At 10 a.m. on Thursday, March 28, the board of trustees at Tennessee State University sat down to meet William E. Hudson, one of three finalists to be the next president of the historically Black school. They had plans to meet with a third and final candidate the next morning as they neared the end of the search process.
But most, if not all, of them couldn’t have imagined how quickly the search would get turned on its head.
The board’s Thursday morning meeting came after nearly two months of uncertainty over whether the board itself would be ousted by a bill carried by Republican state lawmakers. But there was still hope for the board’s survival, this time in the form of a compromise proposed by House Democrats to retain half of the trustees.
28th & Jefferson 