Know Dumb Questions
Know Dumb Questions
Know Dumb Questions FT Dr. Howard Fuller
In this profound and revelatory conversation, Dr. Howard Fuller—civil rights icon, education reformer, and revolutionary—unveils the true origins of the school voucher movement in America. Known as "The Oracle" for his firsthand involvement in nearly every significant Black liberation struggle of the past six decades, Dr. Fuller dismantles popular misconceptions about parent choice programs with powerful clarity.
Beginning with the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education, Dr. Fuller explains how physical integration of schools failed to deliver educational equity for Black students. When Milwaukee's public schools were desegregated in the 1970s, Black schools were closed, Black teachers lost their jobs, and Black educators' perspectives were systemically devalued. Even more disturbing, Dr. Fuller discovered school officials deliberately concealed data showing how poorly Black students were performing within "integrated" schools.
The voucher movement, as Dr. Fuller shares from direct experience, wasn't born from conservative free-market ideology but from Black parents and community leaders who had exhausted every other avenue for educational justice. "This was never a free market issue," he explains. "It was a social justice issue." After trying to reform schools from within and being blocked from creating a separate school district for Black neighborhoods, vouchers emerged as a mechanism for liberation and self-determination.
What sets Dr. Fuller's perspective apart is his lifelong commitment to what he calls "parent choice" rather than "school choice"—a crucial distinction that centers power with families rather than institutions. Drawing from his extraordinary life experiences—from organizing voter registration in the South to spending time with liberation fighters in Mozambique—Dr. Fuller challenges today's activists and educators to define their mission and determine how they'll fight for justice beyond comfortable theories or social media activism.
Whether you're an educator, parent, policymaker, or student of social movements, this conversation will transform your understanding of educational equity and the ongoing struggle for Black liberation. As Dr. Fuller reminds us, quoting Frantz Fanon: "Every generation must discover its mission and either fulfill it or betray it."
We are live. There you go, dr Fuller. I just invited you, so all you got to do is accept the invitation. There you go, dr Fuller. I just invited you, so all you got to do is accept the invitation. There you go. And second, we will have Dr Howard Fuller joining us. Really, a revolutionary among revolutionaries, what I refer to as the oracle One. Second, he is logging on. Try it again, dr Fuller. I am inviting you, just have to accept the invitation. Shonda, can you reach out to Dr Fuller and see if we can help him log on? Thank you so, dr Pillai. I just invited you. Just got to click on the icon there.
Speaker 2:He is there we go. It just took a minute Sorry about that how you been sir. Hey, I'm hanging in brother, how you doing.
Speaker 1:I'm having the time of my life, so I wanted to touch base with you because you are the oracle you have been in this conversation of education.
Speaker 2:I don't want to say you say how long you've been doing that. You know the one that we're about to really talk about. Probably that journey started in 1976, I would say, you know, with the Coalition to Save North Division, and so I know you know you wanted to cover the voucher issue. So we really have to start. For me in 1976, because the person who is primarily responsible for all of this stuff that we have today is a Black woman named Annette Polly Williams, and Polly was a state representative, you know, in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1:But the key thing is we went to high school. Let's say that, dr Fuller. So a lot of people say I'm reading this book. I'm going to give this just to her credit. Elizabeth Gillespie McRae talks about mothers of resistance, of massive resistance. She's talking about white women and their efforts to fight desegregation, and part of the summary that she makes is that school choice was really an effort to resegregate schools, and one of the most nefarious of which was the vouchers. That that was the goal of vouchers. There was no Polly. It was angry white women who wanted to resegregate through public money in private settings. But that's not what you're saying.
Speaker 2:Well, see, I think, first of all, vouchers is a mechanism and, like any mechanism, it can be used for good or for evil, and so it depends upon how far you want to go back, because I've never heard of this woman, but she may be accurate in terms of one of the first usages of vouchers in the South as a way to create white segregated academies. So if you go back, for example, and look at what happened in North Carolina, the state actually used a voucher type mechanism to create ways for white people to access white academies as a way to resist desegregation. So, like a lot of things, it depends upon when you start talking about it and what your particular frame of reference is. So, when you and I talk about parent choice, for example and as you know, I'm a supporter of parent choice, not school choice but if we start talking about the parent choice movement- and what's the difference for you?
Speaker 2:Okay, and this is not just a semantical difference. So I did not get in this fight so that schools could choose children. I got in this fight so that low-income and working-class parents could have the power to choose what school they wanted to send their kids to. And the reason why this is an important distinction is because when we had bail, when we formed bail, there were some quote school choice issues or school choice legislative efforts that we oppose, one in Texas in particular, because what it was going to allow for was for schools to decide which children they wanted to attend, and our argument was no, no, no, no, no. We got in this so that parents could have a choice and the school could have a choice as to whether or not they wanted to participate.
Speaker 2:So, again, to give a very specific example, when the voucher bill was the milwaukee parental choice program was passed in milwaukee, one of the last schools to participate, to agree to participate in the program, was a Catholic school on the far northwest side of Milwaukee, and the reason why it took them so long to agree to participate is that a significant number of the children who attended that school were white children of teachers who worked in the Milwaukee public schools and they didn't want poor Black children to be attending school with their children.
Speaker 2:And so to me, what school choice says is a school has a choice whether to get into the program. Once they get into the program, they don't have a choice about which kids they're going to accept, because the program is driven by the parents' power to say I want to go to that school. And if people knew the history of the Milwaukee parental choice program, for example, the first iteration of it allowed the vouchers to actually go to families, but the final iteration said no, the vouchers will go directly to a school. The parents will simply have to go.
Speaker 1:What's the difference? Most people wouldn't understand. What's the difference? Okay?
Speaker 2:So it's almost like, in some ways, what became known as a tax. There was tax credits and there was another form where the parent got to choose how to use the dollars. You know, almost like some of these education savings accounts where you have a variety of different options for how you would use it. But what people argue was that if the money went directly to the families you know how arguments go back then the families could have done things with it other than what the intent was. Because the intent was you get this voucher and it you can only use it to go to a school. So the work around that was to say the money goes directly to the school, but the school could only get that money if the parent signs the form saying I'm going to my, I want my child to attend this school, and then that would generate the funding coming to the school.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that program, as you're describing it, what we commonly know as vouchers in the zeitgeist that is education conversation started in 1977 with a representative. They used to call it poly, representative, poly no, no, no, no.
Speaker 2:It started the, the coalition to save north. Okay, this is how I want to try to. Yeah, what people have to understand is, for those of us in milwaukee who fought for this and this, what you're getting is not somebody's interpretation of what happened. You're getting somebody telling you what happened because I participated in it.
Speaker 1:Okay, and I've read all this.
Speaker 2:I read all this stuff, people this that he was thinking this. You don't know what the hell I was thinking, or you don't know what Polly was thinking because you weren't there. So what happened was this In the 1960s, in Milwaukee, there was a suit filed against segregation. So how this all got started was Lloyd Barbee, an attorney from Milwaukee, filed a suit saying that Milwaukee was purposely segregating its schools.
Speaker 2:And so this began by using Brown one and Brown II as the legal framework for that suit. This began a long-term struggle in court, and then finally there was an out-of-court settlement, I think in 72, I'm getting these dates where there was an agreement on the part of the Milwaukee public schools and a federal judge that Milwaukee had indeed legally segregated its schools, and so they had to come up with an out-of-court settlement that led to desegregation, court settlement that led to desegregation. And so what happened was, as far as Black people were concerned, the integration decision or the deseg decision solved the education problem. We come along in 1976 with the Coalition to Save North because they were trying to close our high school, the high school that Polly and I went to.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to pause you because I want to go back, because you said something that's super important. What I heard you say was, with the winning of the desegregation case, many black people winning, meaning that white people could no longer deny African Americans physical access to the schools that had previously been white. They couldn't be denied based upon race. What I heard you say was, at that time, african Americans thought that, by virtue of the fact that they won, access to the schools that they could not formally have access to, that they had won. Is that what I hear you saying?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so see, we always have to remember. So I was correct. By the way, I just double checked. So the desegregation case that I'm talking about was first filed in federal court in 1965. Okay, in 1965. And it was settled in 1976. Okay Now. So the suit started in 65, but the settlement was 1976. Now, as a part of the settlement, the Milwaukee Public Schools had to develop like a comprehensive plan for desegregation. I found one of the documents when I did my dissertation and one of the things the documents said was it is the Milwaukee public schools have to give white people the psychological guarantee that they will never have to go to a school that is predominantly minority.
Speaker 2:Because back then the tipping point didn't mean what Malcolm Wesley's book on the tipping point. Back then the tipping point was if too many Black people get into a place, it can no longer be considered integrated. So if it's 70% white and 25% Black, it's desegregated or integrated, and integration and desegregation don't mean the same things. Integrated and integration and desegregation don't mean the same things. But if it got to be more than 40% Black, then it could no longer be considered integrated because you got too many Black people. So to go back to your question for some Black black people. They wanted integration because they wanted their children to be in schools with white people well, we write about that pardon me well, we write about that.
