<Begin Segment 18>
MN: So after you were discharged, you returned to Los Angeles City College? And then around that time, Fidel Castro took over Cuba and the U.S. cut ties with Cuba in 1961, you'd just served in the military, how did you feel about all these Caucasians saying they don't want to go into the military?
Mo N: Yeah, yeah, I was dead set against 'em. I was a right-winger at that time. I felt like, if I had to go serve in the army, then they should go. So yeah, there was a lot of heckling and talking shit to them, yeah, draft dodgers. But at the same time, the Civil Rights Movement was coming along and Malcolm was starting to make his imprint on what the hell was going on and stuff like that. The black cats that I grew up with were running around with these big naturals, and I would think, "Wow, crazy, man." [Laughs] But yeah, Malcolm came to the City College campus and spoke there. He had the persona that he projected on TV, and his rapport when he talks to you face to face is a whole different set. He was just about the warmest most likeable human beings you ever saw, talking face to face. Even white people. He didn't put 'em down when he was talking face to face, it's only those assholes, those people that were trying to put him down and stuff like that on television and things like that that would just... that man was not afraid of nothing. He was a good role model. But yeah, so I changed my thinking about him, what he represented, wanted to know more about what The Honorable Elijah Muhammad was teaching and what it meant for black folks. And stuff started in the South, man. See that Bull Connor turning dogs and horseback people loose on those marchers on the bridge, yeah.
MN: So you graduated from L.A. City College and then you went to California State University Los Angeles for four years. What did you major in in Cal State L.A.?
Mo N: Chemistry.
MN: Now what prompted you to major in chemistry?
Mo N: Well, I had a mistaken, wrong information. When I was at City College, we took German, there was a bunch of us there, and the science language was German. We took German, I had just come back from Germany, so I figured I could speak a little bit. But I had this German teacher, this arrogant sucker, and he told me that I should take, I should not go into science because Japanese people couldn't think independently, and all we could do was copy shit. And I thought to myself, "Fuck you," and I decided I wanted to go into science just to spite this sucker. And at that time, I had heard that there was a Japanese scientist who had won the Nobel Prize, and I thought they said it was in chemistry. So I figured, okay, I'm going to go into chemistry, so that's why I went into chemistry. But later I find out that the cat, I think it was Kikuchi or something like that, but he gets it in physics. I had the information wrong. I think chemistry's easier than physics. But, yeah, so that's why I went into chemistry when I should have probably, if I was going to follow that line of thinking, I should have went into physics or something like that. But yeah, I graduated, I took all the classes that were available in chemistry at state college.
<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.