American society.

And there were Morgan faculty members as well as students who were central to that expression.

NARRATOR: In fact, Morgan attracted some of the nation's brightest Black academics to the campus of the newly designated state college.

People like: Nick Aaron Ford, a pioneer in the creation of the Black studies curriculum.

Ellen Irene Diggs, the noted Black anthropologist.

Iva Jones, the great scholar of Victorian literature and the acclaimed Black historians, Benjamin Quarles, and Roland McConnell.

McConnell, the longtime chairman of Morgan's History Department, arrived at the Baltimore school in 1948, the same year that President Holmes retired.

Holmes' replacement was Doctor Martin D Jenkins, a 44 year old Howard University professor of education and educational psychologist.

(Mahalia Jackson singing into microphone) NARRATOR: Throughout his 22 year presidency, Jenkins would cautiously navigate the choppy waters of America's changing political and social landscape.

SPEAKER: The people of Montgomery walk to maintain their human dignity and their rights.

Let us all walk together for freedom, for liberty, and equality.

NARRATOR: That job was made easier in September 1953, when Morgan's Board of Trustees named Carl Murphy as its chairman, a decision that made the Afro president who was one of Maryland's leading civil rights advocates, the first Black to lead the school's governing body.

When Morgan students energized by a growing national civil rights movement, encountered segregation and discriminatory practices in a shopping center across the street from their campus, they waged a non violent protest that landed hundreds of them in jail.

That campaign lasted until the shopping center was fully integrated.

DR. JOHNSON: When Morgan students were arrested, and taken to jail.

There is evidence that the administration took care of those things even though they didn't take care of it publicly.

And it's a similar relationship, when you look at some of the things that Booker T. Washington did at Tuskegee.

There are a lot of people that look at Booker T. Washington, not understanding the dynamics of what he was dealing with.

There were certain things that he could say and couldn't say publicly because he ultimately needed the support of whites who were oftentimes segregationists.

And similarly to President Jenkins, if you took too strong or too radical a stance, there would certainly be repercussions from the state government in terms of what happens to that budget appropriations.

What happens to that facility we were promised.

So it, it really took a very savvy politician and business mind to navigate um, a lot of what was going on.

(Sounds of people shouting) NARRATOR: In 1958, Martin Luther King Junior delivered the commencement address at Morgan State College.

“Those of us who have had to face lynch mobs, to withstand bombs, who are the last hired and the first fired, are tempted to act with bitterness, but somebody must have sense enough to cut the chains of hate to meet physical force with soul force,” a 29 year old king told the graduating class.

That was a balance Jenkins worked mightily to achieve.

Two more controversial figures of the civil rights movement visited Morgan's campus during the final decade of Jenkins presidency.

On March 28, 1962, the nation of Islam's spokesman, Minister Malcolm X came to Morgan at the invitation of the school's Omega Psi Phi fraternity.

DR. JOHNSON: And he debated a Morgan professor named August Meier: integration versus Black nationalism.

NARRATOR: The spirited discussion drew a standing room crowd of 1700 people.

Five years later on January 16th, 1967, Stokely Carmichael, a 25 year old leader of the nation's Black power movement, gave a two hour speech to 1400 people at Morgan.

Carmichael declared his opposition to the Vietnam War, proclaimed that he would not go into the military if drafted and urged Morgan students to refuse to take part in the campus ROTC: Reserve Officer Training Corps Program which he criticized Jenkins for supporting.

DR. JOHNSON: There's uh, a very interesting relationship that you have to consider because Morgan State University President while he leads this institution; at the end of the day is still a Maryland state employee.

So, there's certain things that Morgan's President cannot say and do publicly, for fear of repercussions from the governor and the state government.

(Helicopter blades spinning) (Bluesy 1970's inspired keyboard music) NARRATOR: But any reluctance that Jenkins had to take a stance in opposition to the war waned in May of 1970, as events in Vietnam spiraled out of control and anti war protests swept college campuses across the nation.

(Sounds of anti-war protests) NARRATOR: With little notice, Jenkins canceled Morgan's annual ROTC day activities, just hours before they were to take place.

“A military review on campus at that time,” he said in a written statement to the campus, “would appear to give endorsement to current national policies which I'm convinced a preponderant majority of the students and faculty of Morgan State oppose.” That same year, Jenkins also took a more aggressive stance in the budget fight he had been waging with state officials.

For 12 years, Martin Jenkins had skirmished with state officials in his efforts to get the funds he believed Morgan needed to provide its students with a quality education.

But when Morgan's 1970 budget request was cut by nearly 10 percent, Jenkins hit the breaking point.

Armed with arguments about why even a fully funded budget would fall far short of what Morgan needed and deserved, Jenkins went to the State Capitol to appeal the decision.

Two-thousand students, nearly half of Morgan's student body, went with him.

While Jenkins and a small student delegation met with Governor Marvin Mandel, a brief confrontation outside the governor's office between the state police and Morgan students resulted in a female student being sprayed with mace.

A bigger conflict was quickly averted when Governor Mandel came out of the meeting to announce that Morgan would get more money.

A few months later, Martin Jenkins stepped down as President of Morgan State College.

DR. JOHNSON: So it, it was a, a really tricky time.

But again, when you look back on that time and look at where we are today, I would say, all things considered, President Jenkins did fairly well.