Speaker 2:That was that the right fight, to fight in retrospect no, no, but listen what I'm saying for some black people so for those people?
Speaker 1:Yeah, were they right? Should that have been the goal?
Speaker 2:No See, the goal for the other Black people was the only way that we're going to get what these white people get is we got to get with them Because you got to remember that when Thurgood Marshall and Derrick Bell and other men were back there in the 30s arguing about DSAG, it wasn't unanimous that we should have ultimately pursued the decisions that led to Brown, because there were some lawyers back then who wanted to try to make Plessy work.
Speaker 1:Okay, plessy, for some people don't understand as the separate, but equal.
Speaker 2:So there were black people arguing back then hey man, we don't want to be with these white people, let's make separate work.
Speaker 2:So, for example, my thought was the problem with trying to do that was the power equation. Our ability to make Plessy work was based on an assumption that America was actually interested in equality, that they were going to actually have a situation where we were going to have equal power. Because if you go back and look at all of the Brown decision cases, for example, the one in South Carolina started over black people wanting to have a bus. They were not initially asking to be integrated with white people, they wanted a bus so that black children could be bused to their schools. The one in Prince George's, I think, started with black people wanting a new black high school built, but the NAACP and there's a white dude who gave the NAACP a grant that ended up. You know, helping the pursuit of this was to know we got to go for full integration. But everybody who knows the history of this needs to understand that there was not unanimity at any point in time.
Speaker 1:I want to say that, dr Fuller, because one of the many reasons why I refer to you well, it's not just me while many of us refer to you as the Oracle, is because you were actually there. You're not talking about what you believe in retrospect was the feeling within the black community about integration. You, who were on the stage with stokely Carmichael at Howard University what year was that Did you? Guys were both.
Speaker 2:I was 74.
Speaker 1:On the stage with him. As a recent college graduate, decrying the necessity for black power, you were as one of the founders of Malcolm X. Was it university? Yeah?
Speaker 2:Malcolm X Liberation University.
Speaker 1:As one of the founders of Malcolm X Liberation University, and what year was that?
Speaker 2:So we founded MXLU in 1969. In 1969.
Speaker 1:When I refer to you, and when we refer to you as the Oracle and that's why we're going to take our time on this, because it's super important and when we refer to you as the oracle and that's why we're gonna take our time on this, because it's super important you are the among the few living individuals in the United States on earth who was actually in the rooms. There's two things I'm gonna credit to you. Actually, in the rooms were some of the major decisions that we currently reflect upon as seminal in the experience of African-American children. That so you're you're. That's first, but here's the second part that I give to you, and I give to you in a very, very short list. You're one of the only, you're the only person that I know who's living was in the room, fighting for freedom for Black people, and was not bought by your proximity to the conversation. And now today is one of those people talking about, yeah, martin Luther King, we shall overcome Negro spiritual thing, still fighting the same fight.
Speaker 2:But Steve, even there, man, let's take a moment to talk about Martin Luther King. If people would take the time to read the lost educational horse tape, so back in the day when white people in Georgia would not allow black teachers to be a part of their union, black people formed their own education associations and at not allow Black teachers to be a part of their union, black people form their own education associations and at one of the statewide association meetings and this is in Vanessa Siddall Walker's book, the Lost Education of Horace Tate they invited Martin Luther King Jr to come address the state meeting of Black educators. And at this meeting, martin Luther King Jr said I did not fight for integration to be integrated out of power. It's an exact quote.
Speaker 1:Stay on that. Stay on that. I need you to stay on that. Because so many? Because when the United Federation of Teachers in 1969 was still denying black people access, United Federation of Teachers, the teachers union in New York City, was denying African Americans access to their union and they were shutting down the entire city because black parents and educators wanted to decide what should be taught in their schools and who should be doing the teaching. Shanker, the then leader of the Teachers Union in New York City, was working with those Black parents and educators and King, you're saying, was saying I did not fight for integration to not have a seat of power, Correct?
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:What does that mean? What does that mean?
Speaker 2:Well, what it meant was this was that okay if you read the book Black Teachers on Teaching by Michelle Foster? So what she did was she interviewed three levels of teachers the senior teachers, the what you call novice, and then the ones who had you know sort of in the middle. When desegregation happened, three things occurred Black schools were closed, black teachers lost their jobs and black educators' opinion was devalued.
Speaker 1:Please stay there. Please stay there, because I don't think people understand that, because there's a combination of that, there's a conflation of that now, when schools close.
Speaker 2:Right, I was going to say, when you look at education reform, when all of its, you know, mean well and everything, three things have happened to Black people Black schools were closed, black teachers lost their jobs and black teachers' opinions were devalued. What do you mean by that, howard? Well, for all of the good that happened in New Orleans, right when Katrina took place, as you know, steve, I went to New Orleans. I went to New Orleans, I sat down and I interviewed and Bishop Watson knows this there's a whole bunch of people, stevie knows this, all the people who are now the head of Black Education for New Orleans that I have founded. They know this story. So I sat down with all of these people. Right, I took 69 pages of notes just sitting there listening to people talk to me from all different positions in New Orleans, right, and there were sort of four groups of Black people. One group was just wanted to go back to the way it was before.
Speaker 1:Katrina, meaning a low-performing neighborhood school system, one of the worst in the United States of America.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but the idea was, you know, we as Black people control the district, right? That was the theory of it. The second group that my great friend, bill Roussel, who just died recently, was in was they were mad about how all these white people came into New Orleans and took oath. The third group were black people who supported the court reforms but had questions. The last group were the people who drank the Kool-Aid. But no matter which one of those individual groups you talk to, they all had the same argument this was done to us and not with us.
Speaker 2:And so what I'm saying to you is that, if you go back and look at Black people coming out of slavery, black people came out of slavery with the understanding that education was the pathway to freedom. We have been liberated, but we were not free, and so we. But we didn't have the power, the resources to create schools initially. So two groups of people came at us the missionaries and the industrialists, and each one of them had their own opinion about what type of education we needed. We did not want to be controlled, we wanted help, but we wanted to control ourselves. If you look at the Ed Reform Movement, two groups of people came at us the missionaries, tfa and I love TFA and all that and the foundations, the industrialists, the same thing.
Speaker 1:That's one of the things that you and I have said to them many, many times. I want to stay here because man and we're going to keep going, because what people don't understand are the nuances here. When formerly segregated black schools were closed in the 60s and those teachers lost their jobs and those children lost their identity, it's not because the schools were closed inherently for integration. It was because none of those let's say, there are 50 teachers at that former school none of those 50 got a job at the school where their children had gone to. So those 50 teachers who used to work at Lincoln High in New Rochelle, new York, which was closed because it was a segregated school, those teachers lost their job. New Rochelle Public Schools didn't hire them. They didn't hire them and they took their children and stripped them of their identity and said to them you come here acting like you used to, you're going to have hell to pay.
Speaker 1:That's what people do not understand. What they don't understand is what I hear you saying is when we look at the coming up out of slavery. We were not freed. We were not freed because we were never allowed, not given, we were never allowed to manifest our destiny. People gave us options of freedom, versions of liberty. But when one gives you a version of liberty, it's not liberty at all. You are free at their discretion at all. You are free at their discretion and that has happened to us you just mentioned multiple times with the industrialists and the missionaries.
Speaker 2:Right. So because there's so many different ways to go at this, let's go back to the initial question that you asked, as it pertained to parent choice. Okay, because what I was trying to say to you, steve, was that our movement towards vouchers was not because I sat in the basement and read Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom. I never even heard of Milton Friedman.
Speaker 1:I know that's heresy, it's not heresy, because I had neither. I had neither. I know he was a big deal to white folks who were in that space, but he wasn't to me.
Speaker 2:So what was important to me was I sat in my basement and read David Walker's Appeal and, based on reading David Walker's Appeal, I said to myself that when the history is written, some group of black people have had to protest what happened, and so I wrote a manifesto calling for the creation of a separate school district in milwaukee, and I and and polly see pa paul.
Speaker 1:Before you get there, before you get to you get to Polly, because I don't think everybody hasn't read David Walker's appeal. It wasn't just a manifestation of freedom. Walker went a little far.
Speaker 2:No, he went pretty deep if you read the whole thing.
Speaker 1:He said that if you are a slave and you allow yourself to stay alive, then you in fact are contributing to your own demise. He said he'd be ready to be dead. Yeah, to take your own life.
Speaker 2:See, there's so many paths we can go down. So, for example, if you read Callie Jackson's book Force and Freedom, what a lot of people don't realize, man, is, all you ever heard about were the white abolitionists. You never you know other than Frederick Douglass. You really don't hear about all of the other black abolitionists. Very few people know that a black woman financed the raid on Harper's Ferry, for example.
