CR 2005 > Commencement > keynote
Charlayne Hunter-Gault Delivers Keynote Address
President Crutcher, by your leave, I will say all protocol is observed except to address specifically the class of 2005. Let me just begin by saying how great it is to be back at Wheaton, even though much has changed in the years since I was last on this campus in 1976, including my hair and the fact that M&M's don't leave me when I leave them.
But I'm assured that while much has changed, much of the core values of this great institution remain the same. That means that sitting in this graduating class today are young men and women who are destined--if not honor-bound, as your speaker has just articulated--to make important contributions to society. Men and women who follow in the footsteps of Wheaton graduates I am proud to know, like Elaine Brown, Leslie Stahl and Pat King. Their passion for what they do has touched me, as it has touched multitudes--in literature, in journalism and also in original, pioneering law.
And from what I know of Wheaton, Wheaton nurtured their passion and encouraged them to follow it, helping to contribute to a legacy that I hope each of you graduates today feels honor-bound to help sustain. I must confess that it never fails when I'm asked to speak to young people at such critical moments, I ask myself, "Why me?" As a journalist, I'm especially curious in these times when, according to the Pew Charitable Trust, we journalists are part of the least trusted institution in American society. I don't know if that means today you can take everything I'm going to say with a grain of salt, but I am desperate to try to do my part in overcoming that lack of trust in some small way. So let me hasten to say that this apparent reality of the lack of trust pains me beyond words. This damaging indictment of our profession comes at a time when the attacks on it are coming from all sides. For me, the most devastating of all is when a young person about your age questions the wisdom of a journalism career.
Not long ago, I was approached by a college student who proceeded to tell me she long dreamed of becoming a journalist but now she was beginning to wonder if she could pursue this dream. When I asked about the source of her doubts, she told me she was afraid she would no longer be able to tell the truth. Well, I have to say I was dumbstruck. A young person in the United States of America in 2005 afraid there was nothing in this country--including the time-honored constitution--that would insulate her and protect her from an environment poisoned by politicians and pretenders to our profession.
Such a concern would have been less surprising in some countries in the developing world that have yet to experience the full flowering of democracy. I find more and more countries, in that part of the developing world where I live, on the continent of Africa, are now in the process of fertilizing the roots of their young democracies. Far too many are still being run by a breed of despots clinging to autocratic power, stifling both freedom of expression and dissent through murder and torture and other forms of criminality. Or, in some cases where that same breed of despot is using the laws in democracies achieved by dubious means to control if not eliminate the free flow of information allowing only the voice of government-owned or -controlled media.
But I was encouraged in my advice to the young would-be journalist in part by the brave journalists of Africa who are daily putting their lives on the line to get the truth to the people, so the people can know true democracy in which their destiny lies in the actions that they themselves freely take. I was also encouraged from the lessons from my past, in the poet Margaret Walker's words, "in which a people loving freedom came to grow." And I found the inspiration to tell this young woman to proceed with her dream in part by the example of my mother during the dark days of segregation, when my dream, yes indeed, was to become Brenda Starr.
My mother, like the other black people around me, didn't have the power to give me first-class citizenship, but she gave me something that in time empowered me to compel the state to grant it. She gave me a first-class sense of myself. Moreover, when I told my mother of what others might have called my impossible dream, knowing instinctively that dreams propel ambition, my mother did not tell me that the time was not right for a little black girl to be Brenda Starr. She merely said, "If that's what you want to do." It was an extraordinary thing for my mother to say in those days, with little other than some deeply held conviction that one day we would overcome the forces that would deny not only our God-given rights but those enshrined in a constitution that had long since deleted from its
pages the words defining a black human being as three-fifths of a person.
Thanks to my mother's faith and encouragement and those like her, within less than a decade my generation would begin, in the words of poet Margaret Walker, to "rise and take control." We took control not by passively complaining about the status quo that denied us our rights, but passionately and actively taking to the streets of Atlanta, Georgia, the bridges of Selma, Alabama, and, yes, the swamps of Philadelphia, Mississippi, among others.