(1970s inspired music) NARRATOR: The next 14 years would be a tumultuous time for the leadership of Morgan College.

Four men would be called on to lead the school during that period.

One: Dr. Thomas Fraser would be asked to serve twice on an interim basis while the school's board looked for a permanent selection.

Dr. King V. Cheek Jr., the 34 year old former President of Shaw University, took over the presidency of Morgan State College in 1971.

Cheek entered Morgan's presidency full of excitement for the changes he wanted to bring to teaching and learning, but less than three years later; a far less exuberant Cheek quit Morgan.

His resignation came after state officials decided to bring the University of Baltimore, a mostly white private school, into the state's higher education system.

“It's a little odd that another public institution should be created that would draw students from the populations that Morgan and Coppin State College have historically served,” Cheek said in a parting shot at state officials.

In June 1975, Dr. Andrew Billingsley took office as Morgan's eighth inaugurated president.

Less than a month later, Morgan College became Morgan State University.

Billingsley was the beneficiary of the push that started during the presidency of Martin Jenkins to elevate Morgan to university status.

NARRATOR: In July 1975, the 12 member board that Governor Mandel named to govern the state's first Black university, chose Enolia McMillan as its chair.

McMillan had impeccable credentials.

For nearly half a century, she fought for equity in public education.

She pushed for an end to the racial imbalance in the salaries of Maryland's Black and white school teachers and she campaigned for better buildings, equipment, and supplies for the state's black school children.

McMillan was Maryland's first Black high school principal, the first woman president of the Maryland Colored Teachers Association, and by the time of her appointment to Morgan's Board, she was president of the Baltimore branch of the NAACP.

A position that years later would catapult her into the presidency of the national NAACP.

But McMillan's tenure as Morgan's first female chair was brief.

It lasted just 15 months.

She was ousted from the Board's top position after sparring with other Board members over her call for an investigation of Billingsley's management of university finances.

A call that would prove prophetic.

NARRATOR: Billingsley's 8.5 years at Morgan were rocky.

The University's budget increased from $16 million in 1975 to $30 million in 1984.

Faculty salaries increased by 60 percent and Morgan added 18 degree granting programs into its curriculum.

But when state legislative auditors reduced Morgan's financial rating from poor to very poor, Billingsley resigned abruptly in February 1984.

Ten months later, Dr. Earl Richardson became the ninth inaugurated president at Morgan State University.

Under Richardson's leadership, Morgan experienced significant growth with 17 buildings renovated, 12 new facilities built and a 75 percent surge in its student enrollment.

Dallas Evans, the chairman of Morgan's Board of Regents said on the eve of Richardson's retirement in 2009, “Morgan has experienced phenomenal growth under the leadership of President Richardson.” To replace him, the Board searched for someone who could take the university to even greater heights.

Dr. David Wilson was that person.

(Applause) NARRATOR: At 54, Wilson came to Morgan with the most impressive resume of any of his predecessors.

He earned his doctorate at Harvard and held senior academic positions at Auburn University and Rutgers.

Prior to taking on the Morgan job, Wilson oversaw the University of Wisconsin's thirteen two-year colleges and the university's extension system at Wisconsin.

He supervised a budget of $300 million which was 50 percent more than the $200 million budget he inherited when he arrived at Morgan.

"There is something very special about Dr. Wilson that when you meet him, you know, he's the real thing," Kweisi Mfume, a Morgan Board member said at the time of Wilson's selection.

"He's a visionary with impeccable credentials and all of his life experiences have prepared him for this moment."

Mfume, who would become Board Chairman two years later, said of the new president.

Morgan has soared on Wilson's watch, enrollment reached an all time high, growing from 7200 students in 2009 to nearly 10,000 students in 2023.

The University's endowment more than doubled in the first 13 years of his presidency climbing from $42 million to $98.7 million.

Morgan added major new classroom space and student housing to its main campus and acquired a 59 acre site that was once home to a dilapidated Baltimore City public school.

Wilson plans to turn it into a technology and research park that will help propel Morgan into the ranks of the nation's top research universities.

Also on Wilson's watch: the old shopping center across the street from the campus that Morgan students picketed to end its segregationist practices, has been transformed by a $50 million renovation into an attractive commercial hub that beckons Morgan students, faculty, and staff.

And the wall that white opponents of Morgan built as a barricade to keep Blacks out of their community, has been torn down.

(Cheering) DALE GREEN: I think the founders would be quite amazed at the journey uh that Morgan State University has embarked upon.

From nine students in the basement of a Sharp Street church to nearly 10,000 student population.

From a basement uh, to now in a nearly 200 plus acre impressive campus.

From an institute uh, to now a full fledged university.

DR. JOHNSON: When you look at this campus, they're just constant reminders of what is possible with leadership, with a...a steadfast desire to improve your condition and an unwillingness to give up and accept no for an answer.

DR. DAVID WILSON: This institution was established out of fight and perseverance and standing up for what is right.

In 1975, we were granted university status and then we were designated by the state legislature, a bill signed by the Governor, as Maryland's preeminent Public Urban Research University and our entire campus was declared a national treasure by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

We are not standing still.

(R&B music over photo montage and end credits) ♪ ♪ (Band plays while Dr. Wilson dances with Magic Johnson) ♪ ♪ I'm so glad I go to Morgan State (and not Howard) ♪ ♪ I'm so glad I go to Morgan State ♪ ♪