Speaker 1:You know, but putting that aside, so you wrote a manifesto for separate schools.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I wrote a manifesto saying we need to create a separate school district in Milwaukee. So what we were going to do was to take the high school that when I said save North Division, that's the high school that Polly and I went to, and so there was a cluster of schools around North Division elementary schools and middle school. We wanted to take that cluster and secede from the Milwaukee public schools, and the reason for that was that when you looked at the number of school districts in Wisconsin, of the 476 school districts, the vast majority of them, way over 50%, were less than 1,000 kids. And so our theory was and actually what I was thinking about was more than just schooling, because, as you know, a school district is an economic enterprise- it's a job program.
Speaker 1:It's more than it's only a job program.
Speaker 2:Yeah, as much as it is about education.
Speaker 1:And secession. Just so that people understand secession you may be hearing wait, wait a minute. He, dr howard fuller was talking about secession in 1976. That's crazy. Like that's so, ladies and gentlemen, as of today, there are 22 states within which succession from the school system is currently in play, meaning that there are white neighborhoods that draw a school system of their own, sometimes inside an existing school system. They actually so think of it as Baltimore, and then Baltimore be the city, and inside Baltimore, a number of neighborhoods established that they're going to create a public school system, a public school system inside the school system that will draw down of state, federal and local money and will limit access to the surrounding community within which they're in. So what Dr Fuller's talking about back in 1976 wasn't crazy then, because there were more states then where secession was in fact part of the law, and today still 22 states offer it up as a law.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I just saw. I see Rebecca came on, but there was a sister who just put in the comments there about Bertie County, north Carolina. You know her grandfather. There's actually a book that was written talking about Goldie Franks, but there was a book written talking about that struggle that she's talking about back there. But anyway, so let's get back to the Milwaukee situation. So think about it in this way. So think about it in this way when after the deseg, after the desegregation thing happened and people thought, okay, the education problems have been solved Because our kids are in school with mostly white kids.
Speaker 1:So what occurred?
Speaker 2:was that no black?
Speaker 1:teachers, but in schools with white teachers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but what was happening, though, is, back then there was not and I'm going to just speak in Milwaukee, there was not this aggregated data. So what was happening, steve, is that the district was putting out aggregate data, saying, oh, these schools are really doing great, but we had no idea what was happening to black children in those schools.
Speaker 1:Ain't a difference in aggregate data, because everybody doesn't know what you mean by that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so people a lot of people who are listeners may now know about no Child Left Behind, and so what it said was you got to begin to disaggregate the data by race and based. In my class, prior to that happening in Milwaukee, we went to court to get the data about what was actually happening to black children. What year was that? So? The first time we went to court was in 1976. It's 77. This was the coalition to say North.
Speaker 1:Explain why disaggregating data in an otherwise integrated school is important.
Speaker 2:Because you will not know what's actually happening to black children in a school that's great. In other words, the school could be great in the aggregate, but it's hiding what's happening to certain groups of children within the context of that school.
Speaker 1:Among those, 75% could read a grade level. But among the 100 black kids, 15% could read a grade level. You take the 75% out of 900 and you divide that. You add that to 14%. You put those two together, that's 79 and 89%. Divide that by two, it's like 75%. So you think, holy smokes, this school is doing really well. Thank God these black kids are in there. But only 14% of black kids can read a grade level.
Speaker 1:And so you need to disaggregate the data, meaning you put the white kids' academic performance in there and you put the black kids' academic performance as separate parts of the same school, so that people will understand parts of the same school, so that people will understand that in the same school there's still apartheid underway. Who have white kids attending a school physically, black kids attending a school physically but receiving profoundly different education, because remember all those black teachers who were teaching in segregated black schools? They don't work in the white school. It's only the white teachers who work in the white school, and the white teachers hire almost no African Americans to teach the black kids. So we have very clear evidence that when African American children don't have whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa we need to take a look at it Now, that we're sitting in the same building it doesn't mean we're in the same classes. They actually have us in remedial classes, or they have us in tech classes. They have us in classes that are not college preparatory Meanwhile they're AP, honors, advanced, whatever.
Speaker 2:Over here we're in the same, we walk through the same door, same high school door, but we're not having the same high school experience, and so you have to desegregate yeah, so, but so if you look at it in general, steve, see what you're saying is even when black people were fighting for integration or deseg, because there's a difference between integration and desegregation. So so when, back when, black people were fighting for desegregation, we did not understand all of the tools that white people had to make sure that, although the school was desegregated, it was not going to be integrated. The one that we knew about, which is the one that the first time I was arrested in Cleveland, the one that we knew about, was intact busing. So we knew that there were ways where white people would bus our children to white schools but would not allow them to be integrated into the white school. They had to stay in the classrooms by themselves.
Speaker 1:And people really need to understand, because this is such a because, when we're talking about school choice and empowerment, you need to understand the foundation of why. What Dr Fuller shared with us for those who are joining is, if you think of what we refer to as the abolition of slavery, what people think is that black human beings were no longer owned by white human beings and were and such free, but in fact there was nothing free about them because they didn't have access to the full of their personality, of god's gifts. And so along came two groups of white people the missionaries, as dr full said, and the industrialists, and they were two separate groups who were pushing to provide a menu of options but never to offer freedom.
Speaker 1:Right Never, and that throughout American history there have been these head fakes of freedom that we feel like we fought for, and one like we fought for access to schools that were otherwise white. We fought for integration into those schools. We get physically into the schools and find that bus, one from the north side of Milwaukee that makes its way to the south side of Milwaukee stays in classrooms one through 15 in this same building. So it is a wholly segregated school within a school that only, and maybe sometimes even, has had separate lunchways because they had the same schedule, has had separate lunch ways because they had the same schedule. They could make sure there was virtually no integration in the schools, and so this is the platform upon which Dr Fuller is talking about. Continue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just wanted to say hello to Joanna, who's a graduate of our school. I just saw her come. But so let me go back, because what happens is, as we start talking about this, there's so many different you know dimensions to it, right, but let me go back to the Milwaukee thing because I want to make sure people are clear about this. So what happened was that in 1985, I was working for the governor and I got him to agree, along with the state superintendent, to do what was called a study commission and for the first time, steve we had in every school in the city of Milwaukee and in several other suburban schools. They all took what was then the Iowa test of basic skills and they took the same test and it was all broken down by race and by class.
Speaker 1:What year was this?
Speaker 2:This was 1985. Okay, so in every single school in the city of Milwaukee there was a gap between black kids and white kids and poor kids and kids with money. That had never been done before.
Speaker 1:Why is that important? Because today, last week, in this Connecticut General Assembly, the teachers union was arguing that we need to stop annual standardized testing.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Because they said that we end up narrowing curriculum and teaching to the test and we don't find out anything different. And these are supposed to be our allies. So they're arguing that we should stop testing. But in 1985, people don't you, howard fuller, an african-american man who was literally on the front lines of the civil rights movements, literally being shot at, literally being shot as you were registering people to vote, and where were were registering people to vote and where?
Speaker 2:were you registering?
Speaker 1:people to vote In North Carolina. In North Carolina, you, a person who comes from that era, who comes from that era, when put in a position of authority, you said wait, we need to take a statewide standardized test. Why?
Speaker 2:Because that was the only way we were going to find out what was actually happening to black children. Because, again, you go back to that aggregate versus disaggregated data. So the reason why I'm explaining it in this way, I'm trying to show you the steps that we took that led us to the Milwaukee Privileged Choice Program. So I'm starting out, steve, by telling you that when we got this data broken out in this way, the first thing we did was go sit down with the superintendent of the Milwaukee Public Schools and we sat in his conference room, which, by something that none of us could have thought about, it, that moment became my conference room. But so we sat down in his conference room and we asked him how come you didn't tell us how bad black children were doing?
Speaker 1:because everybody thought that we were in the same physical school, right right, people thought they had one, right, I'll go to.
Speaker 2:We all go to Northside High everybody goes Northside High Because everybody thought that we were in the same physical school, right, right, people thought they had one Right.
Speaker 1:We all go to Northside High. Everybody goes to Northside High. Couple black kids on the basketball team, couple black cheerleaders. We go to their school, we go to. We get in the same building and you said, how come they didn't tell us that our kids were in the same building?
Speaker 2:And he said two reasons Number one, black parents could not stand to know how bad their children were doing. And number two, it would give fodder to the racists who believe black children couldn't learn. This is exact. I'm not paraphrasing, this is what this man told me.
Speaker 2:The former superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools A dude named Lee McMurrin was the superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools. Ok, so now follow me, Steve. So we then concluded that, for whatever reasons, MPS could not or would not educate our children. We therefore called for a. That's when we called for the separate school district. We actually got a vote in the assembly to create the school district. Derrick Bell came to Milwaukee to help me argue the constitutionality.
Speaker 1:I didn't know, derrick Bell.
Speaker 2:Derrick Bell is one of the great constitutional lawyers of our time.
Speaker 1:One of his great books is Face at the.
