- Collection:
- Southern Labor Archives
- Title:
- Modibo Kadalie oral history interview, 2010-11-12
- Creator:
- Kadalie, Modibo M.
- Contributor to Resource:
- Quest, Matthew
- Publisher:
- Atlanta, Ga. : Georgia State University Library
- Date of Original:
- 2010-11-12
- Subject:
- African American Universities and colleges
College students--Political activity
Strikes and lockouts
African American scholars
Community organization - Location:
- United States, Georgia, Fulton County, 33.79025, -84.46702
United States, Georgia, Fulton County, Atlanta, 33.749, -84.38798
United States, Michigan, Wayne County, Detroit, 42.33143, -83.04575 - Medium:
- oral histories (literary works)
interviews - Type:
- Sound
- Format:
- audio/mpeg
- Description:
- Modibo Kadalie was born Edward Cooper in Savannah, Georgia, in 1943. He grew up in Riceboro, GA in a community called Crossroads, south of Savannah, with an early emphasis upon the importance of education and community involvement from his parents. In the fall of 1959, at the age of 16, Kadalie began attendance at Morehouse College as an early admission student. During the following spring he participated in a sit-ins to desegregate the public facilities in downtown Atlanta. He left in January of 1963, after finishing the requirements for graduation. In the fall of 1963 he entered graduate school at Howard University in experimental psychology. In 1965, he moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada to avoid the draft for the Vietnam War. Returning and he eventually, moved to Detroit, Michigan, inspired by the Dodge Main Strike. He briefly taught at Highland Park Community College, becoming intimately involved with the student strike in 1969. While teaching at the University of Detroit and Wayne County Community College Kadalie maintained an intense level of radical activism. In 1973, he enrolled at Atlanta University, going on to complete both a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in political science. He is currently living and teaching in Georgia.
In this session, Kadalie explains the impact his parents and the community in which he grew up had on him. He summarizes his time at Morehouse College, where his lifelong interest in activism began with his first sit-ins and several conflicts with the Morehouse College administration. He elaborates on his personal philosophies and involvement with various activist groups, including the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the African Liberation Support Committee, the Sixth Pan-African Congress, the Dessie Woods and Sheryl Todd Defense Committee, the Black Issues Community Forum. He describes his role in organizing against the brutality led by police chief John Inman, organizing the armed self-defense in the Techwood Housing Projects during the Atlanta Child Murders, supporting the strikes of the Atlanta sanitation workers, housing authority workers, and Atlanta Junior College students, organizing an independent union of taxi drivers, organizing a march from Savannah to Reidsville in response to a prison lockdown and against the death penalty, organizing against a racist plan for desegregation by the state board of education, and many other events. He also describes the influences that many individuals, and often their published works or activism, had on him, including C.L.R. James, Charles Simmons, Kimathi Mohammed, Hosea Williams, and many others. - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/labor/id/6093
- IIIF manifest:
- https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/iiif/2/labor:6093/manifest.json
- Language:
- eng
- Additional Rights Information:
- Copyright to this item is owned by Georgia State University Library. Georgia State University Library has made this item available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. For more information, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
- Bibliographic Citation (Cite As):
- Cite as: Kadalie, Modibo, interviewed by Matthew Quest, November 12, 2010, Voices of Labor Oral History Project, Southern Labor Archives. Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University.
- Extent:
- 03:19:50
- Original Collection:
- Voices of Labor Oral History Project
http://research.library.gsu.edu/VoicesofLabor
Southern Labor Archives - Holding Institution:
- Georgia State University. Special Collections
- Rights:
-
