A new documentary chronicles a year of racial turbulence at Columbus' Linden-McKinley High School at the height of the civil rights era.
The film "Shutdown" recalls the escalating political strife that bubbled up in Linden more than 50 years ago and the ripple effects felt in the surrounding community to this day.
Ohio State professor of African American and African studies Simone Drake grew up in Linden listening to her father, Edward Poindexter, tell stories of what happened when he was a student at Linden-McKinley High School.
In May 1971, a group of Black students organized a march from the school all the way to Franklin Park to commemorate the birthday of slain civil rights leader Malcolm X.
“I was familiar enough with the civil rights movement for it to be kind of cool. Like, ‘Oh, like in Columbus, people were marching,’ but I didn't really know what the march was about,” Drake said.
It was only after her father took a screenwriting class - just for fun, she said - Drake learned there was much more to the story. She enlisted her father's screenwriting teacher, Celia Peters, to direct a film documenting the fraught tensions that enveloped her father's school.
In the early 70s, Drake said, Linden's demographics were shifting from predominantly white to predominantly Black. At schools across the country, Black students were becoming emboldened to demand schools do a better job of teaching African American history and culture.
“There were lots of schools with students walking out or students walking into auditoriums and demanding that the administration come listen to their demands or students getting suspended,” she said.
Al Young, a member of the Linden-McKinley 1971 graduating class, recalls confronting a teacher who refused to call him by his name.
“Well I said ‘Sir, I call you by your name.’ He said, ‘You will be a boy to the day I die.’ And I'm like, 'Well, I'll stop calling you by your name.' 'You'll go to the principal's office too, and I'll get your ass suspended.' I'm like, 'Well, I just want respect. I've been respecting you this whole year,'" Young said.
Much of the friction, Drake said, focused on the observance of Black History Week, which would not become a month-long celebration until years later.
Linden-McKinley High School had prepared a Black History Week assembly in the school auditorium. All of a sudden, sheets of racist propaganda came raining down from above the stage. Among the people witnessing this was class vice president and future superintendent of Columbus City Schools, Gene Harris.
“The papers are basically saying that white students were being mistreated and that the Black kids were coming in and having more privileges than the white students were,” Harris said.
Drake said things came to a head later that year when Black students demanded the red, green and black banner of the Black Nationalist flag be flown at the school.
“There were white students complaining about the Black this Black Nationalist flag. You had the superintendent, Harold Eibling, telling everyone that there would be only one flag and it was the U.S. flag,” Drake said.
Newspapers at the time wrote that the situation there at Linden-McKinley High School exploded into vandalism and violence, which resulted in police raiding the school.
“Students were beaten and teachers were beaten and the janitor was arrested for protecting students,” Drake said.
After the police raid, the school was shut down. Administrators struggled to resume instruction. It was late May, and there was some question about what to do about graduating seniors and their final exams.
“There was talk about us having to come back to school in the fall. And for those of us who had plans either to go to the service or, you know, or to go to college or whatever those plans were, that was terrifying,” Harris said.
Looking back on her turbulent senior year, Harris believes what happened at Linden-McKinley High School in 1971 destabilized the community.
“More people that owned homes moved out - and that was both Black and white of the community. And I think that it was largely a result of what had happened there,” she said. “I think that the Linden community has suffered since that time. I think it's never recovered.”
"Shutdown" premieres Saturday at 2:30 p.m. at the Main Columbus Library, located at 96 Grant Avenue.
