Professor Melissa Harris-Perry and Wake Forest University clash over MLK speech

After speaking out against Wake Forest University at an MLK event on Jan. 21, Melissa Harris-Perry, a professor at the university, claims the university retaliated against her by threatening to close an academic center and offering her a “payoff.”

Melissa Harris-Perry, a former MSNBC host and prominent professor, is clashing with Wake Forest University after giving an MLK Day speech critical of the institution.

On Jan. 21, Harris-Perry, who has been the Maya Angelou Presidential Chair Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Wake Forest University since 2014, gave a speech Union Baptist Church in Winston-Salem for the 39th annual MLK Noon Hour Commemoration. During her speech, she criticized the university’s role during slavery and outlined the struggle of the city’s black residents over the years.

Harris-Perry described the unfair labor practices of RJ Reynolds Tobacco Co., the second largest tobacco company in the country, against black workers in the 1940s and argued that questionable labor practices take place within the university today. According to the Wake Forest University factbook, the college moved from Wake Forest to Winston-Salem in 1941 after accepting a proposal by the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation set up by Mary Reynolds Babcock, RJ Reynolds’ daughter. Babcock and her husband donated much of the RJ Reynolds family estate as the site for the new campus.

Harris-Perry also claimed that the school fires its foodservice workers every summer, and then rehires them in the fall before classes start. The university has since disputed Harris-Perry’s claims and told City Beat that their employees are on either a “12-month or 10-month term based on student demand” and that “it is not accurate to say [their] dining service staff are fired and re-hired each year.”

Read more: https://triad-city-beat.com/professor-melissa-harris-perry-and-wake-forest-university-clash-over-mlk-speech/