Voices of Excellence - Simone Drake - 4.4.2024_mixdown
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"Shutdown" Trailer: A number of the students were upset. We got these police officers here who were threatening in their posture, who took out their billy clubs as if they were going to beat us. At that point, y'all, I didn't know where to go after this, what to do. I said we got to run for our lives, so we got to run. I slid down the back when he went out the back.

I didn't want to get hit with a billy club. 

Jen Farmer: From the heart of The Ohio State University on the Oval, this is Voices of Excellence from the College of Arts and Sciences, with your host, David Staley. Voices focuses on the innovative work of Arts and Sciences faculty and staff with departments as wide ranging as art, astronomy, chemistry and biochemistry, physics, emergent materials and mathematics and languages, among many others, the college [00:01:00] always has something exciting happening. Join us to find out what's new, now.

David Staley: I'm very pleased to be joined today by Simone Drake, Hazel C. Youngberg Trustees Distinguished Professor at The Ohio State University College of the Arts and Sciences. She is a Faculty Affiliate at the Moritz College of Law, the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, the Department of African American and African Studies, and the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Welcome to Voices, Dr. Drake. 

Simone Drake: Thank you for having me. 

David Staley: And I should also add, welcome back, because I interviewed you at least a couple of years ago, I think. We were talking about legal studies, you were moonlighting as a legal scholar. 

Simone Drake: Yes, and I still am. 

David Staley: So today, we're here to discuss the documentary film that you executive produced called _Shutdown,_ and I think before we get started, maybe we play just a bit here of the trailer for the documentary. 

Simone Drake: Sure.

"Shutdown" Trailer: There was one day when we [00:02:00] had representatives of the Black Panthers standing on one side of one street in front of the school, and on the other side we had the American Legion, of all people. The police had come in numbers and were up in the community to come into the school. We had no knowledge of this.

A number of the students were upset. We got these police officers here who were threatening in their posture, who took out their billy clubs as if they were going to beat us. At that point, y'all, I didn't know where to go after this, what to do. I said we got to run for our lives, so we got to run. I slid down the back when he went out the back.

I didn't want to get hit with a billy club.

David Staley: So, tell us what _Shutdown_ is about. 

Simone Drake: So, _Shutdown_ is about a series of events that happened in [00:03:00] 1971 at Linden-McKinley High School here in Columbus, Ohio. The tensions were building, there were racial tensions that were building as the Linden neighborhood started to experience some pretty drastic racial demographic shifts from majority white, and in a matter of just a few years, majority Black.

David Staley: It did happen really quickly, didn't it, or as quick as any sort of sociological phenomenon would? 

Simone Drake: It did. My parents both are graduates of Linden-McKinley, and I think in 1968, when I look at my aunt's yearbook, my dad's sister, it's majority white, and by the time I look at the 1973 yearbook from my mother, it's majority Black.

And so, those tensions were felt starting with a Black history performance at Linden-McKinley, I think it was the first ever, and there was a big disruption during that event, and as you moved into the spring, by May, just erupted into the police raiding the school and assaulting really [00:04:00] anyone and everyone at the school.

And a lot of the tension also was around a group of Black students who wanted Black studies at the school, they wanted more black teachers, and they wanted to be able to fly the Black nationalist flag, which ultimately really seemed to be kind of the straw that broke the camel's back in a sense with things just falling apart by the end of May.

David Staley: There's a lot there. Let's start with that group of Black student leaders, the Black Student Union, I believe they were called. 

Simone Drake: Yes, they called themselves the Black Student Union. Eventually, you would have many Black student unions all over the country and throughout secondary and post secondary schools.

So yes, the Black Student Union was a kind of student formed group that really kind of wanted to self educate. They would meet at different locations, but primarily at one of the member's uncle's basement who he lived with, John Wells, and educate themselves on what they felt they weren't getting [00:05:00] in the curriculum at school, but also on real like, kind of, racial and social class inequities.

So, they talked about also going and visiting Upper Arlington High School and seeing that they had this facility that was much better and they had a swimming pool. And so, it was a rather, kind of multi tiered sort of way in which they were thinking about what it meant to be Black students then, the Black experience in the United States, but also kind of on this granular level as well, just even within their educational institution.

David Staley: And the leadership of that Black Student Union, I believe you've interviewed all of them. Am I understanding that correctly? 

Simone Drake: I cannot say if we got every single one of them or not; I do know that we got the primary... yeah, we got the primary leaders. Unfortunately, the two of the most prominent leaders passed before the film came out.

David Staley: In 2021, I think I saw. 

Simone Drake: Mm hmm. 

David Staley: Yeah. 

Simone Drake: Yeah. And so, yes, [00:06:00] unfortunately I mean, this was kind of grassroots in a sense, but my father, he graduated in 72, so he wasn't the class of 71, but he was there as a junior when this all happened, and he used his contacts to, basically get people to be involved in this.