While defenders of the status quo murdered some of us and put some of us in those swamps, they couldn't kill us all or kill our dreams, so that a university that had been all white for as long as Wheaton College is old today was forced to open its doors to a 19-year-old girl whose mother had encouraged her impossible dream. Thus, even as I stand here 40-something years later, I can remember as if it were yesterday sitting as you sit today, proud of my achievements in my classroom but prouder still of what we had accomplished in a country that had the instrument that enabled us to rise and take control and have our justice after all.
I think in these troubling times it's important to recall the lessons of history that provide good instruction. For example, a few months ago I attended the funeral of Donald Hollowell, the civil rights lawyer who fought and won the case that opened the doors of the University of Georgia. I hope some of you won't be upset that I am talking about a funeral at a graduation, but living in Africa I've come to appreciate more than ever that death is a part of many passages. And those who are, as they say, "late"--not as in, they came late or arrived late, but have gone to another stage of existence--those who are late and who have made that journey, like my mother and Elaine Brown's recently departed father, are venerated and celebrated as guides to the living. Countless Africans regularly visit the graves of their ancestors for inspiration to take on the challenges they are facing in life.
So I learned of Don Hallowell's death and of the plans for his funeral in Atlanta some 48 hours before his home-going celebration. I made the 16-hour journey from South Africa with about two hours to spare. And many of the people that supported us in our quest for freedom and equality were gathered there, happy that I had made it. These were the people who had helped craft the armor that protected me after the legal team had done their job and I had to walk alone through the mob of hostile white students.
Honoring that legacy was a large part of what had fueled my need to make the journey to this funeral ceremony. Among those who spoke was a high school classmate of mine who, during our school years of white judges and white justice, may never have dreamed that he would be today wearing judicial robes, but he is. And he gave thanks to Don Hollowell's legacy of dreaming the impossible dream of freedom and justice for his people and going beyond the dream. He said, "Every time you take a drink of water from a fountain that doesn't say 'whites only,' you should say, 'Thank you, Don Hollowell.' Every time you use a public restroom that doesn't have a sign that says 'whites only,' you should say, 'Thank you, Don Hollowell.'"
You didn't know Don Hollowell. But what you should know is that his legacy is what we are all living today, whether in the South or the North or in places beyond our borders, like South Africa, where people loving freedom came to grow, inspired in part by our victories in America. But the beast of bigotry and intolerance, though wounded, is not dead, and I confront it in one way or another every day as either a target or as a witness. Thus, I needed to be at that funeral, to recharge my moral armament and to be reminded that even as that and other challenges to our human dignity and to our freedom continue--and I mean our, as the citizens of the global community I like to think we all are--we have the duty to walk and never get weary, as we used to say during the days of our liberation struggle.
In that regard, the president of this fine institution and I have a lot more in common than our mutual birthdays. We are heirs to that legacy of struggle, and I can see that he has honored it by his call in his inaugural address for a new paradigm in liberal arts, insisting on embracing the tension that may arise as the result of unknown and undiscovered sisters and brothers becoming members of our community.
It was the work of another of our moral giants who has just become late in the last few days that shows the severe harm of racial bias and exclusion in education. In his use of black dolls and white dolls, Dr. Kenneth Clark demonstrated that black children preferred the white dolls and saw the black dolls as inferior. Doctor Clark's poignant yet powerful testimony about the damage to the psyche and the souls of black children convinced 12 white men, some southern conservatives, to end the obscene lie of separate but equal.
And while many took his work to mean the greatest harm was done to black children, Dr. Clark clarified on many subsequent occasions that what the court didn't face were the detrimental effects of segregation or racism on white children as well. Those who would today challenge affirmative action and the goals it seeks to achieve have clearly not learned a fundamental lesson of our democracy.
Many of you will remember Doctor Crutcher's inaugural address when he spoke of the revolutionary spirit who founded this institution in 1834 and uniquely positioned it to face the challenges of the 21st century. That he is leading this institution honors their legacy and also gives me great pride and hope that he will continue on the path he has chosen, honoring the other revolutionaries who lived among us and gave us lessons that are timeless and transcendent.
