By Lucius Gantt
At the end of my senior year in high school, I applied to go to college at Morehouse College. I didn’t know anything about the famous school, but I tried to go there because I had friends who were accepted there.
Morehouse replied to my admission requests quickly. The school said I could come there but they wouldn’t give me a scholarship because they required students getting financial assistance to have at least a 3.0 average.
My overall average was over 3.0 but after Morehouse declined to include good grades in ROTC, physical education and other similar classes, my average for them dipped to 2.9.
They said I could do work study which paid less than $3 an hour so I declined and instead went to work for higher pay at WSB-TV in Atlanta and ultimately enrolled at Georgia State University to pursue degrees in Journalism and Philosophy.
I became a GSU student that was also a decent hustler who was married with a wife and young daughter.
Anyway, at that time, Morehouse was a hotbed for student activism. Many well known “activists” were at Morehouse but I was a so-called radical and President of the Black Federation Alliance, a student group that was considered by local and national law enforcers as one of the 10 most dangerous organizations in Atlanta. We were depicted in the same ways as Black Muslims, Black Panthers, SDS, Weathermen, SNCC and other groups, possibly because BFA members were accused of fire-bombing stores that refused to contribute to our tutorial and free breakfast programs.
I didn’t bomb anything because I went to school, to work and home to my wife and daughter.
After a shootout at the BFA house in Fourth Ward, police did come to my journalism classroom and said, “We’re looking for Lucius Gantt”, and all my white classmates turned around and pointed at me.
The police asked me if I wanted protection because they believed the shooters may have been looking for me. I refused their offer.
So, I had some relations and connections to Morehouse.
Recently, President Joe Biden spoke at a Morehouse commencement program. Before his address, politicos were somewhat worried and concerned because of protests happening at other colleges.
I wasn’t worried because current Morehouse students are different from Martin Luther King, Julian Bond, Charles Cherry, Senior, and other freedom fighters who fought for Black causes.
Today’s college students are social media activists. Too many Black students rely on social media for their news, motivation, inspiration, and agitation.
Martin and other former college students read Ghandi, Marx, Lenin, Sun Yat-Sen, Mau, Nkruma, Fanon, Machel, Lumumba, Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, and others.
The apartheid and colonialism of Gaza and the West Bank is deplorable, but Joe Biden seems to be doing what he can to feed the millions of innocent Palestinians in need of humanitarian aid. He also publicly denounced the Israel strategy of killing Palestinian women and children.
But don’t go to sleep and dream that Biden will turn against his ally Israel. He can’t because other allies may believe the USA will turn on other allies.
Palestinians are catching hell because Israel wants Gaza and West Bank lands for Jews and the Jewish government, not most Jewish people, will never agree to a two-state solution.
Until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all Jews and Muslims living in that part of Northern Africa, yes, I call the area what it is,
There will always be “war”.
If students want to protest the fighting in Palestine, they’ll have no opposition from The Gantt Report.
However, I wish they would protest what is happening in the Congo, in Niger, in Haiti and in other places where people are victimized that look like Morehouse students and need help from Morehouse students!
