"He walked around with a wealth of knowledge about what was going on in Africa and other parts of the world," Griffin says. "He was a more quiet person, not into rabble rousing speeches."

Hall says he joined the ad-hoc committee of 17 Black students who contributed to the report by the nine-member Rosovsky committee which assessed the AAAAS demands and recommended how the University should respond.

Hall was one of the three students on the six-member search committee, created from the Rosovsky committee's report, to review candidates to chair the new Afro-America studies program.

He says he was chosen because of his involvement in a volunteer program in which he created an Afro-American studies curriculum to teach weekly to inmates in a Massachusetts prison.

The prison program was a "put your money where your mouth is" challenge, says Hall.

This was the opportunity I had been searching for, that became the source of my seriousness and purpose for the remainder of my undergraduate career at Harvard."

Hall describes himself as a noticeable presence on campus, "letting [his] hair grow into a bushy afro, running around sidewalks spouting off about Africa."

Skipping class to prepare for his prison pupils, Hall says he began to realize the lack of Afro-American history materials available at Harvard.

"[It] devastated me," he says. "There were no courses, no curriculum to prepare me for what I was teaching."

During the seizure of University Hall in April of 1969, Hall he was a "sympathetic" witness "that got too close to the action" as the building was being cleared by the police riot force.

He was standing on the steps of a freshman dorm when he was "accosted by some five or six riot police holding 'Nigger sticks'...poised and raised for the downward swing," he says.

"I balled myself up in the fetal 'civil rights position'--protect your head and genital area," he says, "and then I spoke somewhat forcefully and said 'gentlemen, please don't hit me. If you will allow me to get to my feet, I will leave the premises,' and miracle of miracles, they ceased and desisted."

He says they probably thought he was a "movement plant," strategically placed to goad the police into beating him up.

Hall was a member of the Dean's List his senior year and upon graduation received the Ames award--"the best all-around-guy award," he says.

Hall says his years of student activism have influenced how he interacts with his own students. "I am not frightened by students that speak up and organize themselves," he says. "I often encourage it."

In addition to recruiting undergraduates at local colleges to replicate his prison course at other correctional institution in Massachusetts, Hall continues to teach African-American history to inmates and encourages his own students to get involved.