student complaints about school conditions—including "heavy work schedules, low wages, the inability to accumulate academic credit due to the work loads" and segregation on campus—students went on strike, petitioning for better conditions, liberal arts programs, more African-American faculty members and an African-American president. In 1932, after student strikers held a series of pep rallies, speeches and worship gatherings and sent a letter to the General Conference petitioning for change, the General Conference recruited more African-Americans to Oakwood's faculty, making it predominantly African-American. Additionally, the General Conference first invited two of Oakwood's white professors to become president in response to the strikes and petitions. It was only after the professors rejected the invitation that was it extended to James L. Moran, Oakwood's first African-American president. Although Moran became president, the General Conference asserted that a white man would manage the school's business affairs and serve as the liaison between the school board and the General Conference, two roles typically held by the president of a higher education institution. It was under the leadership of President Moran that Oakwood attained earned four-year college status and was renamed Oakwood College. Due to the conservative ideologies of the SDA Church, students' initial involvement in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s was restrained. Oakwood's non-participation stance, declared by the General Conference, discouraged faculty involvement in the movement. Despite this, after Oakwood hosted guest speaker Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1962—and was the only institution in Huntsville that would host him—some Oakwood students became moderately active in the movement. Because the SDA ideologies discouraged association with those outside of the Church, Oakwood students were disconnected from those at neighboring schools. Also, their access to news outlets such as radio and television was restricted and completely banned in dormitories, limiting their awareness of ongoing events related to the civil rights movement. The Church and the South's expectations for women hindered female students' freedom to choose to participate in civil resistance events, if they desired to do so. However, students were able to stay informed of protests through local black-owned radio station WEUP, and male students had more freedom in choosing whether to participate in sit-ins, prayer-ins and marches, store boycotts and other nonviolent acts of resistance. Their efforts to integrate local white SDA churches were met with hostility by segregationists. For example, white church officials called the police to remove black students from