BOWIE, Maryland — On one of the last stops on the Educate to Liberate tour, conservative influencer Siaka Massaquoi and other supporters stood behind the student center on Bowie State’s campus for nearly four hours asking students about their ideologies and thoughts on being Black.

“It was a surprising, on-the-spot type of thing,” said Daniel Oppong, a junior computer technology major.

The conversation between Oppong and Massaquoi remained civil, and they both discovered they were children of immigrants. However, Oppong said he didn’t know at first that the tour was attached to Turning Point USA, a deeply conservative group co-founded by Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed in September while speaking at a Utah college campus. 

“I want to remain unbiased about this, so it’s more so … wow! I feel like that would have been a good starting point,” Oppong told Capital B on Friday about not realizing the tour’s connections. 

The tour was organized by Blexit, a conservative grassroots movement co-founded by far-right Black political commentator Candace Owens and now affiliated with Turning Point USA. Short for “Black Exit,” Blexit says it aims to encourage Black Americans to leave the Democratic Party and embrace conservative politics. 

Although most Black voters lean toward the Democratic Party, conservative groups such as Blexit are increasingly trying to appeal to young Black eligible voters who feel disconnected from politics and don’t align with a specific party. Professors and students Capital B spoke to were skeptical, but some were open to having a dialogue about conservatism.

The majority of the students Massaquoi spoke with at Bowie State were young Black men. Many of the young women passing by declined the interviews. 

Educate to Liberate, which sparked backlash from within the HBCU community, started in late September. The tour featured Black conservative influencers with the goal of engaging with students on historically Black college and university campuses. Howard University, Hampton University, Bowie State University, and Lincoln University of Missouri were among the 10 tour stops throughout the homecoming season. 

Pierre Wilson, the senior director of Blexit, said the tour’s purpose was to speak to the Black community about where their beliefs come from and to show that some may have conservative ideologies similar to those who call themselves Republican and/or conservative. 

“If we can come out here, I want to be joyous, fun, engaging,” Massaquoi said. “Yes, so we can get into heavy conversations, but it doesn’t mean that we have to be heavy the whole time and that’s who Charlie was when I met him a bunch of times.” 

Massaquoi, who is in his 40s, is a first-generation American raised by a single mother. He talked about his background with students during the Bowie State stop. Before the Maryland tour stop, he was the interviewer at Jackson State University in Mississippi. There were six influencers advertised for the tour, and they took turns showing up on each tour stop. 

“I think things are slowly getting to a point where, at the very least, we could just have a conversation,” he said about society’s perceptions of what it means to be a conservative. 

Massaquoi said after Kirk’s death he reached out to Blexit to be a part of the tour this year. He said the right-wing influencer getting shot while sharing his opinion was the catalyst to him being fed up with the misconceptions about conservatives. 

“We need more people, especially more men, coming out and standing tall to what they believe in and their values,” he said. “The more of us that come out, the less of those incidents happen.” He was referring to Kirk’s shooting.

Will targeting younger people work?

Wilson, the director of Blexit, said he used to be a Democrat. The 36-year-old recalled that when he was in secondary school he did his own research for a school project during the 2000 presidential election. He found that he aligned more with Republican George W. Bush than Democrat Al Gore when it came to their policies. His mother told him Black people don’t vote Republican, and he redid the assignment to focus on Gore. 

Later on in life, he remained with the Democratic Party, but he still had his doubts. While attending the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, he publicly said he was not sure whether he would vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in the primaries in 2008. His classmates questioned why he, as a Black man, wouldn’t automatically vote for Obama. That was when he started questioning his own political thinking as an adult. 

He later transferred to a nearby predominantly white university and realized he aligned more with conservatives. 

Now, he’s a conservative and often critiques both political parties, he said. 

For the right, he said, there are a lot of conservatives who talk about what needs to be done, especially at historically Black colleges. What the party needs is boots on the ground to meet people where they are, Wilson added. 

Wilson comes from a family of HBCU grads: His mom, dad, and sister went to Howard. He, however, followed in his grandfather’s footsteps to attend the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, one of Maryland’s four HBCUs. 

Coming from a Black college background, Wilson knew that homecoming season would be a way to reach a large number of Black people. 

“I felt like it was our place to do it,” he said. “It was Blexit’s job to do it.” 

Blexit’s HBCU tour during homecoming season started in 2023 with Kentucky State University as its first stop. 

He added that the group isn’t forcing anyone to be a Republican but interrogating students’ existing beliefs and encouraging them to do more research. 

