TSU Student Rally

In March 1967, Texas Southern University dismissed the Friends of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee as an on-campus organization and fired its faculty adviser, Mack Jones. With the state legislature already considering a cut to TSU's budget, Dean of Students James B. Jones reasoned that too much student support for the activist group would jeopardize the university's funding. This KPRC-TV footage shows the ensuing campus protest that began on March 28. Reverend Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, co-chairman of Friends of the SNCC, leads the rally, singing songs and speaking to the assembled crowd via a megaphone. (The other man to speak on the megaphone is possibly Millard Lowe, Kirkpatrick's co-chairman.) In an interview with a KPRC reporter, Mack Jones talks about his dismissal and what he plans to do next.