Logan Hall
The goal of the Tuskegee Institute Community Action Corps was to aid, empower, and revitalize Black communities in Macon County. TICAC emerged from a student assembly held in Logan Hall, on the Tuskegee Institute campus, October 1963. The assembly began with the Students and Faculty singing “The Tuskegee Song” by Paul Laurence Dunbar. During a discussion of Civil rights and student activism, Dean of Students, P. Bertrand Phillips, asked everyone to repeat the first verse of the Tuskegee Song, and engaged the students in a discussion of Tuskegee Institute’s great traditions of community outreach and exemplary service programs. He challenged the students to engage in a community outreach program to provide academic tutoring, gardening help and basic home repairs. He encouraged the 400 students to sleep on the idea and if interested, to meet him in Logan Hall the next morning at 5 a.m. The following day, Monday morning, l5O students met at 5 a.m. with Dean Phillips, and TICAC was born. The program’s motto was: “We want to help.”
The TICAC volunteers worked with families to repair, paint, and remodel homes; plant gardens; plant and harvest crops; and dig irrigation ditches and trenches in order to prevent soil erosion.
The TICAC Volunteers shared their reasons for volunteering:
- Make a difference in the lives of young people
- Give something back to my people by helping my younger brothers and sisters
- Be a pioneer in this new Tuskegee Crusade
- Teach young people their rights
- Share my knowledge and experience because others have helped me
- Great opportunity to learn while helping others
Macon County, where the TICAC volunteers served, is located in the east central part of Alabama. Tuskegee Institute and the Veterans Administration Hospital were the most well-known institutions in Macon County. The city of Tuskegee is the county seat of Macon County. Macon has three other towns: Notasulga, Shorter, and Franklin.
