Malcolm X House Increases Presence In the early morning hours of
Feb. 21, 1969, an all-male group of black students occupied Fisk
Hall by blocking all office doors and refusing entry to all non-
blacks. “We blaspheme and decry that education which is
consonant with one cultural frame of reference to the exclusion
of all others,” the occupiers announced in their public
statement. The students, the University’s first admitted African
Americans and part of the 1969 Vanguard class, were reacting to
the administration’s decision not to suspend normal University
activity in observation of the anniversary of Malcolm X’s death.
As a condition of their leaving Fisk, which they occupied
peacefully and without vandalism, the occupiers demanded that
the administration establish support, academic programs, and
centers specifically for black students. The Malcolm X House was
one of those centers. Recently, the current residents of the
house revisited its founding and its original mission as part of
a campaign to reengage wi