As you graduates leave this place, you leave wearing--well, you won't be wearing your cap and gown, because you are going to throw them up in the air pretty soon--but you leave also wearing a suit of armor crafted by those legacies and the diverse family of educators here and the lessons that they have taught, because I have been reading in Google all about those. Lessons in community and camaraderie and care and compassion and, yes, what Oliver Wendell Holmes called "the action and passion of your time."
These and other lessons are bound to help you as they helped me keep my eyes not just on the horizon, but on the prize. And what is the prize? For me it has been embarking on Zora Neale Hurston's great journey to the horizon in search of people and finding them--seeing them and portraying them in ways that are recognizable to themselves. In Africa that has meant seeing them not through the typical media lens of conflict, chaos, disease and disaster, but seeing them through the prism of their hopes and their dreams for freedom and dignity.
People like Puseletso Takane, a winsome 17 year old I wrote about in this month's O Magazine. Puseletso has taken it upon herself to try and do something about the AIDS pandemic that is infecting half the girls her age in her village in the tiny mountain kingdom of Lesotho. She writes what she calls "little dramas" aimed at educating her peers in the hope of saving their lives, and I think that many of you in the Wheaton community would be pleased to know that she also talks about living life abundantly.
As a journalist, I'm not an advocate or a cheerleader, but I do care about the people like Puseletso, and I do not accept the view of many media decision makers that Americans would not be interested in them, too, if only they knew. In my view the prize for you graduates today, and for all of us, is not some Utopian dream of a harmonious world but a dream of a fulfilled harmonious world. And that brings me back to the dream of the young would-be journalist and the worrisome environment in America that is giving her pause about entering this profession.
With the confidence born of the legacy of righteous struggles, I told her this, too, would pass. For all of our sakes, and perhaps for the sake of democracy itself, men and women who care about the world they inhabit--and you graduates especially, who now bring to the world a gift of new energy and fresh commitment--I would hope you would help make sure that it passes by not abandoning faith in our profession but holding the feet to the fire of those whose decisions affect all of our destinies and the destinies of generations to come--the politicians and those who own and control the media.
With appreciation for and apologies to Dylan Thomas and all the English professors in the audience today, I would urge you not to go ignorant into your good day. Rage, rage against the dying of the light of trust and truth and institutions you need to help safeguard your freedom. Rage until you can be confident of good news that will help you be good and better citizens of the world, or you can affirm your own dreams and encourage the dreams of others--others like Puseletso--where you will continue to embrace difference and affirm tolerance as a welcome part of the journey to greater understanding and knowledge, even when those who should know better do not, and who are confident in your ever-increasing knowledge will lead you to wisdom that will enable you to resist taking the easy way out, of being taken in by the sexy sound bite or the catchy slogan. Know from one who has traveled it, the road not taken may lead you to some troughs and valleys, but it will also lead you to having a real life, like mine, that exceeded Brenda's wildest dreams.
After three score and some, I can see the words of Walt Whitman's "Song of the Open Road": "Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing, strong and content I travel the open road. Still, here I carry my old delicious burdens. I carry them, men and women. I carry them with me wherever I go. I swear it is impossible to get rid of them. I am filled with them, and I will fill them in return."
As I offer you my congratulations--you, your parents and those that have supported you through these years--I also invite you to embark upon a journey that in the fullness of time will lead you to the open road. It might be helpful to take a detour now and then, especially to the gym three times a week or a faster walk along your own road to help maintain your health and stamina for the journey, because nobody needs you if you are sick. Also a detour to the bank every payday where you can save up enough money to be able to say good-bye to any job that assaults your dignity or where you may be called upon to compromise your principles.
As Maya Angelou has said, "I learned that making a living is not the same as making a life." And when we meet at some stop along the open road, as I hope we will, I plan to sit and listen with the pride of the mother I am as you tell me about the good life you have been leading and the legacy you are creating.
Once again, my congratulations to all of you. Go well.
This page is maintained by Commencement. Last updated on 8/21/07.
Questions about this page? Use our query form.
Questions about the weekend? Contact us!
Office of Alumnae/i Relations:
508-286-8207
Dean of Students Office:
508-286-8218
Aramark Food Service:
508-286-8209
Check out our 2005 Reunion photo album.
Does my reunion class have a Web page?
Yes! Find yours here. Reunion classes will be providing updates in the coming weeks.