Preacher allegedly punched by Mizzou anti-racist protesters

Jesse Morrell, a Christian open-air preacher, was allegedly punched in the face by anti-racism activists at the University of Missouri on Thursday.

KCOU 8’s Mark Kim first tweeted a picture Thursday afternoon that showed Morell with a bloody lip, and the caption: “Preacher Jesse Morrell tells me someone punched him while he was preaching at Speakers Circle.” Four minutes later Kim tweeted a video of Morrell telling his side of the story; Kim added the caption: “Morrell shares his account of the altercation that resulted in him getting punched at Speakers Circle.”

“And because I said Michael Brown died for disrespecting the police, I got popped in the mouth a few times and other students kinda pulled this guy away,” Morrell is heard saying. Morrell, who described his attacker as a black man with dreadlocks, went on to say that the man kept trying to attack him, and threw “a few more punches that he missed.”

Periscope user Jeff Rakestraw uploaded a video that reportedly shows the scene after Morrell was punched. The video shows a chaotic scene with Morrell speaking his message into a megaphone on one side and a group that one Missouri student called “African American Communists from New York” with megaphones of their own, shouting about “violence and rapes against black and brown people.”

The latter group was composed of one white woman—who admitted the group had travelled from New York—and several black men, all wearing matching sweatshirts. Morrell, for his part, can be heard preaching about abortion, homosexuality, and Muslim immigration in Europe.

The Periscope video opens with the woman talking to students through the megaphone. “I’m sure none of you guys came to this campus, hoping to be in a middle of a fistfight by the white supremacist,” the woman can be heard saying, later going on to yell about the rights of immigrants, the environment, and “white supremacy here at Mizzou, over at Yale, [and] up at Ithaca,” before claiming that “this isn’t a question of free speech.”

The woman then hands the microphone to a black man—whom the Periscope user identified as the man who punched Morell—who proceeds to accuse Morrell over the loudspeaker of being against gays, transgenders, and “black lives.” The man claims the problem isn’t “whoever came here and punched him in the face, it’s the speech and we allow that to happen,” before later yelling about how iPhones (including the one he admits having in his own pocket) are “made with slave labor.”

A picture posted to Facebook showed that the sweatshirts worn by the group read “BA Speaks: Revolution—-Nothing Less.” A Google search for the phrase brings up a website that claims to be “The voice of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA.”

According to the GateWay Pundit, the alleged violence took place in one of the university’s “free speech zones.”

Morrell did not return Campus Reform’s email requesting comment.

UPDATE: One Twitter user claiming to be the alleged puncher says on Twitter that he did not do so but he wished that he had.

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @peterjhasson