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Lift every voice and
sing.
Til Earth and Heaven
rings.
Rings with a harmonies
of liberty.
With a new era comes change.
So um... as we all know Dr. King um... preached about change often.
Ok; and change in how we judge and treat people. Um... change in how we make this
world a better place
for our fellow person.
Change in economic and political spheres so that more people could be equal,
as our constitution guarantees.
Um... so change is good but it isn't always easy.
But, if we always did things that were easy, where would that get us?
He was poised, he was articulate.
The strength of his conviction took away the long bus miles.
The force of his words became our mission at least in the
mid-sixties.
But, I do want to tell you
is how that moment changed my life
and urge each of you to measure yourselves by Dr. King's dedication to the cause
of equality.
His passion for peace and selfless concern
that America be the best it can be for all its people.
There'll never be another
Dr. King.
Quite frankly we shouldn't expect that.
We were blessed to have him
and recall him through his acts and his enduring belief
and hope and optimism
that we can solve race and economic problems in this country.
It's my hope
that if he came to this university, today,
that he would see that we have been working so hard
to stand by his principles,
to achieve his goals.
We were among the first to open our doors to all people and promised to value
the differences,
not similarities.
To reach down to those
without resources to join us.
To study and to learn and return to our community as you all will
to build equality;
to build opportunity among all of our neighbors among all of our citizens. But,
remember everything that you see, everything that this campus is
was a result of someone's vision. At some point in the past somebody always had a
dream, had a vision for
what they want to see and they turn that vision into reality.
Now we're also, here to commemorate obviously another man who's known for having a dream
although the dreams very small part of his legacy which is the speech
that actually made him most famous.
And a... his name was Dr. Martin Luther King. People don't even realize that
there were a lot of people that didn't want Dr. King to speak that day.
When they had the march on Washington, he was not popular.
Even fifty-five percent of African-Americans didn't approve of his
position on the Vietnam War and over eighty percent of the white Americans didn't approve of his
position on the war.
A lot of people were mad at Dr. King, they felt that his message was to radical, they felt
that it was gonna disrupt what they were trying to do with the march. So there were
a lot of people who work very hard to keep him
off of the list of speakers.
And sometimes
it's okay to say some things that people don't want to hear.
It's okay to ruffle some feathers in order to move our society forward because we
know the change is not easy.
My sense is that this university will move forward,
impressively,
meaningfully, under his leadership.
So I thank you
for coming together today as I have in past years.
I am grateful to President McCarthy for joining us today; his first day as
president of this university.
And to all of you my gratitude for being a part of this community
and its mission
by remembering and honoring
the momentous life and spirit of Martin Luther King. Thank You.
Let us march on
til victory
is won.