By Jason Ethridge
The Scene staff
Forest Park students can view an example of peaceful protest almost every day, courtesy of assistant biology professor Tommie Frison.
It’s a simple affair. Tablet and speaker in hand, Frison walks from his office in D Tower to the flagpole next to the hairpin. He cues up a rendition of the national anthem, played by the marching band of Jackson State University, where he was a drum major in college. Then he kneels for the duration of the song.
The whole thing takes about five minutes. The purpose is to draw attention to what Frison sees as the many problems in modern America, including systemic racism.
“This stuff that was already there seems to be just coming out of the woodwork and displaying itself everywhere now,” he said. “And I’m thinking, ‘It was here all the time.’”
Frison is an African American from Batesville, Miss., one of 12 children who grew up on a sharecropper’s farm.
Many of his beliefs were formed during the civil rights movement.
“If there is injustice anywhere, it affects justice everywhere,” he said, borrowing a phrase from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his 1963 letter from the Birmingham jail.
Frison joined the Forest Park faculty as an adjunct in 1981. He’s been a full-time professor the past 12 years.
Frison has been staging his mostly quiet protests since the end of October. They begin at 10:45 a.m. every day he is on campus, usually Monday through Thursday.
Often Frison kneels alone by the flagpole, getting only brief glances from students on their way to class. He estimates fewer than 30 have stopped to ask what he’s doing or why.
Theater major Derek Owens, 29, thinks Frison should be commended.
“You don’t have to be loud and angry to get your point across,” Owens said. “The most powerful protests are silent.”
But not everyone has a positive opinion of Frison’s methods.
“I don’t approve of disrespecting the flag or the U.S. at all,” said nursing student Kevin Howard, 40. “Especially being a black person and all we had to fight and die for.”
This attitude doesn’t surprise Frison, but he believes that the right to protest is a basic tenet of American democracy.
“There’s room for all kinds of kinds,” he said. “There’s room to kneel, room to protest this way. There’s room for being patriotic that way. There’s plenty of it. We don’t have to worry about that.”
Frison is borrowing a page from former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who began kneeling during the national anthem at football games in 2016 to protest police brutality against black men and other racial injustice.
That led other football players to kneel in support and drew criticism from President Donald Trump, who called for them to be suspended or fired.
“The thing that bothered me the most about those protests was the response of the president of the United States,” Frison said. “This country, supposedly, is founded on the right to do these things. Whether I agree with it or not, for Trump to say that, to use the phrases that he used. … My God.”
Frison is comfortable carrying out his protests alone, but he welcomes anyone who wants to join him.
One person who has participated is Robert Hertel, professor in hospitality studies and president of the St. Louis Community College chapter of the National Education Association, the union that represents full-time faculty members.
“I thought it was important as the president of the NEA to show support for him,” he said.
Hertel kneeled with Frison three or four days a week last fall. He isn’t participating now because of scheduling conflicts, but he would like to do it again.
How long will Frison continue his daily protests?
“As long as I feel that there is a need and that this is the way I’d like to address it,” he said.