Samuel L. Jackson has played the role of a hostage negotiator and victim on screen—but did you know he once took hostages in real life? And not just anyone—one of them was Martin Luther King Sr.! But why would a young Jackson take such a bold step? Here’s what went down.
In 1969, Jackson and his fellow Morehouse students had clear demands: greater community involvement, a Black voting majority on the board of trustees, and a stronger academic focus on Black studies. Determined to be heard, they staged a bold protest—locking themselves inside a campus building along with trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr.
Their 29-hour standoff forced a negotiation, but Jackson’s activism got him expelled. That summer, the FBI warned his mother that he’d be dead within a year if he didn’t leave. Fearing for his life, she put him on a plane to Los Angeles. That moment changed his path—but not his fire.
Jackson remained in Los Angeles for two years, working in social services before returning to Morehouse in January 1971 as a drama major. “I decided that theater would now be my politics. It could engage people and affect the way they think. It might even change some minds,” he told Parade.
Jackson’s radical roots remind us that the spirit of resistance lives in all of us.