Massasoit Community College Archive & Special Collections: From the Archive...

Click on the image for the archived newspaper article.

In spring 1976, Angela Davis visited Massasoit Community College as a paid speaker. Her visit was organized by the Continuing Education Student Activity Committee and soon became controversial on campus, not only because of her philosophies, but also about the speaker fee.

 Angela Davis is an American political activist, academic, and author and remains controversial. She emerged as a prominent counterculture activist in the 1960s working with the Communist Party USA, of which she was a member until 1991, and was briefly involved in the Black Panther Party during the Civil Rights Movement.  In 1997 she co-founded Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison–industrial complex and to challenge the idea that incarceration can solve all social problems. In her autobiography, Angela Davis: An Autobiography, first published in 1974, Davis uses the terms “jail” and “prison” as a metaphor for political oppression generally. She also graphically reveals the dehumanizing reality of prison for herself and others, especially for those who because of their race and poverty end up in prison for years after convictions on relatively minor charges. Davis details her own incarceration in New York and California, focusing on the special oppression of women in prison.

For more information about Angela Davis, search Library resources here.

Click on the image above for the archived newspaper article.

Dick Gregory signing his autograph for appreciative Massasoit community members after his presentation.

Dick Gregory (1932-2017) succeeded at many endeavors: as a champion track and field athlete, a pioneering stand-up comic, an author, a businessman, and a human rights activist. He performed primarily to black audiences at segregated clubs until 1961, when he became the first black comedian to successfully cross over to white audiences. Using political satire, his popularity in the 1960s gave him a national forum in which to address poverty, segregation, social injustice and inequality, and the Vietnam War. He appeared on television, released many comedy record albums, and published a number of books, mostly about Black history and social injustice.

In 2000, his doctors diagnosed him with lymphoma, and he fought against his grim cancer prognosis with diet, vitamins, exercise, and what was characterized on his Web site as "modern devices not even known to the public." Miraculously, by 2005, his cancer had largely gone into remission. As he has done throughout his life, Gregory turned his experience with cancer into fodder for his activism: he lectured widely about the importance of diet in combating cancer and promoted alternative approaches to those typically advocated by Western doctors.

The Tuskegee Airmen were the first military aviators of color in the U.S. Army Air Corps (AAC), a precursor of the U.S. Air Force. All Black military pilots who trained in the United States trained at the Tuskegee Army Air Field, and were educated at Tuskegee University, Alabama. They flew more than 15,000 individual sorties in Europe and North Africa during World War II. Their impressive performance earned them more than 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses, and helped encourage the eventual integration of the U.S. armed forces. The group included five Haitians from the Haitian Air Force, and one pilot from Trinidad. It also included a Hispanic or Latino airman born in the Dominican Republic. On 29 March 2007, the Tuskegee Airmen were collectively awarded a Congressional Gold Medal at a ceremony in the U.S. Capitol rotunda. The medal is currently on display at the Smithsonian Institution. The airfield where the airmen trained is now the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site.

In May 2019, Phase I of the ADA
accessibility upgrade ended.
A visit through Archive materials
shows how the quad entrance side
of the Student Center has changed
throughout the years. 

A new ramp is available for accessing the lower courtyard.

2019

The clock’s pedestal is the last
remaining piece of the original
multilevel water feature/fountain.

Facilities is determined to get
the clock working again.

Click on the images for the archived newspaper article.

For more information about Julian Bond, search Library resources here.

Julian Bond's 1997 appearance at Massasoit Community College drew attention across the Brockton community. His presentation was sponsored by Massasoit's Top of the Rainbow Club, advised by Professor Barbara Napoli.

Speaking at Massasoit in April 1997 Julian Bond attacked conservative efforts to dismantle affirmative action.

Horace Julian Bond (1940-2015) was as an American social activist and leader in the Civil Rights Movement, politician, professor, and writer. While a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, he helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and later, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). He was the SPLC’s president from 1971 to 1979. He was elected Board Chairman of the NAACP in 1998.

Bond ran for the United States House of Representatives, but lost to civil rights leader John Lewis. In the 1980s and ‘90s, Bond taught at numerous universities, including American, Drexel, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Virginia.

He also served as a commentator for radio’s Byline and for NBC’s Today Show. He authored the nationally-syndicated newspaper column Viewpoint and in 1987 narrated the critically acclaimed PBS series Eyes on the Prize. He published several books and his poems and articles appeared in magazines and newspapers.

He received 25 honorary degrees.