Speaker 2:Bottom of the Well, yeah yeah, yeah, right Face at the Bottom of the Well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right Face at the Bottom of the Well. Silent Covenants, where he talks about the concept of interest convergence theory. He edited Shades of Brown, which is really interesting because one of the articles in there, judge Robert Carter, who had the responsibility to put the social science literature before the court on Brown, won. Yep, because anybody who says they know the Brown decision, you don't know the Brown decision if you have not read the Brown decision and you haven't read footnote 11. Because footnote 11 is where all of the social science literature is. That led Warren to conclude that anything that is all black is, by definition, inferior, which was the fundamental problem with the Brown decision. But I digress.
Speaker 2:So once it got voted for in the assembly, voted down in the Senate, we then said okay, you're not going to educate our kids, you won't. Let us create our own school district. Then logic said give us a way out of here. And so the voucher effort came. After we tried to get the school district to address the issues, we tried to create our own school district. So when they said, no, you can't do that, then Polly and a lot of us sat down and started saying, well, we need to have a. This is when I first heard about vouchers as a way to create our own schools.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to pause you there because I want to reframe this. So 1954 Brown versus Board of Education says essentially that you can no longer limit access to schools K-12 and beyond but mostly K-12 was what the decision focused on and that you couldn't limit access by color case. In Milwaukee, that further pushed this notion that there was still not integration into the schools, while at the same time black schools that had been run by African American teachers were being closed, because people need to understand the confluence of issues that are occurring to get you to this place. So now the black teachers who used to teach the African-American children just didn't have the resources to do so, didn't have the books, didn't have the facilities, didn't have the, didn't have the, didn't have the. Those schools were closed and the people used to teach in them were uh, were ostracized.
Speaker 1:You mentioned that dr king came to speak to a uh organization of african-american teachers who recognized that they were not being given access to the power of teaching so they were being ostracized. So now you have black kids in schools where they have no cover, no support, almost all white teaching staffs and administration within which they're being intact bust, which means they're being driven from their minority neighborhoods to essentially a segregated part of the school. And you said that you confronted the uh, the then uh um superintendent of milwaukee public schools to say hey, we, how are black kids doing in in the school? Like we're physically in the same building, ain't no people teaching in here, but we're physically in the same building. How we doing? You find out they're not doing that well and he tells you look, I didn't want to tell you how bad y'all were doing because you couldn't handle it In between.
Speaker 1:There you recognize that at no point, with integration and other strategies, were African-Americans being given power or providence over the way their children could be taught, over the expectations that could be sought for their children. They were given a choice from missionaries or industrialists. So you and others, you and Polly, had been fighting to try and act time and time and time and time again to get freedom, to teach Black children the beauty of their humanity and the best offer that you guys had been given was a school that wasn't teaching them. And so you said, to hell, with this, we'll start our own school system. They said, no, y'all can't do that. So now we're here. So if you're not, if you're not going to teach our kids and you're not going to give us the money in our schools through separate but equal, you're not going to educate our kids in your school through integration, and you're not going to let us start our own school system, then, hell, we got to do something different than that, and that's where the conversation is Right.
Speaker 2:The only thing I would say, Steve, is that you said a lot. Some of it I would have to have people think about it for a moment, because the way into the desegregation problem and the slash integration problem, there were similarities in the North and the South, but there were differences. So a book that people need to read to the segregation problem only existed in the South and so, for example, it's very important for people to understand that some of the most vicious resistance to integration of schools came in the North.
Speaker 1:It wasn't just New York City 1969.
Speaker 2:Look at Boston. Look at Boston. Look at what happened in Detroit. So in Milwaukee, for example, something I want people to be clear in Milwaukee, andrea joined too, but it wasn't a difference. Now let me say it this way In the schools that were inherited, or black children were in those schools, but the teaching staff was not predominantly black, not in the north.
Speaker 1:Not even close.
Speaker 1:Not even close In fact, that's what the strike, the strike that changed New York, one of the greatest books I've ever read on education, and and, and, as you know. But in that book, what the author talks about is the reason why, the reason why there was a strike in New York city's public schools for a year. For a year, for a year, they shut down the school system. It's because one little bitty school in Ocean Hill, brownsville, tried to do what Dr Fuller just talked about, which is to say, okay, if y'all are going to teach your kids the way you want to, and you're going to teach your kids the way you want to, and you're going to decide who teaches your kids, and I'm going to decide then here's what we're going to do. We're going to decide who teaches our kids, we're going to hire Black principals, we're going to hire Black teachers and we are going to teach about people like Malcolm X, who the teachers union, the United Federation of Teachers, removed from the history books in 1969 because they felt that he was too incendiary in New York City.
Speaker 1:In New York City, they took Malcolm X out of the history books. That's your teacher's union. They did that, and so the teacher's union said no, you will not hire who you want, you will hire who we say you will hire. And these brothers and sisters said, no, we ain't, we're going to hire who we want to hire. So they said, well, shut down the whole damn school system. So one million children in the city of New York did not go to school because the way that we came, to vouchers was we started out trying to get the school district to educate our kids.
Speaker 2:We tried to create our own school district and then, when they wouldn't allow that, we then said give us a mechanism that allows us to create our own schools. And so, from our standpoint, this was never a free market issue. It was a social justice issue. Glenn LOURY JR.
Speaker 1:The difference from Milton Friedman JOSEPH COHEN JR. Correct GLENN LOURY JR. I think that's. I don't know that people understand the difference between. I think it's super important that you make that point, because not everybody understands that subtlety right there.
Speaker 2:Yeah people, people know me know I got in an argument with milton friedman at a dinner in his honor, uh y'all don't know if you, if you're being introduced to the oracle tonight.
Speaker 1:you just don't know who you're watching. You do not understand who you're watching. Milton friedman is, to many people, a god Literally he is a god, and there's nothing about Dr Fuller fact checking him. There's nothing about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a disagreement over universal vouchers, and Rebecca knows these people know what I'm doing, because we never supported universal vouchers. We supported a means tested voucher because our objective was to give low-income and working-class black people the power to choose. Because our assumption was that if you got money in this country, you already got choice. Because because if you, if, if you're work, if you're living in a community and schools don't work for your kids and you got money, you got three options you can move to communities where they do work, you can put your kids in private schools, or you can get the most expensive tutoring on the planet, or you can do all three. The people who don't have that power, as we saw, was low-income and working-class people in the city of Milwaukee.
Speaker 1:So let me pause you there because I think you're hitting something that so many pundits miss. I watched CNN a couple days ago and I watched some people I'm not going to say their names talking about choice people. I'm gonna say their names talking about choice, and this person said if everybody doesn't get a choice, then it's not a choice, and what you're talking I know right, so we'll just wait another 300 years. Meanwhile, his kids go to private school. I'm not calling his name right now because he's not here to defend himself, so but y'all sawall saw it, y'all know who it was. So what you're talking about is something so vital to one of the many reasons why I love you and why we've started organizations together, and it's why we continue to do the work that we do together.
Speaker 1:What you're saying is something different. It's not enough that you allow me to have dinner at your house. That's your house. You're cooking, you're the one determining what we eat. You are, you are, you are. I don't want to eat what you eat. I want to eat what I want to eat.
Speaker 1:And I don't want to have to ask you for permission. I don't want to go to your school where you hire the teachers, you hire the principal and no, it's not Scott Bakari. You decide what you want to do with my kids. I don't want you doing that.
Speaker 1:The birth of the voucher from the Milwaukee experience was saying we don't trust y'all. No, no, no, I don't trust you anymore. We tried to mess with you and you did the okey-doke. You said okay, fine, fine, fine, brown, fine, fine, fine, federal court case, we'll let you attend our schools, but we're never, ever, ever, ever, ever, never going to treat you like full children. You're never going to learn that. So Dr Fuller and the crew were like hell with that. We ain't doing that. No more Give us, we'll take our, we'll take check, please. We'll take our tuition and go somewhere else to create our own schools. Not to go to Our Lady of this or that, not to go to Country Lady of this or that, not to go to Country Day of this or that, but to create our own schools. And that's the difference.
Speaker 2:Right, and what I would say to people is two things. Number one if you read Ted Coldery's book or Ember's book it was called, you know, never Win or I'll think of it in a moment but it explains how charters got created. And in her book and if you've ever heard Ted Colery talk, they give Polly a lot of credit for the fact that the charter school effort got started the way that it did because there were so many people, even though Shanker had the idea when he gave that speech, he came to Minnesota, he started meeting with people like Ted, and then Ted and Amber and Joe Nathan and John Schroeder, and all of them got together and passed the first charter bill. But they will tell you that one of the things that influenced people or why some people supported charters because they saw charters as the public response to vouchers, which they could not support because it allowed people to go to private schools.
