The year, 2022, marks the 34th anniversary of “School Daze.” It was in 1988 that the film broke boundaries in Hollywood. It opened up sore spots within the Black community, allowing those ‘sores’ to be picked, peeled back, exposed, and healed all at the same damn time. It let mainstream America know that films about predominantly African American colleges and it’s students could in fact pull numbers at the box office. Above all that, “School Daze” was the creation of a then-31-year-old Morehouse graduate, who was fresh off the hills of his ’86 success, “She’s Gotta Have It.”
There are countless memories that I- like many- will forever remember about the film. There was “Dap’s” (Laurence Fishburne) encounter with the older Atlanta natives in that fast food parking lot, when he had to tell the brothas “We’re not nig&as.” Or his ingoing battle with the pretty boy “G-Phi-G” frat leader, “Julian” (Giancarlo Esposito). We can’t forget the classic dark skin/light skin back n’ forth between the culturally aware “Jigaboos” and the sadity “Gamma Ray Wanna-Be’s”- a play on the real world complexion complex that still unfortunately exists today. As the world watch “School Daze” challenge many social issues, behind the scenes Spike had to tackle some of those issues on his own, just to create the film.
Why Morehouse President Kicked Spike & Crew Off Campus
Spike initially chose to shoot “School Daze” at his alma mater, Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA and in the beginning stages of filming, everything was all good…until it wasn’t. Just two weeks after filming began, Spike Lee, along with the entire cast and crew, were kicked off Morehouse’s campus for a very sad, superficial reason, according to Spike.
The president of Morehouse at that time, was Hugh Morris Gloster, a lighter complexioned brotha. Ironically, Gloster kicked them off Morehouse’s grounds, due to the very issue that was being covered in the film- Black on Black bias/colorism. Here’s what Spike revealed in a Feb. 2018 interview with Atlanta Journal Constitution:
Via AJC- Lee recalled a “sad” meeting with [Hugh Morris] Gloster, after he was kicked off campus, to plead his case to stay. “He said to me, ‘I don’t like the guy you cast as the college president (the late, great Joe Seneca). He looks too much like a sambo,’” Lee said. “He said that to my face. When he said that, I said, I know what we were doing was right. Because I had the president of Morehouse telling me the man I cast as the president was too dark-skinned.”
Spike Lee ended up taking his production just across the way from Morehouse, to film at Morris Brown college instead.
To make matters even worse, Spike revealed in a separate interview, that he wasn’t even invited back to Morehouse for the rest of Gloster’s presidency, but then he got sweet revenge:
“As a matter of fact, after this film came out, I wasn’t really invited back to Morehouse for several years. Really until the guy that was president left. But now I’m on the Board of Trustees, so it’s been a long while. But that was really hurtful at the time.”
The Tragedy That Inspired Spike To Create School Daze
In that same interview, Spike also revealed that the one of the reasons he wrote “School Daze” in the first place was because he wanted to shed light on the dangerous hazing that oftentimes goes unnoticed at HBCU’s. Why? Because a fellow Morehouse student’s death raised his level of awareness at that time:
“We show all the ills of these organizations. In fact, after I finished Moorehouse, a brother died pledging Alpha Phi Alpha. That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to get into this fraternity thing, or this sorority thing for that matter. It always amazes me the amount of abuse and punishment people will put up with, just to belong to a group. To any organization. I mean they will fu*k you up.
Wow.
