Malika Moore’s bags for Baltimore were nearly packed. She had secured a plane ticket from Cincinnati, made a hotel reservation and had a hair appointment just before her afternoon flight. She was ready for homecoming at Morgan State University.
Then she learned of the incident on campus Tuesday, when five people — four of them students — were injured in a shooting, causing her to “lose my breath for a minute,” she said. Almost instantly she realized that the weekend she had anticipated for the last year was in flux.
So, when it was announced Wednesday that homecoming at the historically Black college would not go on — an unprecedented occurrence — Moore said she “sort of lost my breath again, but in a different way.”
“Homecoming is a special thing,” the 1981 graduate said. “I have missed maybe five homecomings since I finished at Morgan. That tells you everything.”