While Wilson said they are meeting students where they are, Jo Von McCalester, a lecturer in the Political Science Department at Howard University, questioned the intention behind the tour stops at historically Black colleges. 

Reaching young people about conservatism was something Kirk was known for, she said. In fact, she thinks the far right is purposely targeting college-age students.  

“If he gets students that are young, like freshmen, possibly sophomores, they haven’t had to engage in the practice of analysis and synthesis at a deep level,” McCalester said. 

Jake Davis, a freshman at Bowie State, didn’t take the interview with Blexit representatives so seriously. Before talking with them he said he was expecting laughs from the group. When it comes to politics, Davis, who is 18, said he only gives his political opinion when asked.

“I feel like they’re trying to change some minds,” Davis said.

While speaking to students, Massaquoi said he would go off script from the usual questions he prepared for the interviews. Sometimes the conversation would venture off, depending on the interviewee’s responses. 

In one instance, Massaquoi was discussing Black-on-Black crime with a student. 

McCalester said influencers’ use of statistics without context is concerning because they are not presenting students with the full picture to make more informed decisions. She said targeting freshmen straight out of high school seems intentional because they don’t always have the academic training to recognize what’s missing.

McCalester, who is also a lecturer in the Afro-American Studies Department at Howard University, said that older students, who are juniors and seniors, have already engaged in deep, critical thinking and understand the importance of context when using numbers. 

However, McCalester said context is often left out in these kinds of conversations. Most crime is within one’s race, she said, because people tend to live within their racial and ethnic groups. 

McCalester teaches Introduction to Political Science as well as Introduction to African American Studies, which are both required at Howard University for several majors. She often gives a lesson about why Black people, especially older generations, tend to be conservative on religious issues such as abortion and gay marriage but won’t necessarily vote that way. 

“You can have a conversation with someone, and they may say some things, but when it sort of comes down to it, a lot of older Black people will literally either not vote or they will vote the other way,” she said. “Because of what the implications will be if they vote along sort of conservative lines.” 

When asked about her sources, she pointed to one she uses, the Joint Center, a Black think tank that often provides credible statistics. Her other sources come from extensive research of first-hand accounts as a researcher in academia. 

“When you’re talking to some of the people, some of these activists, or whatever, they don’t have to have data to back up their claims,” she said. However, as a tenured faculty member at a university, not only is she a source of information, she continued, but she also has to have data to back up her claims.

Did Blexit ask permission to be on these campuses?

Vincent Adejumo, a former African American studies professor at the University of Florida, said that he disagrees with HBCUs banning or escorting these members off campus. 

“As long as it’s respectful, as long as it’s not anything threatening safety, I think it’s healthy for students to see it,” he said. “If they want to engage, engage, you know. That’s part of life.” 

While he taught at UF, he said, it wasn’t uncommon to see students setting up shop to engage in conversations about abortion or political topics. Some may end in a screaming match, but Adejumo said it’s just a part of college. 

According to Blexit members, the interviewer for the Hampton University stop was kicked off campus while visiting Oct. 24.

“While the organization has suggested that their filming activity was ‘shut down,’ that narrative is inaccurate,” the university said in a statement. “This was not a matter of suppression; it was a matter of safety, procedure, and fairness.”

Capital B attempted to reach out to Hampton for a comment several times through email and voicemail, but the university did not respond. 

Wilson told Capital B that Blexit reached out to all the schools on the tour before heading to the campuses. Regardless of whether the school responded, he said they were going to go anyway. 

Howard, Lincoln University of Missouri, and Bowie State said they did not receive permits or applications for Blexit members to be on campus. Capital B also reached out to Tennessee State University in Nashville, but they declined to comment. 

Blexit said on Instagram that Stephen Davis, an interviewer for the Blexit tour, was also escorted off Tennessee State’s campus. 

Last month, white conservatives went to TSU to debate students on hot topics, arguing that they had the right to be on a public university campus because their tax dollars help fund the institution. However, they were escorted out by campus police and other students. 

Kelly Alexander, the director of communications at Bowie State, said the group was not permitted to be on the school’s campus. However, the university did not kick Blexit members off campus because it is a public university, Alexander said. 

Wilson said there are currently 21 Blexit chapters at HBCUs, some not acknowledged by the universities for paperwork reasons or the lack of sponsors, which he said some students have had trouble finding. 

“For anyone, no matter what sides you want, if you care about these students, you should want them to learn as much as possible,” Wilson said.