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MN: So in 1968, while you were a Fellow, there was this student strike at San Francisco State University, and then Governor Reagan came and spoke to your group. What did he say about the strike?
Mo N: Well, he came in at first putting it down. So we started firing questions at him about what would he do if he were in our place? And on a person-to-person level he was pretty personable. He ain't too bright, but he likes people, so he talked real straight, and so we talked. "What would you do if you lived here for..." Black Brothers are talking about, "Yeah, we've been here for, shit, three or four hundred years," we're talking about, "We've been here over a hundred years." Chicanos talking about, "We've been here forever." "And there ain't none of that in history. Don't you think that's unfair?" "Oh, yeah, that's mean." This fool was sittin' up here agreeing with us. I shouldn't say fool, he was just following the logic, right? But, yeah, so we got him supporting us and supporting the strike. That's when his aide come up, a black dude, "Governor, I think we got an appointment," and pulls his ass out of there. But, so that's when we learned that he wasn't too bright, that he was obviously being manipulated by people behind the scenes. But yeah, that was a real eye-opener.
But if you look at American history in the latter half of the last century, you see that this guy was the spark that pushed the counter revolution. We hadn't even gotten civil rights settled in when he countered that with the Bakke decision and started the counter revolution right away and took away all of the meat and strength of our civil rights struggle. Can't use numbers, we can't discriminate against white people, fuck. Years of discrimination and you can't reverse that one way? So that kind of stuff, and he took that and carried them white people all the way up to the presidency with that.
<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.