Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is perhaps turning in his grave.
On the very week that the world paused to remember the 49th anniversary of the assassination of the slain civil rights leader, the board of trustees at his beloved Morehouse College — where he was admitted at the age of 15 — made an abrupt decision to strip its current president — Dr. John S. Wilson, Jr. — and the chair of the board of trustees, Robert Davidson from their respective positions.
The board — which had already made the decision in January not to renew Wilson’s contract when it expired in June — has now made a tumultuous situation even worse. It is yet another glaring example of how boards of trustees at institutions of higher learning, often make rash decisions based on emotion rather than logic.
By most accounts, students, faculty and staff had voiced concerns over the decision by the trustees not to renew Wilson’s contract.
Former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson and filmmaker Spike Lee —who both graduated with Wilson from Morehouse in 1979 — joined actor Samuel L. Jackson, also an alumnus, in issuing a stinging criticism of the board of trustees most recent actions.
“Morehouse College is at present drowning in acrimony,” Johnson, Lee and Jackson wrote in a letter that was released a few days before the administrative shake-up. “Your decision to not renew President Wilson’s contract is inexplicable, and you must now search for the school’s third president in 10 years. All of us in the Morehouse family—students, faculty and alumni — hold you, the Trustees, responsible for this dismal state of affairs.”
The critique was a public setback for the nation’s only historically Black college for African American men founded in 1867. For decades, the college had a successful track record of producing some of our nation’s most brilliant thinkers and public servants, from theologian Dr. Howard Thurman, to Maynard Jackson, the first African-American mayor of Atlanta.