David Staley: It's a really compelling story. The film begins with sort of talking about the sociology, I guess, of the neighborhood. I mean, it really nicely sets up the situation in Linden and in Columbus, I think. Give us a little more sense of what was happening in the neighborhood.

Simone Drake: I also grew up in this neighborhood, I grew up in South Linden, and so the neighborhood did have a dividing line, which they talk about in the film, which was Hudson Street, and it was predominantly Black south of Hudson, so in South London, and then predominantly white in North London; there was that division of the neighborhood, but, you know, everybody went to the same high school. This is also a time period of a lot of uprising and turmoil in the United States in the mid [00:07:00] 60s, 64, you start having like racial uprisings across the country, particularly in Northern cities and on the West coast.

We didn't have anything that elaborate in Columbus. Those tensions were there; in the late sixties, you had had you know, the National Guard at Ohio State's campus, the year before, Kent State, you had students killed, and also lesser known, at Jackson State, at the beginning of 1971.

So, just all around there were social issues and political kind of strife. The students definitely were aware of that, they could feel it in Linden. You also had the rise of the Black Power Movement, and their awareness of that, even though generally, I think, especially then if people thought about Ohio, they were not thinking about Columbus, perhaps Cleveland. 

David Staley: Cleveland, maybe. Sure. 

Simone Drake: You know, Cleveland had a Black mayor, and it took a while before Columbus became on any radar, and I think we just had a [00:08:00] different industry, different pattern of migration and things like that, so. 

David Staley: Well, no less consequential. You mentioned, and it's sort of a critical part in the middle of the film, where there's a performance during Black History Week, and there's a, well, I'll let you describe it, there's a disruption. 

Simone Drake: Yes, there is a disruption, and, you know, the students were so excited about doing this.. They had hired some teachers from Central State University, HBCU here in Ohio to teach African American history, and they did this performance when the teachers wrote the skit, the plays, and Linden-McKinley's auditorium has a balcony - 

David Staley: And it's a play of the history of Africa from slavery to the present, it was sort of the story of Africans in America yes?

Simone Drake: Yes. And so, a group of white students, one who everyone identified by name. 

David Staley: But it's not in the film, I noticed.

Simone Drake: Yes. You know, initially it was, and I was watching the final edits, I thought, I'm like, you know, I don't think that we can say his name or show his, [00:09:00] or show his picture, his photo. 

David Staley: Yeah, you shadow his face, yes. 

Simone Drake: But, it seems that most everyone that we interviewed did know who it was.

They had some flyers, they threw over the balcony and showered down onto the auditorium. What's interesting is, you know, we're doing these interviews, we're doing this during - like, we started these in 2020, during the pandemic, so that was all very interesting too - but we're doing these interviews and we keep hearing about this event, and everybody has a different memory of what the flyer said. You know, everybody says it was something racist, because apparently students did take off after them when they threw them, but they weren't sure what it said. And amazingly, my father ended up finding out that there was a teacher who had saved the flyer.

David Staley: Because it's shown in the film. 

Simone Drake: What is shown in the film is the actual just photocopy of the flyer that this teacher had saved, teacher had saved all kinds of things. And so, the teacher had the [00:10:00] flyer. 

David Staley: And it does say some pretty racist things, it's pretty obvious what the intent is.

Simone Drake: Yes, very white supremacist propaganda. And so, you know, that ruined the event, it became the marker of when that school year became disrupted. 

David Staley: One of the people you interview, one of the Black students said, I never knew they felt that way, in reference to the white students. That was her takeaway from this moment. It was a really poignant moment, I think, in the film. 

Simone Drake: And I think one thing that we learn later is that individual perhaps didn't necessarily even feel that way himself. Dr. Jean Harris and her husband, they see him not too long later at a restaurant, and he apologizes and said that he was influenced by his parents' politics and that that's not really, I guess, sentiments he wanted to share anymore. 

David Staley: Yeah, and that's Jean Harris, one of the student leaders and then later superintendent of schools for Columbus City Schools. 

Simone Drake: Yes, yep. She became the superintendent of Columbus City Schools and [00:11:00] retired from the school district. 

David Staley: There's another event about the time or shortly thereafter, students lead a march that ends up in Franklin Park: say a little more about this...

Simone Drake: Yes. 

David Staley: Again, really important moment. 

Simone Drake: That march is something that I knew about as a child. 

David Staley: Is that so? 

Simone Drake: I didn't know the story at all, like the violent part of the story, I didn't know that. I just know that in my mother's yearbook, which I loved to look at as a child, I think I always loved archival things, and also I thought that they had funny hair and things like that. So, I would look at her yearbook all the time and there must have been photographs that they were marching and I knew that where I lived in South London and where Franklin Park was, was a long walk. 

