Howard Fuller: A civil rights warrior or billionaire’s tool? - The Washington Post

Howard Fuller: A civil rights warrior or billionaire’s tool? - The Washington Post:



Howard Fuller: A civil rights warrior or billionaire’s tool?

Howard Fuller — seen here in 1970 at the Malcolm X Liberation University, which he founded — has had many roles in a lifetime of struggling for civil rights and to promote education. He has a new book about his life: “No Struggle, No Progress.” (Perry Aycock/Associated Press)

By Lyndsey Layton September 9 at 2:43 PM  

He’s been called both a respected voice in the African American community and a tool of billionaire conservatives. He’s a onetime labor activist who says teachers unions are blocking poor children from getting a good education. And he’s a civil rights champion who broke with the NAACP over publicly funded vouchers for private schools.

There’s been plenty written about Howard Fuller. Fourteen books mention some aspect of his lengthy career as a civil rights champion, community organizer, educator and school choice proselytizer. But Fuller says no one really understands him.

So at 73, Fuller has penned a memoir — “No Struggle, No Progress” — which was released Tuesday during an afternoon event at the National Press Club.

“Everyone has their own view about me,” Fuller said in an interview Monday. He wrote the book with Lisa Frazier Page, a former Washington Post reporter. “They have it for their little bit that they think they know about me. But I thought it was time for me to tell my story.

“I wrote it in the hope that young people would read what it’s like to engage and struggle over a long period of time,” Fuller said. “I want them to see that there are twists and turns and ups and downs, personal and political, and that conditions change and lead you in different places.”

 Fuller’s struggles began in childhood. Raised by his mother and grandmother in Milwaukee, he grew up in poverty and spent summers with family in the Jim Crow South. After becoming the first black man to graduate from a small Wisconsin college, Fuller worked for the Urban League trying to integrate previously all-white industries. Next stop was North Carolina, where he was a community organizer in some of the country’s poorest black communities.

Frustrated with the slow pace of some of the more mainstream civil rights groups, Fuller got involved in the Black Power and African Liberation Howard Fuller: A civil rights warrior or billionaire’s tool? - The Washington Post: