- Only an idiot would think that what happens to a young person before they get to a school building has no bearing on what's gonna happen once they get into that building, because kids who are hungry can't learn, kids who have experienced violence every day, they're not gonna be able to come in and concentrate on math.

(bus humming) (faint speaking) I'm on a rescue mission.

I'm trying to rescue as many children as I can, to try to make their lives better.

(upbeat guitar music) The poor black and brown children, they are not a priority for the political structure in this country writ large, and we ought to quit lying about that, and so, all of this stuff about how important our kids are to us, that's all bull.

(indistinct) ♪ I'm getting real (upbeat guitar music) (upbeat guitar music continues) ♪ I'm getting real - [Cory] And you go across the country, literally from California to New York and D.C., and this guy is a rockstar.

- Every generation must discover its mission and either fulfill it or betray it, and I feel like I have this mission to try to create better educational opportunities for young people.

- [Lisa] His passion, his dedication, his energy.

- [Michelle] He's a visionary, he's a revolutionist for sure.

(upbeat guitar music) - What I can do every day is I can fight to try to change the trajectory of as many kids' lives as I can.

I'm real happy, I'm real excited... - [Cory] He's made it his life work to be a very vocal, loud advocate on their behalf.

♪ I'm getting real - [Kenny] And no one has fought harder and longer than Howard Fuller.

You know, there's a lot of families like mine who should thank Dr.

Howard Fuller every single day.

(upbeat guitar music) ♪ I'm getting real (upbeat guitar music) (singer vocalizing) - [Narrator] Major funding was provided by Greater Milwaukee Foundation.

(upbeat hip-hop music) Northwestern Mutual Foundation.

(upbeat hip-hop music) And by... (upbeat hip-hop music) Additional funding provided by... (upbeat hip-hop music) (upbeat hip-hop music) - [Kenny] There's cities all over our nation that can be described as rough environments.

(upbeat hip-hop music) - [Kenny] The barbershop... You know, the barbershop, that's an honest talk about what we face.

That's where those conversations happen about what's really going on in communities.

- No, they giving out college credits now for real.

- It's equivalent, that's what they do, the Math 102 or something like that, it was a number... (indistinct) Now, have the boys took the ACT test yet?

- So, like, a lot of what those guys see in us is, like, another chance for them to instill in us what they wanted to do when they were younger, but they may not have known, so they wanna see us thrive in this opportunity we have.

- The only thing that's gonna help you with your child's education is you being a part of it.

- A lot of black inventors, a lot of black scientists, a lot of black... That we don't know that helped America get built all these year, a whole lot of people that we hear their name, but... - Right, don't get credit for it.

- But we don't really know what they does.

- Even Dr.

Howard Fuller, man, first time I heard his name, I really... - I swear to God, if they get... (indistinct) - Didn't have a full idea of what he actually did.

(upbeat hip-hop music) (gentle piano music) - He grew up with his mother and his grandmother, and these women were everything to him, they were his world, strong, independent women who pushed him.

- [Howard] Both my mother and my grandmother were very focused on education, on trying to make sure that I got the best education possible.

Everything that I am today, honestly, it's the foundation that those two black women set for my life.

(gentle piano music) - Howard was born in 1941 in Shreveport, Louisiana.

More black people were lynched in North Louisiana than perhaps any place in the country, and yet, Howard learned from his grandmother how to be fearless.

(gentle percussive music) - We were sitting on the back steps, and the cops came up and said that a robber was in our house.

My mother said, "That's not true," and they told my mother to move and she didn't, so this cop kicked my mother, and my grandmother came home, got her gun, and went to the police station looking for the cop that kicked her daughter, so I always tell people that's the blood that's running in my veins, right?

(laughs) (gentle piano music) - [Lisa] His mother and stepfather decided to go to Milwaukee to take care of a sick relative, and they liked it.

- When I was in the ninth grade, I was the last dude on the bench, but I was determined to get better, so that summer, I was on... (indistinct) Park playground just relentlessly, and then, at the end of my sophomore year, they moved me up to varsity.

- [Lisa] That says something about Howard because he always wants to be better, so he kept working on himself and working on himself, and eventually became a star basketball player at North Division High School.

(relaxed funk music) - I had decided to go to Carroll College.

My mother dropped me off and I was like, "Wow."

And so, what I had to do was I had to figure out how to negotiate that world.

When I got out there, there wasn't a black person nowhere, I mean, people would say, oh, they didn't understand why I talked the way I talked, "Why did you have a...?"

(indistinct) There was all these different things, right?

- [Lisa] He was the only black student at the entire college.

- Being the only one in an institution, being the only one in the room at a particular time, and you could either fight that or you could embrace it and say, "You know, the fact that I'm on the..." "I'm gonna get to know everybody in this room."

- [Lisa] He not only survived, he thrived at Carroll College, ultimately becoming student body president, and that was a title he held at every school that he attended, from high school to Carroll College to graduate school.

(gentle piano music) Howard graduated from Carroll in 1962 and decided to go on to graduate school.

- I chose Case Western Reserve, back then, they had two forms of social work initially, case work and group work.

In my mind, case work and group work help you manage oppression.

I wanted to figure out how to end oppression.

(bright guitar music) - [Lisa] So Howard is at Case Western Reserve University and he sees, you know, the movement happening all across the country, students sit-ins, the Freedom Riders, and he wanted to find his place in the movement.

- And so, what happened is the Great Society Program, Lyndon Johnson... - It is our task to carry forward nothing less than the full assimilation of more than 20 million Negroes into American life.

- They passed the Economic Opportunity Act that created community action programs all around the country, and those community action programs ostensibly was supposed to fight poverty.

(somber electronic music) - And he went to this protest and things just went awry.

The police were called in, he was beaten along with other protestors, dragged down the stairs, and it left him very, very angry that people were just exercising their right and the police would treat them that way.

After that, he participated in another protest and even saw a demonstrator killed, Bruce Klunder, they were protesting, a guy driving a bulldozer backed right over one of the protestors, and all of this just left him angry.

- You and I need something right now that's going to benefit all of us, that's going to change the community in which we live.

- 1964, I was in Corey Methodist Church when Malcolm X delivered the "ballot or the bullet" speech.

- You don't need a debate, you don't need a filibuster, you need some action.

- I was in that church, I heard Malcolm X deliver that speech.

- So what you and I have got to do is get involved.

You and I have to be right there breathing down their throat.

Every time they look over their shoulder, we want them to see us, we want to make them... (people applauding) We wanna make them pass the strongest civil rights bill they've ever passed.

It's going to be the ballot or the bullet.

- That speech changed my entire life, and it's one of the reasons why even today, when I'm speaking, I try to really understand that you never know who's gonna be listening to you and you never know what impact your words may have on their life, because I know what happened to me.

(upbeat funk music) - [Lisa] So Howard went to North Carolina in 1965 to work for an organization called Operation Breakthrough, and this appealed to him because he liked the idea of going into communities and organizing black people to help themselves.

- There's a movie that was done called "Best of Enemies..." - Miss Atwater?

- Uncomfortable housing and unaffordable rent are about the only two things Abe Greenfeld has ever given us.

(people exclaiming in agreement) - [Howard] And it's based on Ann Atwater.

- I have here with me 79 written complaints from the residents of Edgemont.

- I'm the one who trained Ann Atwater as an organizer, and I first met Ann just by knocking on her door, 'cause I was going around knocking on doors trying to, you know, create these neighborhood groups, then you always get around to the question, "What's your greatest problem?"

You know, "What do you wanna change?"

And she said, you know, "Look at this house."

- He looked at my house and he asked me, did I have any problems?

Asked me, was the landlord treating me right?

Fixing up the house?

And I... That's when I showed him the bathroom and he said, "Do you owe any rent or anything?"

I said, "Yeah, I'm behind 100 dollars in my rent," and he said, "Well, we help you pay that rent," He said, "Now, I can tell you how to get this fixed if you come to the meeting tonight," Howard Fuller was the reason for my eyes coming open and I think that after that, my eyes got wide open and I never closed 'em.

- He was one of the most hated black men in North Carolina, you know, for some of the things that he did, but he was fearless in the way that he demanded respect and demanded change for the people who live there.

- Negro activist Howard Fuller was arrested at Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina as eight Negro students positioned themselves on the roof of a building to dramatize their demands.

- [Lisa] He's, you know, wearing his dashiki, he has a big 'fro, and he's angry and he's talking about racism.

- White folks control our minds.

Lot of y'all gonna say, "Don't no white folks control my minds," really?

Whole lot of us are still saying that black is beautiful, but we need white folks.

Whole lot of y'all still saying black is beautiful because we still trying to convince ourselves that it is beautiful, because the man has told us that we ain't what's happening.

- And as Howard tends to do, he gets into trouble.

He gets into good trouble by trying to do something that the institution is not ready to do.

- So we had this huge meeting.

They invited me up there to be one of the speakers, and it was that speech that catapulted me to being public enemy number one in North Carolina, so I said, "Look, when we come to a fight for our rights, it's like white people bring a baseball bat and we bring a twig."

Let me show you an example, if I got a baseball bat and you got one of them little skinny sticks, I'm gonna beat you to death.

You can... I'm gonna beat... We can start out, the referee can say, "Go," but I'm gonna beat you to death if I got a baseball bat and you got a little stick, and that's what our society's all about, we got to get a baseball bat in our hands to fight the baseball bat that they got in their hands.

And so, of course, that got interpreted in newspapers all over the state, "Fuller urges black people to pick up baseball bats," right?

And so, the whole thing got misinterpreted.

And then, they keep telling me, "For goodness' sake, don't none of you Negroes mention anything about black power, don't mention black power," well, I'm gonna talk about it.

- [Newscaster] Earlier in the week, a delegation of demonstrators converged on City Hall demanding better housing and living conditions and threatening to turn the city into another Watts, Newark or Vietnam if their demands aren't met.

The National Guard troops ordered into Durham today by North Carolina Governor Daniel Moore.

- Howard Fuller and Ben Ruffin, both are trying to hold the crowd back and I believe they are succeeding.

(upbeat guitar music) ♪ Power to the people ♪ Black, black power to the Africa people ♪ - [Lisa] Students were demanding to be heard.

They wanted the creation of a real black studies program.

- They said, "We need to create our own school, we need to create an independent black university," that was the beginning of organizing and creating Malcolm X Liberation University.

The opening of Malcolm X Liberation University, an event which I consider to be one of the most important events that has taken place in our struggle.

But we didn't have what I would call an ideological perspective, it was just that we need an independent black school.

Our thing is only important when it is really our thing, meaning that it is all the black people's thing.

The school moved to have a Pan-Africanist philosophy, and the goal was, you know, we are an African people no matter where we are in the world and that Africa was the homeland of those of us who were African people living in the United States.

We are still operating out of a... (indistinct) Complex from our brothers on the continent.

We claim to be Africans, yet many of us are scared to talk about Africa.

We claim to be Africans, but yet, we still think that Africa is a land inhabited by some long tall cracker called... (indistinct) (gentle percussive music) So I was invited to come to Tanzania to give a speech on black education.

(gentle percussive music) They asked me if I wanted to go into the liberated territories and see what was actually going on.

(gentle percussive music) - Africa was the ideal, and then, for him to go to Africa and see black people were oppressed there too, and the leadership was black, and that left a huge impression on him and helped him to start to think more in terms of class, that maybe some of the issues were more class-focused than race.

That's what led to the Marxism experience.

- Well, first of all, the reason why I started studying Marxism was when you go to Africa and you see that black people are oppressing black people, a racial analysis of oppression does not suffice, and the only other analysis of what was going on in the world was Marx, I had to begin to understand class, and the only way to understand class, at least in my mind, was to study Marx and Lenin.

It helped me frame the problem that poor black people are having in this country and in the world.

When I got back to Malcolm X, a debate ensued.

That debate led to us deciding that it didn't make sense to continue Malcolm X Liberation University, and it just got to the point, honestly, like, where one night, I just decided to load up my Toyota and drive back to Milwaukee.

(gentle piano music) - Howard came back to Milwaukee a broken man, and like many of us, we go back to what we know, to the place where we felt loved, and I think that Milwaukee in some ways was that place.

- For 11 months, I sold insurance, and so, I was one of the top sellers in the region, right?

But I didn't care 'cause I decided to quit.

- He started organizing again, he pulled people together to protest.

- So my name is Howard Fuller.

We believe that the plan is blatantly racist and it shows a complete lack of concern not only for the needs of black students, but also for the needs and interest of the entire black community.

If we say, "No," then enough is enough.

(audience cheering) - People were glad to have someone step forward, they were glad to have someone who was willing to take a lead on these issues, and in some ways, didn't really care to play the status quo.

- [Newscaster] Police officer Thomas Eliopol and George Kalt could be charged with homicide by reckless conduct in the death of Ernest Lacy.

Last July, the 22-year-old Lacy was arrested for a rape police later found out he did not commit, but Lacy died while in police custody.

- And Howard did what Howard does.

- I'm here today representing the Coalition for Justice for Ernie Lacy.

(gentle piano music) - There was an all-out police call and three cops stopped Ernest Lacy, and in the process of arresting him, although he was innocent, had nothing to do with it, Ernest Lacy ended up dying in custody.

- [People] Right now!

Right now!

- He knew that the community saw that there was an injustice that needed to be righted, and he wanted to be part of calling and moving for there to be change so there would never be another Earnest Lacy.

- He became the voice of this movement, which feels very similar to what many of us experienced and felt during the George Floyd murder.

- [Howard] We formed a Coalition for Justice for Ernest Lacy, and our goal was to have those three cops charged with murder.

- [Newscaster] Coalition spokesman Howard Fuller delivered an emotional speech that brought the crowd to a standing ovation several times, capping it with two demands and a plan for action.

- We have decided that Ernie can't make it to the DA's office tomorrow, but we can make it there for him.

There are some of us who are going to remain in this office around the clock until he makes a decision, so that's where we are.

(gentle piano music) Ultimately, the Lacy family had a settlement with the city of Milwaukee in an unfair death situation at the hands of the police, but I never felt that Ernest Lacy got any form of justice.

I believe the justice system does work, but it doesn't always work.

My view was that in many instances, when it came to poor black people, it didn't work.

(gentle piano music) (gentle percussive music) Electoral politics is one instrument for change.

I organized a group called the Black Political Network, and our goal was to figure out how to do electoral politics, so I decided to support Tony Earl.

(laughs) Tony ultimately won the primary, and then, ultimately, he became governor, and then, when Tony made me the Secretary of Employment relations, he changed the trajectory of my entire life, period, period, because it put me in rooms I never would've been in, it gave me a level of, quote, "legitimacy" that I never would've gotten, I learned how state government operated, which has been very important to other things that have happened to me in my life.

(upbeat percussive music) When I was trying to get the approval of the Senate, one of 'em asked me, you know, "Were you a Marxist?"

And I'm stupid, so I said, "Yeah, but I was also a Boy Scout, so I'm neither one of them at this moment in time."

(laughs) - If you would raise your right hand and repeat after me, "I, Howard L. Fuller..." - I, Howard L. Fuller... - "Having been appointed..." - Having been appointed... - "To the office of superintendent for the Milwaukee public schools..." - To the office of superintendent for Milwaukee public schools... - I think there was a lot of hope attached to him coming in 'cause he was such a breath of fresh air, he was just so different than what they'd had, and he was so determined to change.

- I realize that for all of us, this is a... Really a nice period, and, you know, I haven't made the first wrong decision yet, so, you know, everybody still likes me and stuff.

- To have somebody come in with fresh ideas and enthusiasm, and who had the support of so many sectors of the community, it was very exciting, but below the surface, where the district administration and the board were, there was a lot of nervousness, and I think for some people, there was resentment.

- I think it was really controversial at the time because Howard was not trained as a school superintendent and had not really spent time teaching in classroom.

- Oh, I just thought it'd be a interesting way to start school, you know, this year, no other reason than that, so I made a few new friends.

(laughs) - I went along with him for a school visit, and it was a small elementary school, the kids were cute, the visit was very nice, everything was, you know, looking okay, but we got in his minivan as we were leaving and he was obviously kind of troubled, and I said, "So what do you think?"

And he said, "What happens between when these kids are so cute, and when they're five, and six, and seven years old, and how they turn out as teens?"

And so many of them were not gonna turn out well, that was just... The data all said that, and I said, "My sense of you is that you're sitting there thinking, 'I may not know what to do, but do something.'"

I said, like, "Put the desks on the ceiling," he said, "Yeah, yeah, do something, and if it doesn't work, then move on," and so, I think that's been true for the years that I've known him.

- Howard went in and removed three principals who just weren't doing the job.

You can't have a building where there are fights that are recurring, where a principal is sitting in her office literally filing her nails while there's chaos in the corridor.

You have to do those things, but it set up almost immediately a sense of distrust by principals.

- Howard said, "Let's change the offerings, let's change the curriculum, let's change the hours, let's move things around," and the union said, "Oh, the contract doesn't allow that."

- Powerful forces conspire to protect careers, contracts, and current practices before tending to the interests of all of our children.

You see what could be done, you know, you have, like, a vision of what this could be like, but you're not able to realize that vision, and so, that is really my greatest frustration.

- Having worked for seven superintendents in the time that I was an NPS, there were probably one or two who had really good relationships with the union, the rest did not.

Howard's was probably the most volatile of all of them because, again, they couldn't see everything else that he wanted to do in large part because he had been one of the early supporters and architects of school choice.

- And then, I think he got into controversy with some of the school board members that were not interested in pursuing the market approach, the free market approach, and were more interested in pursuing reform from within.

- And so, that's where I really think he thought, "I've worked inside the system, I know it's not gonna change, it's time to step out and do something different."

- I have regretfully concluded that I can no longer pursue my goals and mission as a superintendent of the Milwaukee public schools.

You know, I went in there thinking that I could significantly change that system.

I didn't.

The fact of the matter is I did fail because the level of change that I thought that I could get done for kids, I didn't get it done, and it was a very humbling experience.

(gentle piano music) - So he wanted to keep going, so Marquette offered him this... Basically what I've sometimes referred semi-seriously to as the "Howard Fuller chair of being Howard Fuller," that he had a lot of freedom to do what he wanted.

- I'll be a distinguished professor in the school of education and also the director of a new institute that I'll be forming called the Institute for the Transformation of Learning, and what we really intend to do is to make the institute a national think tank, discussion place, advocacy for a lot of kinds of issues that I've been talking about related to school reform.

- I suppose in some respects, you could look at his tenure as superintendent and call it a failure, but in most of our lives, it's our failures that give us our successes, and what he learned from losing as superintendent, we gained in terms of a passion for making sure that all kids had options, and I think that experience really moved Howard into the forefront of parent choice.

(upbeat guitar music) (bright piano music) (school bell ringing) - The story of parent choice in Milwaukee, in Wisconsin, and later on in the nation is an interesting story, and the person who needs to get the lion's share of the credit for this happening was Annette Polly Williams.

(bright piano music) Polly and a lot of others came up with the idea of vouchers.

All I saw was we couldn't get the system to change, why don't we come up with a way for people to leave and for us to be able to create our own schools?

And that was really the driving force behind what became the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.

- One of the most controversial forms of educational reform, school vouchers, getting a lot of attention.

- The issue is being put to the test right now in Milwaukee, a city where the public schools do just about as bad a job of educating kids as any place else in America, and who is behind the Milwaukee Choice plan?

Polly Williams, a Wisconsin state legislator.

- This parental choice program was a program that was needed for children that right now, needs were not being addressed in the public schools.

- And the theory of it was that if you look around America, choice has never been the issue, the question is, "Who has it?"

Because people with money always have choice, because schools don't work for their kids, they can move to communities where they do work, they can put their children in private schools or they can get the most expensive tutoring on the planet the people who don't have that ability are low-income and working-class people, so our effort was to give low-income and working-class people in the city of Milwaukee the option to choose another school for their children.

- The union's notion of the reform is that it would be reformed from within, focused on public schools.

- And what Howard brought is a recognition that in order, sometimes, to really make change in the system, you have to make radical change outside the system, it's the only way it's gonna happen.

(upbeat string music) - It took a Democratic legislature and a Republican governor to create the first voucher program in the United States that allowed people to use the voucher at elementary and secondary to go to a private school.

- [Newscaster] Urban Day is the largest of six private elementary schools that are taking part in Milwaukee's choice plan.

It has a virtually all-black student body where three-quarters of the kids' parents pay their own tuition and where one of four youngsters is a choice student, their tuition paid for by the state.

- The leaders of the movement were adamantly opposed to regulation and any control from above, particularly the State Department of Public Instruction, and felt strongly that parental choice would drive quality, this was the purest version of Milton Friedman thinking.

- What we need to do is to enable parents, by vouchers or other means, to have more say about the school which their child goes to, a public school or a private school, whichever meets the need of the child best.

Market competition is the surest way to improve the quality and promote innovation in education as in every other field.

- That if you gave parents pretty much unfettered choice, that they would choose well.

That didn't happen.

- In the early days of the voucher program here, it was the Wild West, you had principals taking money and buying luxury cars, and not buying books for their classroom because there wasn't any oversight.

- I think he came to understand that there was a need to have some guardrails, some oversight, some regulation, and to not have a completely free-market system because it allowed bad schools to start, even worse, it allowed bad actors to get into private education as profiteers not serving those families.

- And he began to move much more towards saying, "We have to have some quality control."

You had to stop bad schools from ever opening.

- When you looked at test scores, especially when the choice schools came into the public testing pool for the state tests, everybody wasn't doing very well, and I remember an editor saying, "It..." "Who are we gonna call with some...?"

"Who can give us some outrage?"

And I was like, "Howard Fuller can give us some outrage," and I called him and Howard said, "This is an outrage!"

(laughs) He said, "We need more accountability," and so, it was really telling that Howard was such a strong advocate who said, "We need more accountability and some of these schools need to go," that is not something that you hear very often from voucher advocates.

(gentle piano music) - I think this school choice movement has provided some opportunities for some students who would not have had them before, but as a whole, I don't think it's accomplished a lot academically for students, I don't think it's done appreciably well or better at all than public schools have done.

- There was some data that indicates more kids graduate, more kids go on to college and do well, kids who went through voucher programs, overall test scores to this day for Milwaukee kids and for voucher kids statewide in Wisconsin are somewhat better most of the time than for public schools, but not by a very big margin, so if in Milwaukee public schools, 17% or 18% of kids are rated as proficient in reading, and in the voucher schools, it's even, say, 22% or 23%, these are the kinda statistics that, among other things, drive Howard Fuller crazy 'cause he wanted it to be better, he still wants it to be better, and he's still trying.

(gentle piano music) - I've always believed that the idea of public education was to educate the public, and in trying to educate the public, you can create different types of systems that will try to make good on that promise, and so, when people say, for example, I'm opposed... Or I'm an opponent of public education or I want to destroy public education, no, actually, I don't, I support public education, I just believe there can be different delivery systems, and since none of these delivery systems were created by God, we could actually change them.

- None of these delivery systems have a right or entitlement to any funding at any amount, the kids own those funds and the funds ought to travel them to wherever they are.

- And I think the voucher program and choice programs have allowed parents to enter into an environment where they feel safe and connected.

The voucher program in Milwaukee has kept alive many Catholic schools that would otherwise have closed, Catholic schools are very popular with Latino families, and so, I do think it's important to acknowledge that the choice program has delivered on some parent desires, and maybe happiness, or joy, or connectivity, community connectedness.

- And for these usually black and brown single moms, especially African-American single moms, to be able to the agency to say, "I wanna go do something else," that choice in itself is huge in terms of power, control, and agency, so that's a huge win.

- [Newscaster] Governor Walker is on a statewide tour pushing initiatives he plans to unveil in his budget later this week, including an expansion of the controversial school voucher program.

- For those families whose sons or daughters are in line to go to a school that's failing to meet expectations, we believe they should be given a viable alternative.

- I predicted, and I wasn't alone, that it's a program that would have income limits raised, that over time would become a universal program if Republicans, conservative think tanks, conservative foundations had their way, and would end up subsidizing the private school choices of affluent parents.

- Yeah, that's disappointing, as a matter of policy, I do not support that.

This program started and was built on the backs of poor black kids.

- And I've never been a supporter of universal vouchers, I was a supporter of vouchers for low-income and working-class people, I don't think those of us who already got money should get more money, and I do believe that if you don't have a focus on poor people, that the instruments that get created are not gonna function in a way that meets their interests first.

- And they say, "Politics make strange bedfellows," and Howard has had some strange bedfellows all because he was so singularly focused on education.

- Every public policy in a democracy is made through compromise, and so, what that meant then was that at a certain point in time, our interest converged with their interests, but it could never be permanent 'cause we're coming at it from two different worldviews, when people would tell me, "Oh, you've been bamboozled," I was like, "No, man, I understood that this was gonna happen right from the beginning," and so, I was never bamboozled.

- I'm here to introduce to you today Dr.

Howard Fuller, who is the president of that alliance, Dr.

Fuller.

(audience applauding) - Good afternoon.

(audience applauding) This is a wonderful and glorious day, and I'm so happy to see all of you here this afternoon to share this launch of the Black Alliance for Educational Options.

I was out in D.C., and we were trying to get a voucher... A national voucher bill passed, or a natural... National parent choice bill passed, so they asked me to go meet with the Republican Lunch group, but the real thing was Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms were both in that room, right?

And I'm sitting there, like, gripping the table 'cause I wanna leap over and choke these dudes, right?

(indistinct) "Howard, you're up here to try to get some votes, calm down, just do what you gotta do and get out of here."

- I think the Milwaukee school choice experiment was closely followed for a long, long time, it also served as a model over time for advocates around the country to say, "How could we do that here?"

- And you go across the country, literally from California to New York and D.C., and this guy is a rockstar.

- Howard was absolutely a national figure, and probably, he became the most well-known African-American voice pushing for parent choice, and part of the reason for that is because that issue often is aligned with conservatives.

- Howard's never been very ideological.

He's never been very political in any partisan sense.

He's always been glad to get support from whoever was willing to give him support, so if George W. Bush was interested in having a relationship with him, that's great.

(gentle piano music) - We had this half-hour meeting scheduled with George Bush.

Usually, you don't have a chance to say anything, you just sit there and nod, and act like what they said made sense, so what was really different about him was he said, "Look, I don't know anything about education, can you, you know, talk to me?"

We ended up... The meeting ended up lasting an hour-and-a-half, right?

'Cause he actually listened, he was asking questions, so he said, "I want you to come to Washington with me," so then, all of my so-called progressive friends, you know, like, they were on my case, you know, "You've been meeting with Bush," you know, "You've been..." Like, "You're in bed with the devil," and so, what I said was, "Hey, man, like, I'm sitting alongside of the bed, but I didn't get under the sheets, so..." (laughs) - And one of the things that's always struck me about Howard is that when he has something to say, he will say it to any audience and he says it the same way, even if it's an audience he knows isn't gonna like it at all.

- And this really angers me, and I'm gonna just get it out, I'm accused... Like, a headline in the Washington Post the other day after my book was, "Is he a warrior or a tool of billionaires?"

John Walton was one of the finest human beings I've ever met in my life, I mean, he just happened to be one of the richest people in the world, right?

All of us make the mistake of broadly configuring human beings because of their money, because of whatever it is, right?

And then, we think that all of those people who have money, they all have the same reason for why they do things, and that's absolutely and totally false.

Why do you all think John Walton had to give a single dime to try to make sure that a poor kid got educated in America?

Think of all the rich people in this country who don't care one iota about what happens to poor kids.

When I was superintendent of the Milwaukee public schools, if I went out and got a grant from a major corporation in this city, all I heard was applause, tell me how you can get corporate money for that but if I get corporate money to help some kids up on 29th and Capital, I'm a tool of the billionaires.

It was trying to figure out different ways for public education to work for more people, and for me, giving low-income and working-class parents control over money, that was crucial because at the end of the day, people say this is about public education, blah, blah, blah, but what it really about is who controls limited resources.

(gentle piano music) (gentle piano music) - I didn't realize it was happening yesterday, your mama told me when I was wrapping up.

- Education has always been a big thing for us.

- They started in public schools.

There's just things that are being done in a traditional cookie-cutter sense that aren't working, so we started to inquire about what other school options our kids would have.

(gentle piano music) With our sons, we wanted to make a choice to do something different, and Howard Fuller presents the perfect landscape and opportunity to be that change.

(gentle funk music) - [Kenny] Every morning, me and the boys, we get up, head out, we make a drive across town through traffic just to get to Howard Fuller Collegiate Academy, but every day, it's worth.

(car humming) (gentle funk music) - You pull up and you see this building.

(gentle funk music) When you walk in, it was completely different.

Like, they just literally make it feel amazing, right?

It's a good feeling for me.

- [Howard] And a part of understanding history is what was this...?

What was going on before I got here?

- How ambitious this man's goals were, and to then see him able to walk the halls of that dream fulfilled, this is a man that radically wanted to challenge a construct that he was constantly told couldn't be changed.

(gentle piano music) - In 2020, we really made a big, bold decision to build a new high school, a new building.

- [Howard] The goal of our school is to save their lives, the goal of our school is to change the trajectory of their lives.

- He said, "You've got the world as I wish it were and you got the world as it really is."

He's still trying to move the world towards what he wish it were.

- Good morning, good morning, good morning.

Don't be late.

Don't be late.

- Be great.

- Don't be late, be great.

- Our mission is to nurture scholars who are capable of transforming their world by going into and through college.

That's our mission.

- I would go around, if you're working on the power board, I'll put my initials on the top of the power board... - Oh, he means everything to the school, we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for Dr.

Fuller.

To our kids, he's just Dr.

Fuller, they see him walking around these halls, right?

- [Howard] The first thing that we have to do is to make sure that when the kids come into this building, they feel loved.

- And he teaches us to love them, 'cause I believe he starts with love because then, that's how we're better able to help them.

- And so, I think that fills them with a sense of pride to have their school founder, their school leader, still accessible.

(gentle piano music) - And he stands at that door and he greets every one of those kids usually by name, and he has relationships with them.

- I don't know how he does it, I'm gonna be honest, like, it's even peers that I have classes with where I'm like, I just found out their name a couple weeks ago and he's known 'em from before day one.

To me, Dr.

Fuller is, like, a hero kind of, just seeing him, and, like, what he's done and what he's still doing, he's a idol to me, like, we all kind of see him as a figure to look up to.

(gentle piano music) - These kids are coming from families, and from circumstances, and from ZIP codes that have challenges beyond what we could imagine.

- And I remember going to the home of one of the young people who didn't graduate, she was 16 years old, still in the ninth grade and had two or three babies by different dudes, and I remember sitting there talking with her... Her and her mother, and I was the only one who thought that that was a problem.

- He told me, he said he had two of his best students who had started to falter and were having some bad days, and so, he called them in, each of them and said, "What's going on?"

Well, one of 'em had been walking home from school, like, the week before and saw two people get shot, he said, "How are you supposed to come to school and act like, 'I'm here to learn math and reading,' when these things are going on in your lives?"

- You're gonna have kids who do things you wish they wouldn't do.

You're gonna have kids who are off in this stuff and what you're actually dealing with is not actually the problem.

There's something else going on, right?

And to me, that's where the love part comes in because you have to love these kids even when they're not lovable.

- [Cory] And, you know, as challenging as their circumstances are, you can't look in the eyes of any of those kids and not feel a moral obligation to do more.

(gentle percussive music) - And there's all kinds of different definitions about what constitutes a great school.

I'm always looking to see how are the kids doing?

You know, are they smiling?

Are they focused on learning?

Do we have an environment that encourages learning?

Do we have people with them who really care deeply about them?

- I enjoy the school because they have structure so it's not too chaotic, you know?

Like, the uniforms, I'm not... Like, at first, when I first came here, I was like, "Dang, a uniform?"

But then, my dad was telling me, you know, it could... It's preparing you for the future, like, so you could be disciplined and structured in the future, so I'm like, "Okay, I understand."

- [Computer] Blue line and route 30, Howard Fuller, route two.

- There are naysayers in the community who may be wondering whether it's a high-performing school.

What does that mean?

"High-performing."

When you're saving kids' lives, I mean, literally saving their lives, they come to you reading at a fourth-grade level, and now, they're able to go to college.

- 96% of our students come from economically-disadvantaged backgrounds.

Many of our students, albeit they may not classify themselves as homeless, they are moving from one household to the next household and not a stable... Our students face day-to-day trauma around basic needs, food, shelter and care.

A couple years ago, we did a study, and disproportionately, a number of our students, you know, wanted to either go in cosmetology, or barbershop, or hospitality, while those are earnest ways to earn a living, in order to change that economic gap and disparity, we need more of our kids pursuing careers that they may not have heard of from architecture to data scientists.

- So how many applications do we have done for schools that we are realistically considering going to?

Show me that on your hand.

- One of our, you know, big successes that we continue to be incredibly proud of is that all of our graduating seniors get admitted to college.

- That's great, but our outcomes, our attainment, math, reading, we're not where we need to be, I want us to be an excellent school that is at the top of the heap in terms of the quality that we provide our kids.

- How many people have an acceptance... A college acceptance already?

All right.

So I teach a class called Senior Seminar, which is at the heart of our mission, so a class for our 12th-graders, in addition to researching and applying to college, we talk about all things college.

- And so, if you get an acceptance... - [Kwame] So then, you see the light bulb go on and they start to think differently about, "Oh, okay, that's something I can do, I didn't think I could do that before, but that's something I can do."

(gentle piano music) - He feels still alone.

He is beloved among so many people, but sometimes, I sense still just a somberness in him, you know, like there's a piece of him that still feels just by himself.

(gentle orchestral music) - I don't think you can go at stuff the way that I do and you don't pay a personal price, because there's only so much of you that you have to give.

- He's always that caring person.

He definitely can be rough around the edges.

(laughs) - He was the leading edge of trying to do something, and it's been so hard to do it.

(inspirational orchestral music) - Howard, I think, is a role model for someone who shows that you can continue to push, and push, and push, and eventually, you do get some change.

I think that's the legacy he gives, you see something that's wrong and you stand up, and you talk about it, and you do something for it until you see some change.

(inspirational orchestral music) - You have to fight for change, even if you don't think victory is possible, because not to fight for change is to co-sign on the injustice, and I've always believed that no matter what we get, it ain't never gonna be enough.

No matter what kind of programs you set up for poor people, there's always gonna be people trying to change it, so rather than being frustrated, I'm just more, "Okay, what do we gotta do?"

(inspirational orchestral music) - [Narrator] Major funding was provided by Greater Milwaukee Foundation.

(upbeat hip-hop music) Northwestern Mutual Foundation.

(upbeat hip-hop music) And by... (upbeat hip-hop music)