Speaker 1:And start their own schools.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it's still a lot, yeah yeah, but so here's what I'm trying to say to people. Right? It's just like when people ask me today about DEI which I know we don't want to get into, because the people who benefited most from DEI, if you actually look at it, have been white women Set that aside for a moment. As you know, steve and other people know who are listening to me a lot of black people. They get invited to a room full of white people and they're just happy. They're just happy to be there. They're just happy to be invited. They ain't going to say nothing. Invited, they ain't gonna say nothing, they ain't gonna do nothing, they ain't gonna raise nothing, cause they're scared they won't get invited back, right?
Speaker 2:I'm saying I'm saying to hell with that man. If you invite me up in here, I'm talking, I'm cause I don't care if y'all don't never invite me back again, right?
Speaker 1:because you've got your own room.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but the issue isn't inclusion, the issue is power. Are you in the room with any power? Are you just in the room to change the complexion of the room? But you ain't got enough power to bust a grape, you know. So you just sitting up in there, happy and hoping they take your picture so you can post it, you know, and get some clicks or some likes, or whatever it is.
Speaker 1:It's one of the reasons why Dr Fuller, that'll come back to this and go to stay on this for a second but it's one of the reasons why DEI for many people, for many black people, didn't work. What a lot of elite colleges and companies did was they hired the African-American sister with the dreads who was gay, so they got all the. You know, they got their DEI all up in one person. Now she happened to grow up in one person. Now she happened to grow up around white people and so she's comfortable with white people and because she is, she decides that she is going to integrate, as it were, by hiring more white women.
Speaker 1:But in many of the cases, in many of these people who were the vice president of diversity and inclusion or the you know VP of community, whatever, whatever, which is not even a real thing, those people came on to your point, were just happy to be in the room, they were happy to have a VP title, they were happy to have a university sticker on their car that says that they worked at Marquette University and they didn't increase the number of African-Americans, they didn't increase the power, they didn't create more opportunities for more vendors to service that university, or more children to be in there, or more professors or anything. They made no changes to the power structure, whereas you have spent your career saying y'all invite me in here, I'm tearing this place to smithereens.
Speaker 2:Right. I mean, what's the value of being in a room and the poorest of our people get nothing out of those of us with degrees and stuff sitting up in a room with a group of white people but the most oppressed sector I mean, steve, you know a lot of people don't know this, but you know I spent 30 days with a guerrilla column in Mozambique and so I was very active in you know supporting.
Speaker 1:I just want to pause for a second. When I say the Oracle, I mean the Oracle. Some people say they talk about their organizing and they're talking about it. It's clean organizing, meaning they work as an organizer at defer, they work at an organizer at the aclu and they have a job and has benefits and they get to go and you know what I mean. They get vacation and they're an organizer like a professional, professional organizer. Dr Fuller is saying that. In what year was this?
Speaker 2:So it was when I was invited over to Tanzania to give a speech on Black education in 1971. But before that I had called, I had led a press conference at the United Nations to demand that Black people not go to South Africa, because back then they were trying to get black people to come to South Africa to prove that apartheid wasn't so bad. And I led a group through IFCO, an organization that still exists. Brother Lucius Walker and I was on the board, and so I demanded that, because he got an invitation and A you should not go go. And not only should you not go, we need to call a press conference at the United Nations to support the liberation movements in southern Africa, and and and so, um, he has a book.
Speaker 1:so, dr Fuller, tell me the name of your book, because people are saying oh, yeah, yeah, no struggle, no progress.
Speaker 2:You know, for those of you who don't like to read books, you like to hear books. It's on Audible and I read it. So it's my voice on Audible. Please get it, folks. In any way Okay work in organizing African Liberation Day in 1972, where we brought almost 40,000 mostly black people and there's actually a video of this to march in DC to support liberation movements. I started, I had relationships with black people in Africa who were actually fighting for their liberation, and so with guns, not just running them out, yeah, no, no.
Speaker 1:Here's what we're not going to do. This is why I am on this Zoom with the Oracle, because here's what we're not going to do. What we're not going to do is conflate e-gangsters of today. We're not going to conflate vloggers people who are on another goddamn panel at the with the education glitterati in aspen, talking about, well, you know what we need to do in order and never run a school and and never, never, never, never, never, but determine what happens. And he's going to go back to the industrialists in a second, because these are those same people who look like us and many people tell the story. Dr Fuller was on the ground with people who had guns.
Speaker 2:This is true, but the reason why I raise that is because of that work. When Amilcar Cabral came to Lincoln University, amilcar Cabral was the second the black Lincoln University, lincoln in al-Karqabaw, was the Black Lincoln University.
Speaker 1:Lincoln in Nebraska or Lincoln in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2:In Pennsylvania. Okay, so what happened was Amin al-Karqabaw, who was the Secretary General of PAIGC, the Party for the Independence of Guinea and the Cape Verde Islands, guinea-bissau and the Cape Verde Islands. So there's a poster of me, him and Amiri Baraka at Lincoln University, but the reason why I'm talking about him is he wrote a book called Return to the Source. The reason why I'm talking about him is he wrote a book called Return to the Source, and in this book, what he talks about is what is the role of the petty bourgeoisie of an oppressed people? That's how I got off on this.
Speaker 1:You got it. No, no, no. You got to stay on this because I call him the education glitterati. Yeah, but who are at every South by Southwest and every conference that you can ever have anywhere? Oh my God.
Speaker 2:I call them hotel militants and hotel revolutionaries. You know these niggas who couldn't bust a grape after they go back home. You know you gotta sit there and listen to them pontificate, right?
Speaker 1:But anyway, six of them in a panel in 45 minutes. Yeah, right, very impressed by themselves.
Speaker 2:But what Amilcar Cabal said was the role of the intelligentsia of an oppressed people is to provide the ideological framework for revolutionary struggle. But if you ever read Rodney Walter Rodney's book how Europe Underdeveloped Africa, but then he has another little book called Groundies With my Brothers, and what he's talking about, man is, a true revolutionary is grounded with his people. And so, even though you may be intellectual, there's the dialectical relationship between theory and practice. And if one only theorizes and never practice, your practice by definition is going to be weak because you have no theoretical basis. However, if you only theorize and never practice, your theory is going to be a second or third level of abstraction. This device makes that so much easier. So what I'm saying is you have a lot of this device makes that so much easier. Ultimately, those who are strong for our people have both a theoretical framework and a practice framework.
Speaker 1:Because you have to be bloodied at a certain level in the struggle to give a higher definition to your theoretical assertions. So you mean fighting for tenure at an elite white school for you so you can send your kid to a private school. That's not blood right.
Speaker 2:No, it's people who are sitting at a university with tenure, hollering at people who are fighting in the street about what you ought to be doing.
Speaker 1:Telling them telling them. You know you need to send your kids to public school or whatever you say. Well, I went to visit your kids' private school.
Speaker 2:So tell me why. Or you got people who are telling teachers what they should be doing, who ain't been in a school in 10 years, if at all, yeah, and they're scared to come in there and deal with the kids Meanwhile you last year were breaking up adult fights at the basketball games. Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1:Meanwhile you, at 80-something years old, are still going to work every day with the flyer sneakers in the building, still trying to get teachers to come to work. Meanwhile you still have to find principals. Meanwhile you still have to find ways to raise money to start the school to do the work while they sit in aspen thinking right, yeah, and then telling us what we should be doing, and telling us and telling you and me that they're going to give us money to do the things that we do to help actually help Black people, not just to create another bourgeoisie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was just up at our school today.
Speaker 1:Our school being the. Howard Fuller.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dr Howard Fuller Collegiate Academy, but it's also Joanna's school. It's all of the people who participated and, just like you have, I know you don't like this, but I know you are.
Speaker 1:You are the North Star you gotta take. You gotta take your flowers because you know it is. The school was named in your honor because it you know it is. The school was named in your honor because it should have been, and so we're going to call Dr Howard Fuller because it must be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so what this conversation? Although it has so many tentacles to it, what it's really all about in the final analysis is Francis Nolan wrote a book called Wretched of the Earth, and in this book I think the last paragraph of the book somewhere he made a statement that every generation, out of relative obscurity, must discover its mission and either fulfill it or betray it. Or betray it Right or betray it. And so what I'm saying is I'm not telling young people what they should do and everybody's younger than me I'm not telling people. You know what they should be doing. I'm not telling people what they should be doing, but the issue still is how do you define what we should be doing at this moment in history? How do you come to grips with? What is your responsibility to our people at this moment in history, from whatever perch you take, you're in?
Speaker 1:Right, because you said one of the reasons why folks, any opportunity I can have to talk to Dr Howard Fuller, I take it. When he returns my calls or picks up my call, I'm glad that he does, but one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to him tonight is because, excuse me, because the reign of Donald J Trump is creating a dissonance that allows the missionaries who limited our freedom from slavery and, if we're going to call it what it is, they helped enslave us. They were the ones who taught us the slave Christian Bible. They're the same people. They're the same ones who went over to Africa and said that they were there to civilize the savages. The lineage of that group makes its way all the way up through the teachers union. They're the same exact people. They're not coming at you in an aggressive way. They're presenting themselves to you as a group of people who have your best interest at heart. They want to make sure that you understand that they care. Meanwhile, they're the same ones who created the conditions that our children currently are educated in.