David Staley: Yeah. So, they marched down Cleveland Avenue and then up Broad, that was a march.

Simone Drake: Yeah, I knew we only went to Franklin Park in a car, and so there's something fascinating to me about that. My dad had retired and was taking a screenwriting class at the African American African Studies Community Extension Center, and needed to write a script.

And somehow, when he asked me for my [00:12:00] help, I said something about, what about the march to Franklin Park? And then I actually learned there was this, you know, it wasn't as romantic as I thought. I mean, it kind of was, that day actually was a good day for students, they were excited about it, almost all of the Black students marched from Linden-McKinley High School to Franklin Park. And with the students, what's interesting is, you know, you got to hear all these different stories, and then sometimes people didn't know the backstory. 

So, they knew they did this march, but then I found out that the first director of Black Studies at Ohio State University, Charles Ross, had organized what was basically a birthday party for Malcolm X, who at this point had been slain, assassinated, but it was a birthday party in Franklin Park for Malcolm X. Alex Haley was invited and spoke, a local minister who is very active in the local civil rights was there, and there was music, lots of Congo drumming and things like that.

But they did, kind of like a Marcus Garvey style parade [00:13:00] through the neighborhood that looped around to Long Street and back to Broad, and then they marched back to Linden-McKinley from there. And so, you know, everybody thought it was a great event.

That's not really how the local news reported it. Their focus was... 

David Staley: Of course not. 

Simone Drake: A lot on how everyone was supposed to be welcome, but a local, I think like a white Ohio State student showed up and he was like assaulted or something, and they reported on that for a couple of days. But the students just remember it being you know, just peaceful and, you know, of an event that made them feel good. And we got lucky to get original photographs from that. 

David Staley: And they're presented in the film and it's really quite striking to see this. And to be clear, this is done during school hours, so the report is the school is emptied at least of Black students, the white students. remained 

Simone Drake: I think the white students might've gone home. In 1971, when I looked through the news archive, so Linden was having its issues, but it was not the only school, there were a number of junior high schools and high schools where Malcolm X's birthday was actually a pretty [00:14:00] popular thing that students wanted to be able to celebrate.

They just wanted different things connected with civil rights. And so, while Linden shut down and could not reopen, there were other schools that periodically, you know, like at lunch hour, the principal would just say, everybody go home. I'm like, really? There was a lot of this going on in 1971, of students walking out of school, of administrators not being able to contain an issue and just saying, leave, or if people want to leave, they can leave.

So, it was beyond Linden, but no place experienced what Linden ended up experiencing. 

David Staley: And then tell us about... this is not tied to the march to Franklin Park, there was... well, I'll let you describe it, police in riot gear attacked students in the school.

Simone Drake: Yes. So, you know, after coming back from a community kind of meeting at a church, the students decided to put the Black nationalist flag on the roof of the school. And, you know, it's taken down pretty quickly.

David Staley: Students [00:15:00] wanted to replace the American flag with the Black nationalist flag, yes? 

Simone Drake: Yes. The flag gets put up, they call a meeting in the school auditorium.

There was a lot of this going on as well, in '71, at different schools with students calling administration into the auditorium. So, they call for a meeting in the auditorium, and the flags are put up in the auditorium. And it seems that the next thing students know, the school is being raided by battalions of police in what looks like riot gear, and they begin assaulting students, teachers, administrators. The janitor is one of the photos that the press had was of their janitor being arrested, and my dad was like, yeah, he was trying to protect the kids, he's trying to protect us. And the school shuts down.

They try to reopen repeatedly and it's determined it's not going to be possible, and so what they ended up having to do so that the seniors can graduate is allow them to, I think it's about a week [00:16:00] later or more, come back just to sit for their exams. But then, during that period, it's occupied by police, and one of them ends up assaulting Mr. Brown, one of the assistant principals, 

David Staley: Who is African American, I believe. 

Simone Drake: Yes. Mm hmm. Yeah, he was one of two. The other one... 

David Staley: I thought he was the only one? 

Simone Drake: I did too, but I think there was one other one. I think that there were two, but the other one just wasn't entering into the stories that we were getting, so we didn't contact him. But, yes, Mr. Brown and many of the teachers were quite young in their careers. Some of the teachers were just fresh out of college, they weren't that much older than the students.

David Staley: I thought he was a student at first, when you first started interviewing him. 

Simone Drake: Yeah. Also, aside from Mr. Brown being arrested, there were two teachers that came to his aid, two white teachers who were arrested, and Charles Ross was arrested on the day that the school actually closed, because he happened to be there with another OSU professor, Dr. Kelsey. It was covered for [00:17:00] weeks and weeks in the media, his trial. 

David Staley: And what's extraordinary, and I had to keep reminding myself as I'm watching this, is that this is all happening in 1971. Everything we've been talking about, this is all in the year 1971. 

