Long before he was starring in hit movies like Pulp Fiction and Die Hard With a Vengeance, Samuel L. Jackson was just another student at Morehouse College in Atlanta. And it was there that the future actor first started to make a name for himself—but not for the greatest of reasons.
According to Parade magazine, Jackson led a protest with other students in 1969, demanding reform to the school’s curriculum. Evidently, they were pushing for a Black studies course. Jackson and company reportedly ended up in a standoff with local authorities after holding members of the board of trustees hostage inside the school. Among the people who were locked in as a part of this demonstration was Martin Luther King Sr.—father of MLK Jr., of course.
Oddly enough, Jackson had actually met MLK Jr. and even attended his funeral the previous year. Though the school eventually agreed to make the requested changes, Jackson was suspended for two years because of his involvement with the protest, and convicted of unlawful confinement.
Before Hollywood, Samuel L. Jackson Was Suspended From College Over a Hostage Protest
A little while later, Jackson befriended Stokely Carmichael of the Black Power movement, around the time the FBI began to take notice of him. Jackson’s mother was warned that if she didn’t get her son out of Atlanta, he’d likely be dead within a year. Jackson left town for a bit and returned to Morehouse in 1971 as a drama major.
Appearing in one of the school’s plays made him fall in love with acting, and he quickly realized that he’d be better served trying to change people’s minds as a performer.
“It was all part of growing up in an extraordinary time,” Jackson said of his college antics. “That s—t helps you mature if you come through it, and I’m here, right?” he continued. Jackson’s big film breakthrough finally came in the ‘90s, but his earliest performances were in stage productions. Interestingly, when he made his Broadway debut in 2011, he was playing Martin Luther King Jr. in Katori Hall’s The Mountaintop:
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