Speaker 1:Well, because Donald J Trump comes off as such an overt enemy of the people, for many of us, it is easy to attach anything he says to something that we should be against. And so if he says out of his mouth something about vouchers or school choice or any of those things, it is easy to affix that to the narrative of the missionary and say you don't want that. But one of the main reasons why I wanted Dr Fuller up here tonight is because he was there in the room where it happened, when the decision was being made that if you're not going to fully integrate our kids into the schools and you're not going to allow us to start our own school system, then how about this? Give us the money and we'll go and do our own thing. And that was the birth of vouchers in 1976 in Milwaukee. It wasn't some corporations coming in trying to privatize education, it was black people who had had an F enough.
Speaker 1:They were done they were tired of asking.
Speaker 1:They were tired of going to superintendents and trying to get them to consider. They were tired of begging for them to. Tired of going to superintendents and trying to get them to consider. They were tired of begging for them to hire one black teacher in a high school that had 300 teachers. They were tired of trying to get a day where they could study African-American history. They were tired of trying to get a week or do an assembly. They were tired. They were tired of finding out their kids couldn't read, write and compute. They were tired, they said tired of finding out their kids couldn't read, write and compute. They were tired. They said enough is enough is enough. Give us our money.
Speaker 2:I think the problem that we have to recognize and it's a discussion that Polly and I had right is that, since we don't control this country, even something that starts out as something that we fought for, if we don't fight for it and fight to define it in the way that works for us, they will take it over and flip it on its head. So, although technically the Brown decision was supposed to be for us, what I did my dissertation on was how the Brown decision was implemented in Milwaukee in a way that benefited white people.
Speaker 1:So what I'm saying is that when you look at the Brown decision, talk about that, because I don't think people understand what you're saying, because then it sounds like people say so what you want us to go to schools that have no resources. Understand what you're saying? Because it sounds like people say so what you want us to go to schools that have no resources.
Speaker 2:What I'm saying is that when you look at how they implemented desegregation, they closed schools in the black community. They bused black children all over the city. They just dispersed black people all over the city. They didn dispersed black people all over the city. They didn't force white people to have to get on buses In any way metaphorically or in other ways. They didn't force them to have to leave their country.
Speaker 1:I'm saying in either way, in any way in nothing.
Speaker 2:But see, you have to read Gernon Murdoch's book An American Dilemma to understand the psychological thing that happened here. Because there's sections of Gernot Murdoch's book and his book is one of the social science literature things that I talked about that's in Footnote 11. But there's a section in his book where he talks about the Black community is pathological. You actually have to see these words, right.
Speaker 2:And so what white people were saying was two things Number one, y'all the one who want this integration, and so you know we didn't ask for this. And number two, we're not coming into your pathological community and the only way we're going to come to any school that y'all in is that if we guarantee that we're going to be in the majority and that you get rid of all of these low-income, incorrigible, dysfunctional Black children, because we only want to be with certain type of black children. I mean, people got to understand the insidious way it was something that was supposed to be for us, the way that it got implemented, Because you can go all the way back to the slavery example, but I'm trying to think of a name. But there's a book called A Class of Our Own. But I'm trying to think of her name. But there's a book called A Class of Our Own, which is powerful because it gets into what happens when people who are supposed to help you come in to control you.
Speaker 1:People don't even I want to say that for a second Dr Fuller, because I want people to really understand why a revolutionary understand why a revolutionary, a card-carrying revolutionary such as Dr Howard Fuller, why someone like him would fight to establish vouchers. When you look at even many of our historically black colleges, we often laud them for being bastions of liberation for african-americans. But up until the mid-1980s I don't think it was 1986 spellman had never had a black president. Spelman had never had a black president. Spelman founded by a white woman, a wealthy white woman. Spelman Howard, named after a white man, morehouse, saying these schools were run by white people for many generations, many generations, and in such, found themselves to be teaching African Americans how to exist. These were the missionaries. These were the missionaries. And so when you have someone like a Dr Howard Fuller who starts at Malcolm X University, when you have a Dr Howard Fuller and Polly who decide that they want not just to get vouchers for their children to go to another school, but they want vouchers so that, quite frankly, they can liberate their children with their tax dollars to even create their own schools, you see the community lurch. And part of what Dr Fuller said for those who may have missed it was the community lurched in such a way that it said whoa, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait them. What you want to you hire, who you want to hire to teach there? Nah, nah, nah. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to offer you something. Here's what we got for you. Don't worry about the voucher thing. Here's what we're going to do. We're teachers. Unions ain't going to have nothing to do with it at all, nobody. And and the powers that be. So here's we're going to. We'll give you charters. We'll give you charters. We'll pass by. You need to take a charter. Take a charter. What do you want these vouchers for? They're so messy, you don't want the vouchers. And so many of us charter school leader right here said all right, all right, all right, all right, I'll take it. I'll tell you a specific example and I'll go back to you.
Speaker 1:Dr Fuller, in 2001, I sat down with the in 2000,. I sat down with the then commissioner of the State Department of Education. I said I want to start a school and he said what do you want to do? I was like whichever one gives me the most freedom? He said at the time you can't just get vouchers or anything like that. I said why not? We don't have this, it's not a law. I said what's the next best thing? He said why not? He said we don't have this, not a law.
Speaker 1:I said what's the next best thing? He said charter. I said okay, I'll take a charter. He said yeah, but I'm not going to give you any money for charters. I said what will you give me? He said a magnet school. So if I can open a magnet school, don't I have to open that in the school system, don't they control it? Yeah, but that's the only get it. Many of us were negotiated down to what we believe to be the least common denominator thing that we could do in order to be able to start schools, and so those of us today who look back on the efforts that you made look up and say why did vouchers was the move? Do you think you mentioned that we will allow ourselves to, if we're not careful to define our circumstances, that they will be defined for us. How would you suggest that we reframe the conversation on vouchers in the given context of of of the reign of Trump?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I saw this book came across the the white architects of black education, and the one I would also add to that is Faircloth's book A Class of their Own. That was the one I was trying to think about. Because of the money, right, because back when we started as a private school using vouchers, but in 2011, we became a charter school.
Speaker 1:Explain the difference because everyone doesn't know what you mean. Like specifically like how much money did you get as a private school? How much money did parents have to pay? And then why did you go to a charter school?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so one of the compromises that we made to get the voucher program started in 1989 was the amount of the per pupil, because the teachers union had a very clear strategy for how to fight us. The first way was try to make sure a law like this never passes. If the law passes, work as hard as you can to weaken it along the way. And the way you weaken it is the amount of money that's available. You limit the number of schools, you limit the number of kids, you limit the number of kids. You do all of these things and if it still gets through, then you demagogue it once it gets through and then you take it to court. That was their strategy.
Speaker 1:And then you make it as hard as hell to stay on. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, I mean, because a part of the demagoguery is a part of that Because you also turn Black people against Black people by. You know calling us, you know tools of white billionaires and privateers, you know all of these terms right, that these white people tell you to call us and so, if you can, we exist for your freedom.
Speaker 1:We exist so that you don't have to worry about whether or not you have a black teacher Right.
Speaker 2:Because we got you Right. So what we did was organize black ministers to create our school, organize black ministers to create our school, and then when we looked at the per pupil difference, it was $2,000 per kid, which is a lot of money, yeah, in terms of what you can provide for your students. So the reason why Joanna went to a charter school when she came to CEO we might've been a private school, but anyway it was the money and and, and, and and. So, as you get into a situation where the money gets more equalized, to me it makes sense to go back and look at whether you ought to remain a charter, because there's less, uh, bureaucratic entanglement with a voucher than there is going to charter.
Speaker 1:But people don't understand Dr Fuller that. So for instance, oh damn. If you go to open a private vouchered school in Georgia, they just pass the voucher, but I think it's $7,500 a kid. If you open a charter school, you get $10,000 a kid what that? $3,000.
Speaker 1:And if you work in a neighborhood school, you get about $14,000 a kids in that $7,000 difference between a private school and a neighborhood public school or private school and a neighborhood charter school. What you end up with is you end up with not being able to hire classroom assistants, not being able to get a building, not being able to get books that not being able to get books.
Speaker 1:Now you end up plunging yourself back into the days of old, where you had poor, black run schools that if you don't have the most committed human beings on earth who are prepared to give their life for the school meaning you have that old school teacher who's going to live on property and she's going to do all that she can and she's going to, she's going to take it. If you don't have that, then you cannot exist. If you're hiring a kid fresh out of Spelman or fresh out of Howard and they're expecting to make $50,000 at 21 years old, you can't hire them. You literally can't hire them in those settings. You have to do something different.