Simone Drake: And all in the first six months. 

David Staley: Yeah. So, what happens after 1971? What happens after all of these events? 

Simone Drake: Well, in 1971 in the fall, what happens is they just treat it as if nothing happened. Now, if something like this happened, there would be counseling for children, there'd be all kinds of things, but they just acted as if it had not happened.

Teachers were reassigned, Mr. Brown was reassigned, and the people that returned back to Linden, there was really no addressing what happened, but I think there were other things going on. There ends up being a legal case, _Goss v. Lopez_, a class action, about students basically being suspended or removed from school without due process.

And in that case, they don't base it on race, on racial discrimination, they base it on due [00:18:00] process, not getting a hearing, but when I read the syllabus of the case, I'm like, okay, Malcolm X you know, these different, and like, these are Black students even though it didn't say that.

And so, that went to the U. S. Supreme Court, and I see what was going on at Linden as being very much, even though I don't think any of the students that were plaintiffs were Linden students, I see Linden being, right in the center of that, whirlwind, of that happening.

And then, by '79, we have court mandated school integration in Columbus, Ohio, which is quite late. 

David Staley: Yeah. 

Simone Drake: Quite late, but Penick v. the Columbus School Board, that also went to the United States Supreme Court. So, it wasn't until '79 when they finally implemented the desegregation decree, which is also one year before I started kindergarten.

So you know, in just one decade, I think it's actually pretty significant that there were two education based U. [00:19:00] S. Supreme Court cases that were right here in Columbus, Ohio. I wouldn't call them landmark Supreme Court cases, but they went to the United States Supreme Court.

You know, Penick, the judge here was the first Black judge. There was a lot of drama around how they were going to do the integration and what schools might need to close in order to do it. North High School was targeted and people were very upset about that, partly because I think North was actually one of the more integrated high schools, and so there was controversy around that. But one thing that came out of it that personally affected me is Columbus Alternative High School, was Dr. Ilg, he was the kind of first principal founder. He came up with this idea to kind of basically do this sort of voluntary integration really through this high school and it, it was very, very Seventy ish.

Very unstructured and non traditional, and it... 

David Staley: Sounds wonderful. 

Simone Drake: You know, it was, and many years, you know, [00:20:00] later, when I ended up going there for high school, it really was wonderful and non traditional. I don't know how much attention it gets now, but when I was still in high school, nationally, it would get attention for its strong academics, but also just kind of alternative approach.

David Staley: Why'd you decide to produce this film? Where did, where did the idea come from?

Simone Drake: You know, I had never really thought about producing a film. I write books. 

David Staley: I was going to ask you that, too. Why a film as opposed to, I don't know article or typical thing that an academic is supposed to do? 

Simone Drake: Well, I did end up writing a couple of like little, like short pieces on it, but I wanted them to be able to tell their stories, for one thing.

I mean, it wasn't my story to tell, film gives that voice. Now, it was only supposed to be a documentary short, and it really, the idea kind of came when the director, Celia Peters, was teaching the screenwriting class that my dad was taking. [00:21:00] And when he started to have to actually write the story, and I started hearing all of these other parts to it and what actually happened, I was like, that would actually make a good film, a good documentary.

And so, I had some funding that was for community engagement, and so I'm like, okay, we can give this a try, like 15 minute documentary short. And this is, I think, about two weeks before everything shut down because of the pandemic in 2020, in March of 2020. And when we got people together and decided, yeah, we, maybe we can make this happen and we were ready to go to the studio was like, kind of like the same week where everything shut down. And we had to wait until I think August with very, very stringent COVID precautions. By that point, Celia had moved to Oakland, and, you know, we really couldn't be on campus, and so we were on Zoom.

David Staley: There's a couple of them on Zoom, I noticed. Yes. 

Simone Drake: Well, even when they were here in this studio, [00:22:00] Celia and me and Allen Coleman, another producer, we would be on Zoom, like they'd set up an iPad for us to be on Zoom, to talk and do the interview. So, you know, even in that way, it had its challenges and that's part of it, you know, it took a little longer to get out.

We were hoping to get it out for the 50th anniversary, which would have been 2021, and it didn't until two more years later in 2023. 

David Staley: Well, it's not 15 minutes, it's an hour, and it's very, very much worth watching. It's just a, just a terrific documentary. I learned a great deal from this, and we're going to have a link to it on our website, and I would urge everyone, everyone to watch it. 

Simone Drake: Thank you. 

David Staley: Simone Drake, thank you very much. 

Simone Drake: Thank you for having me. 

Jen Farmer: Voices of Excellence is produced and recorded at The Ohio State University College of Arts and Sciences Marketing and Communications Studio. More information about the podcast and our guests can be found at go.osu.edu/voices. [00:23:00] Voices of Excellence is produced by Doug Dangler. I'm Jen Farmer.