Howard Fuller (activist)

In one 1996 interview, he said, "it has to do with the nature of the black struggle in the South, in that although there were clearly class issues involved, there was a lot more unity around race that came into play", indicating that class was not as important as race. In another from the same year, he said, "So, race is right there. Class is right there. There is nothing quaint or redeeming about being poor" indicating that he felt class was at least as important as race. While it is unclear exactly how he felt in 1996, it is evident that his priorities shifted during his lifetime. However, the fact that, while shifting, his priorities and approaches always revolved around the central pillar of African American uplift through education sheds light on the interconnected nature of race, education, poverty, and class and clarifies the complexity of racial disparity and inequity.

From 1991 to 1995, Fuller served as superintendent of the Milwaukee Public Schools. Today, Fuller continues to advocate for educational system reforms. He particularly focuses on school choice and argues for the dismantling of teacher's unions. His nonprofit, the Black Alliance for Educational Options, promotes school vouchers to enable low-income children to attend private schools. He is a distinguished professor of education, and founder/director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

MXLU's primary investor after the initial funding from the FCD was the Federation of Pan-African Institutions, "a consortium of nation-building elementary, secondary, and higher educational academies dedicated to black cultural nationalism," of which it was a member. The Federation, in turn, was primarily funded by the national Episcopal Church. MXLU received one round of grants from the Church but was denied the second time due to the ideological "struggle between the alternative revolutionary college and members of the state's upper stratum of blacks". As a result, MXLU lost its ability to pay for the land lease and shut its doors in 1972.

Many historians believe that Fuller adopted his pan-Africanist and Marxist views during his visit to Africa in which he traveled with black freedom fighters in Mozambique. However, he traveled to Africa in August 1971, while he had made his pan-Africanist and Marxist remarks in 1969 in the context of MXLU. This means that his transition into believing these ideas happened slowly during his tenure at OBT. It is these beliefs, primarily his Marxist ones, which differentiated his OBT and MXLU phases. Prior to his MXLU days, Fuller had seen the class disparity and the resulting injustices inflicted on the disadvantaged as a function primarily driven by racial discrimination. However, by around 1969, he had started to see class disparity as an original injustice of its own, perpetuated by the wealthy to subjugate the poor regardless of race. These new beliefs had made Howard enemies among Durham's population of wealthy black people. North Carolina Fund staffers in an in-house memo wrote, "The city's negro elite were among the most bothered by Fuller".

On October 25, 1969 sparked by the Allen Building takeover crisis at Duke University, Fuller founded the Malcolm X Liberation University (MXLU)– a black-only university in Durham, NC intended to, "provide a framework within which Black Education can become relevant to the needs of the black community and the struggle for Black Liberation". It ceased operation on June 28, 1972 due to political infighting, staff turnover, and a lack of funding.

The school's curriculum was influenced by Fuller's black power views as well as his newer pan-Africanist and Marxist leanings. Evidencing the black power and pan-Africanist influences and tying the two together, the idea of MXLU, "began innocently, says Fuller, by ‘taking any subject and putting ‘black' in front of it. Black history had to be taught, for example, because it was not being passed down within the conventional institutional framework. Inevitably, this led to the need for a historical understanding of the African race, when combined with the knowledge of imperialism exposed by the anti-war movement led the university to a political movement called Pan-Africanism (a global extension of Black Power)". Earlier in 1969, Fuller had declared a focus of the university to, "teach here why we must bring down capitalism," evidencing his newly acquired Marxist beliefs.

Through his efforts at OBT in organizing protests and rallies at Durham's city hall and universities, Fuller earned a reputation as a black power militant. By 1968, this reputation had grown to such an extent that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had started to monitor his activities.

Fuller's unique style of activism enabled him to become one of the most significant civil rights leaders in North Carolina from around 1965 to 1975. His evolving, complicated, and at times contradictory ideological positions throughout his career, however, also mirror many of the debates and conflicts of the black freedom struggle of the 1960s, '70s and beyond.

Fuller's "relentless impatience of youth" drove him to move to North Carolina in 1965 and take up a job as the director of community development at Operation Breakthrough (OBT). OBT is an anti-poverty non-profit that places an emphasis on mobilization of communities in need to enable them to empower themselves. OBT was funded by the North Carolina Fund, a state government-sponsored project that provided grants to local anti-poverty organizations.

It was during his time as a student at Case Western Reserve University that he participated in his first protest – a sit-in in 1964 to oppose the construction of a "…new public school in a predominantly black area of Cleveland on the grounds that it would surely be segregated". Here, he saw a Presbyterian minister get crushed by a bulldozer.

Upon graduating from Case Western Reserve University in 1964, Fuller moved to Chicago to work as a community development specialist for the Urban League and community organizer for the Congress for Racial Equality. More intimate exposure to the plight of inner-city blacks during this experience promoted his ideological evolution. Historian Cedric Johnson writes, "His radicalization was facilitated by his immediate experiences as a social worker in inner-city Chicago and the mid-1960s sea change in black public discourse from liberal integration to Black Power militancy".

Howard Fuller (born January 14, 1941) is a civil rights activist, education reform advocate, and academic. He is best known for the community organizing work he did in Durham, North Carolina as an employee of Operation Breakthrough, and as a co-founder of the Malcolm X Liberation University in 1969. In the 1970s, Fuller adopted the name Owusu Sadaukai, organized several national African Liberation Day celebrations, and was one of the foremost advocates of Pan-Africanism in the United States . Decades later, Fuller rose again to national prominence as one of the leading advocates for school vouchers. He served as the superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools from 1991-1995 and is currently a distinguished professor of education, and founder/director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Dr. Howard Fuller was born in Shreveport, Louisiana on January 14, 1941 as the only child to Tom and Juanita Fuller, who were sharecroppers. His parents divorced not long after his birth, and his mother moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in search of employment. After living with his grandmother, he moved to live with his mother at age seven. Raised Catholic, he attended St. Boniface Catholic Parochial School for elementary and middle school and North Division for high school. He was the sole black student at St. Boniface. From an early age, he demonstrated leadership qualities, leading "the student body of every school he attended". He was also a skilled basketball player, and this skill earned him a basketball scholarship to Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin to study sociology. By matriculating, Fuller joined the first racially integrated class at Carroll. He then went on to study at Case Western Reserve University and graduated with a Master's in Social Administration. He also earned a Ph.D. in Sociological Foundations of Education from Marquette University in 1986.