Speaker 2:Let me give you an example of what's currently happening in Milwaukee. So I did a study back in 2009. There were 46 schools controlled by Black people. By controlled by Black people, I don't mean the principal, I mean the board. I have a very specific definition of what constitutes an unapologetically black-controlled school. Number one the board has to be a supermajority. Black Doesn't mean it can only be black people, but it's got to be supermajority because we don't show up and stuff. Secondly, the president of the board has to always be black. The main administrator, like right now we have both a high school and a middle school. So the CEO has to be black, the chair of the finance committee has to be black and the chair of the education committee that determines the curriculum has to be black. That, to me, is what an unapologetically black controlled school is. So back in 2009, it was 46 of those schools. Today there's less than 14. Here's what has happened. Connecticut has three. What has happened is two things Well, more than two, but the important things the population, the elementary and secondary age population in the city of Milwaukee between 2004 and 2023 2023 dropped by 13%. They are anticipating that by 2030, there's going to be 20% fewer first graders.
Speaker 2:The interesting point I want to make and I want people to hear what I'm saying when it comes to the Black community on the north side of Milwaukee. Years ago, many of us told Black girls to quit having babies, and they did so. Now we don't got no kids, Okay. So what is happening is the result of that, which I think for a lot of reasons made sense, right, but now you don't have the population of kids and you've got this funding disparity. So what we're fighting for in Milwaukee and in Wisconsin is more equitable funding, but the only way you can do that politically is to tie charter schools and private schools to low revenue districts. That's a whole discussion.
Speaker 1:You said something earlier when talking about Plessy. You said that the only way Plessy works is if there's an actual interest in the equal part of the separate. Correct Saying that it doesn't work. All you got is separate.
Speaker 2:Correct, you got separate but no part. See, that's what happened, you know, to us, right? And so all I'm trying to get people to do actually through this conversation, steve, is just stop for a moment and see if you can think for yourself Before you start having all these people tell you what you should be thinking. One of the values of freedom. You know like it's a beautiful thing to be 84 and free, because nobody do shit to me. They couldn't. It didn't, as some people on this thing know. It wouldn't have made any difference when I was 30. I'm going to say the same thing, but can you imagine today? I mean, what are y'all going to do to me?
Speaker 1:There's video of you in your 20s. I don't think you gave a damn.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what I'm saying is we all got to stop at this moment in history. Go back and see what Frantz Fanon said Every generation, out of relative obscurity, must discover its mission and either fulfill it or betray it. Or betray it what was our mission during slavery? It was there to be free, right, it was there to fight, to remove the chains. So Nat Turner and Denmark, vce and others you know, heard that call. What was the fight during Jim Crow? Again, it was to resist being quote second-class citizens. It was to refuse to go around the back, to go to the back. It was all of these things that that generation had to pick up, right.
Speaker 2:So the question is in today's world that's driven by clicks likes, uh, different things, what is your mission today? Right? What, what, what is your mission? And and and then then the corollary part to it is once you define that mission, how are you going to fight that struggle? Are you going to fight that struggle online? Are you going to fight that struggle outside of your house? Are you going to fight that struggle in the halls of power? Where are you going to fight that struggle? In the halls of power?
Speaker 1:where are you going to fight that I want to say that with you, dr Fuller, because as we come to a close I used to do this all night, but as we come to a close, I want you to go back to a subject that you mentioned about the application of theory and how the theory without action.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I want you to talk about that, and then I want you to define. In so doing, define how you idealize what should happen among those who have access, that we might consider the bourgeoisie. What should they be doing? And then, how do we achieve freedom?
Speaker 2:So, in answer to that question, first of all I don't know how to do the last one. I know how to because I don't see the pathway to freedom. But I want to explain that, because if you read Derrick Bell's book Faces at the Bottom of the Well that you mentioned, one of the things that Derrick Bell talked about in his book is he was having a conversation. Well, first of all, he made very clear that racism is woven into the fabric of American society. It's not tangential to American society. And so he was having a discussion with a black woman in 1964, in Macomb, mississippi I think, and what he said to her was how come you all get up and fight every day? The white people in charge of the money? They got the guns. They in charge of the money, they got the guns, they're in charge of everything. And she said you know I'm old and I can't speak for everybody, but God put me on this earth to harass white people. So her.
Speaker 2:But the larger point that he was making is that you have to fight even if you don't see victory, because not to fight is the cosign on the injustice. Be victorious. You must fight, because if you don't fight, you're saying it's okay for you to oppress us. So what I'm trying to get people to say is, however, young people who are actually going to fight today, not those who are going to shrivel up when stuff comes at us, but the people who will be willing to stand and fight for whatever avenue of struggle they choose. It could be schools, it could be healthcare, it could be housing, it could be any number of things. Right, the question that I have for you today is how do you believe you have to wage that struggle? So when SNCC said we're going to fight, they felt the way that we have to wage this struggle is to put our bodies on the line. Right Is to sit down at a lunch counter. It's to, you know, be arrested. You know, when Cor said it is through Freedom Rise, when Bob Moses and them said it is through going to the, you know, when the Mississippi Freedom Summer happened, it is through registering people to vote.
Speaker 2:H. Rap Brown, you know, was talking about in Die Nigga Die. If you ever read, you know his book. You know. You know Rap was and he still is. He's still still alive, but in prison and he was somebody. You know we got to bring our own atomic bomb. So what I'm saying is everybody got to make a decision. If you're going to fight, how are you going to fight, right?
Speaker 1:Right. I'm especially troubled and I make no bones about it by two groups of people, african Americans, who have been invited to the party. These are people who work at colleges or universities. These are people who work at not-for-profit organizations. These are people who work at funding foundations. These are people who work at Fortune, whatever companies. These are people who have become college presidents, college vice presidents.
Speaker 1:And these are black people I'm specifically talking about highly educated black professors and the like who can talk the talk, who have the backstory, who have the pedigree, who could talk about going up in Compton, walk around with a baseball hat on. Who could talk about what white people should be doing if they teach black kids. Who have worked in places whether it be Harlem or Compton, whether it be Detroit or what have you, by zip code, by zip code, zip code. But who, in the presence of their day, if they're not being asked and paid to come speak somewhere, may volunteer occasionally at something that you know, whatever, but but their day to day it's not changing a lot of our community. Imagine, if you will, all of those deans of students, heads of housing, all of those chief diversity officers. Imagine if, during the past eight years, they had actually flexed, done the things that Trump has accused them of doing, done the things that Trump has accused them of doing when I was growing up.
Speaker 1:we would drive to the party and one person paid to get in and that person was the one you trusted most to go to the back door and let everybody else in.
Speaker 1:Or one person got the stamp. I mean you kept the stamp wet so you could rub your hand on the stamp. These are the black people who, I feel like, got the hand stamp, went in and didn't come back out. Now what they do is they're very, very, very, very cnn, very, very msnbc. You can see them at state capitals and they tell you. They sit down and talk to them like doc. I said, man, you know I support you, you know like Mike can drive me crazy.
Speaker 1:And those people that's the first group that I struggle with mightily, because I've sat across from so many of them. I know where their kids go to school. Some of them even went to my schools. I've seen what we've done. I've seen how we've supported them and what I'm saying to them brother, sister, we'd like to open a school to serve more black kids. Yeah, doc, I get it. Man, you know I do what I can. I mean it's just like there's only so much that I can do. I mean I got you, though, but behind the scenes, because I'm just trying to just getting my feet wet here. Whether their feet are getting wet at the Travelers, the insurance company, whether their feet are getting wet at UConn, whether their feet are just getting wet at Yale, whether their feet are just getting wet at this foundation. I want them to take the word of people like you and say if I got in here, I'm going to ride this thing until the wheels fall off.
Speaker 1:I'm going to get up in here.
Speaker 2:I'm going to be like who do you?
Speaker 1:Hey, y'all guess what's happening. This is what I'm about to do. If you're working at the Department of Education, the state of Connecticut is a black by by aesthetic state, commissioner, but by no means in her efforts. And she is one of the people standing in the way of us opening one of our schools. And this is a sister who I pulled aside and I said hey, you know, like people really want to see you lose. I don't want to see you lose, but I'm going to need you to stop standing in the way of us doing what we're trying to do to help black kids. Those people, those preachers who are invited to be the speaker at the whatever, those people who they got the invite, they trusted you, they let you in, go in there and tell some shit Like, do something. Like you know, do something, do something, do something.
Speaker 2:Hell do it, hell do it. You know, I know we got to go, steve, but what you're saying is so real If you read Die, nigga, die. So Rap Brown went in when the Big Six went to meet with the president, right, you know, around the March of Washington. So Rap tells this story how he was so angry at these niggas that he was trying to figure out what can I do. So what he talks about is he stole the ashtray out of the White House on the way out. So when I got invited to the White House, you know was sent to the Oval Office, first of all because I'm stupid, I was looking around to see what door that Clinton used with that Clinton used with Monica Lewinsky, because there's about five or six doors really that's in the Oval Office. And so then I was trying to think about oh shit, I got to steal something.
