Oral history with Umoja Kwanguvu

              An Oral History with Umoja Kwanguvu
This oral history is provided through a cooperative project of USM Libraries and USM's Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage It is presented here for reference purposes only. Interviews in this collection are protected by copyright and PERMISSION TO PUBLISH MUST BE REQUESTED from the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage. Please call ( 601) 266- 4574 for more information.
Biography
Born William Jones, and the first of nine children, Mr. Umoja Kwanguvu started his life in 1925, in Birmingham, Alabama. He was reared in Birmingham, and was graduated from Miles College there with a major in English. In 1944, during World War II, he was drafted into the U. S. Army. During his tenure in the Army, he was a cargo checker on U. S. ships in England and the Philippines. In 1945, he was honorably discharged. Returning to Birmingham, Mr. Kwanguvu attended business college for a year. Because of strict racial segregation and discrimination, he could not find work commensurate with his abilities. Moreover, he could not adjust to or accept his " place" as a second- class citizen in the oppressive South. In 1947, he reenlisted in the military-- this time in the Air Force. He was graduated from military dental technician school and served as a dental technician in Germany. Demoted for actively protesting and defying segregation which still existed in the military at that time, he was honorably discharged in 1952. He returned to Birmingham where he was arrested in 1953 for drinking from a water fountain labeled " white." In 1953, he entered Miles College where he evoked the ire of the president of that all- black institution by conducting protest activities against the prevailing Jim Crow attitudes and laws. He taught French and English in Georgia for two years where he provoked his students to begin to question a long- accepted attitude of racial " untouchability." Parents of his students counseled him to leave town before entrenched white racists could do him harm. So, he returned to Birmingham where he taught high school English and French for approximately three years. On Mother's Day, 1961, after witnessing the horror of freedom riders being beaten at the bus station in downtown Birmingham, Mr. Kwanguvu decided to relocate to New York City where he taught school. For about three years he taught at an elementary school in Bellmore, Long Island, New York. In April of 1964, he was arrested with James Farmer, the founder of CORE ( Congress for Racial Equality); the two of them were picketing the New York World's Fair because of inadequate and demeaning employment of non- white people. That same summer, the long, hot summer of 1964, he was arrested in Hattiesburg, Mississippi for attempting to desegregate the public library. His subsequent arrest in 1968 in New York City occurred when he witnessed and protested the abuse of a man by police in the subways. Mr. Kwanguvu taught English in one of President Lyndon B. Johnson's anti- poverty programs, JOIN ( Job Opportunities in Neighborhoods) in New York City from 1967 through 1972. At LaGuardia Community
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