Speaker 2:You know, it's my way out, that's my way to resist. You know I got to do a wraparound.
Speaker 1:But that is the point, though right, Steal something, take something, do something. And I think, for me, my struggle with the second group is these are the people who are so quick to cry. These are the white liberals who claim that they have our back. These are the people, both of these people, the Black political operatives who are safe, who are safe and well positioned, and the white liberals. Both of them are in the same room. Meanwhile, you and I are outside shivering, shivering like hey, could y'all, you know, could you throw down a coat or something Like, yeah, you know, when I get a chance I'll throw you down a coat, but you know, you keep out there shivering, like you keep fighting. Those are the people who, I believe, represent the greatest challenge. They're the ones who Dr King wrote the letter from a Birmingham prison to. They didn't write it. He didn't write it to the Klan.
Speaker 2:He didn't write it to the Klan. He wrote that. You gotta remember that when he landed the first time, a group of black menace didn't met him at the plane to say hey, man, like we don't need you here. Our white people are cool. And actually, as people know, the letter to Birmingham jail was a response to a group of pastors.
Speaker 1:You know who had already chided him. People don't know that Dr King was among the least popular living human beings before he was murdered.
Speaker 2:Exactly among the least popular living human beings before he was murdered. Exactly and, in fact, what I would say. And I know, like I said, we've got to close, but the most powerful speech that Martin Luther King gave was not at the March of Washington, it was the one that he gave at Riverside Church, where he came out against the war, and I had a conversation with, I think, his name in a minute before he died. He was one of King's major lieutenants and his name just slipped and he wrote a book Rivers. You would know who I'm talking about if I could think of his name, but anyway. So we were having a conversation and he's the one who actually wrote that speech for King and he felt that was the speech that got King murdered, because if you ever want to listen to a powerful speech, you can both listen and read the speech as he gives it. That was his most powerful speech, not the one on March of.
Speaker 1:Washington, and I'll tell you this Vincent. Hardy, vincent, hardy, yes, of course you and I rarely disagree on these matters, but my favorite Dr King speech was I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that was good.
Speaker 1:I'm sick and tired of fighting for what I should have had and I have said that so many times. I felt that so many times where I thought I am sitting here with four black legislators Four with four black legislators, four and if all they did? Because I'm not asking for any money from me, I'm not saying put any bread in my pocket, don't put any. I'm not asking for any commissary, I'm just saying I would like the opportunity to create more opportunities for people like you to exist. I would like that, if that's okay with you.
Speaker 1:And I recognize, and I have no misgivings. I know how this ends for me. I know I am not. I've had two strokes. I am aware that we all go out, and so each of us gets to decide how we live. We don't get to decide how we die unless we do something tragic, and so, for me, the way I want to live is I want to live as somebody who has taken every single opportunity could to create more opportunities for young people to enjoy the life that their their creator has given them. How do you want to live?
Speaker 2:yeah, you know, like that's. That's an interesting point, steve, because, as you know, first of all, I don't believe in things like legacy, and people are mad at me because I keep saying that and they keep saying, well, whether you believe in it or not, you know this school is going to be your legacy, this or that right. So the way I look at it, man, is every day that you can get up and fight, it's a great day. And you know, the tagline in my email answers that question, and it's really a quote by Mary McLeod, bethune McLeod, bethune. She says that the drums of Africa, you know, beat in my heart and my soul, or something like that, and that I could never not hear those drums as long as there's one black child out here who has not been able to prove his or her worth.
Speaker 2:So the way I intend to do this is to, as long as I can, to raise my voice for the people that Dr Thurman talked about, because if people have not read the book Jesus and the Disinherited, it's, it's. Dr Howard. Thurman was one of the great preachers of the 21st, of the 20th century and Martin Luther King used to carry his book, this book Jesus and the Disinherited, and he talks about. The disinherited are the people who get up every day with their backs against the wall to try to figure out how to survive, and these people are always trying to figure out what will their relationship be to those in power. And so the way I want to live is helping those people fight to get as much control as possible over their lives. That's what I want to do, and so right now, the way that that plays out in Milwaukee is I'm trying to take leadership to change the reading scores for Black children in Milwaukee, who have the lowest scores on NAEP in the United States of America.
Speaker 2:And so what I'm saying to people is either our children are genetically incapable of reading or we have decided not to teach them, and I believe that is what has happened. And so what I do, like you, is I don't every day. I get up and I put one foot in front of the other and I sort of declare victory you know, particularly if you, because I'm in my right mind these days most of the time but then the thing is now that you're up, how are you going to fight? Now that you're up, what are you going to do? You know what I mean. And so what I'm going to do is keep trying to make sure that our school is there for these children and then to work on trying to make sure that our children can read, and I believe everybody should choose something that they're going to fight, fight for, you know, that requires them to get up every day and fight.
Speaker 1:The Oracle, dr Howard Fuller, the book, if you haven't read it, which I have called no, no struggle, no progress. It is the front lines account of how, how a man almost Forrest Gump's his way through all of All, of some of the most powerful experiences. If you look in more than a few civil rights pitches, you see this really skinny guy whose voice is exactly the same. He said we've played this game before, is that?
Speaker 1:Dr, Fuller man. Actually, that is him. I want to share this quick story with folks as we go. A very good friend of mine bought me what was one of the coolest gifts. I'm not a good gift giver, howard, I'm not. I wish I were. It's a skill, I'm just not. Doesn't mean I don't care, I'm just not really good at it, excuse me. Fortunate if I remember that. The thing that I was supposed to make a date skill, I'm just not. It doesn't mean I don't care, I'm just not really good at it. It's fortunate if I remember the thing that I was supposed to date, you got me if I got you.
Speaker 1:That feels like the present I have to give, but I digress and so a friend of mine got me one of my favorite gifts. It is a 1969 edition, august 1969 edition of Ebony magazine. It's huge Literally. It's, you know, huge, huge Ebony magazine and Huey P Newton is on the cover painting of him and the and the addition August 1969 is called the revolutionary edition. Now, I was born in 1969, august, on my mother's 16th birthday, so the gift is really special to read what was going on during that time and to see the fights for justice and the efforts to create the opportunity for Black people to teach their own and to learn in their own to do those things that matter. And I never, as you guys can see these are all books that he's mentioned during this conversation. I'm always about 30 books behind Dr Fuller and so never had.
Speaker 1:I was flipping through and in the middle of the revolutionary edition of Ebony Magazine from August 1959 is a picture of these two young men elevating. You could see that they had just jumped and they were jumping on a casket and they're outside of what's clearly a big public school and it's in black and white, of course, and they're talking about, they're demanding, they are protesting in 1969. High school students are protesting in 1969 because they want to be taught by black teachers and they want to be taught what matters to them. So so I called Dr Fuller and I sent him a picture of the young men in there. Piece of me was like look what I found. Little did I know I was a pilgrim, I had just discovered America. Because Dr Fuller said, yes, those two young men were students of mine, and that he begins to tell me was on one of the college campus, that he had started. And I won't say he deflated my brag moment, but it just shows that here is civil rights Forrest Gump.
Speaker 1:If it happened, he was there, and if he wasn't there, he decided to be somewhere else. I saw somebody mention something about no Child Left Behind. You don't know this, but Dr Fuller was already in that room too. He mentioned something about no Child Left Behind. You don't know this, but Dr Fuller was already. He was in that room too. You don't know that. He was in so many of these other rooms that you'd think that there were not any black people. There was a black person and they may have taken a picture because he may have told them don't you take a picture of me in there with y'all? But he was there, dr Fuller. I love you, I love you. I love you too.
Speaker 2:You ever know my brother, I really appreciate you having me on, all of you, especially all of. I've seen three or four people who I know you know like have jumped on and it's so good to like see you all on and I really appreciate. I saw Rebecca, eric and Andrea and Joanna and Dan, who haven't seen or heard from in a while.
Speaker 1:So it's really cool, folks. You you got to make sure that if you don't want to read it, go to audible dr fuller reddit no struggle, no progress. I joke and calling him the forestump. But when you hear it or read it you will think holy smoke, you were there too. How are you there? You're only 84 years old. When did you start this thing? Were you like six? What are you doing, man?
Speaker 1:So I will let all of you know that I have said to Dr Fuller only once because I'm not an idiot, I know not to say something that's so dumb. More than one time I've said Dr Foley, you know, maybe you want to chill a little bit, maybe breaking fights up at 83 years old is probably not a good idea. And then you know, he politely told me to mind my business and I appreciate that. I'll go back to doing what I need to do. Folks, go, go, go, go, go. And if you run a school, get purchase no struggle, no progress. Get your kids reading it. They deserve to know that there's a living, breathing icon of social justice the oracle, dr Howard Fuller. Thank you so much. Love you, brother.
Speaker 2:Thank you, man Peace, appreciate you, love you. Talk to you later, all right, peace.