Transcript
0:00 a product of Chicago Public Schools Mrs Michelle Obama graduated from Harvard Law School in 1988 and then she joined Chicago Law Firm sley Austin after a few years Mrs Obama decided her true calling was working with people to serve communities and their neighbors she served as assistant Commissioner of planning and development in Chicago city hall Mrs Obama also worked at the University of Chicago as an associate dean of student services and as the first executive director
0:30 for Community Affairs at the University of Chicago's Medical Center as first lady Mrs Obama continues her work on issues close to her heart some of her initiatives include joining forces for military families let's move to support kids health in her news initiative which was announced last week reach higher which pushes High School seniors and students to attend college she always keeps the Community First and never forgets her upbringing and the impact she can make in the world
1:01 today Mrs Obama serves as a true living a no matter where you come from you can always dream big and make your dreams become a reality never allow your ZIP code to Define who you are or where you will go please join me in a class of 2014 as we welcome our commencement speaker on this very day May 10th 2014 [Applause]
1:37 first lady of the United States of America Mrs Michelle Obama [Applause] oh my goodness good
2:09 morning I I I am so happy to be here with you all I'm I'm I'm I'm proud to be here in The Big Easy look at you all you look good thank you I I want to start by thanking Nicole for that very kind introduction and for sharing her story which is uh not too
2:42 unfamiliar to me because they told me I couldn't be where I am too so I want to thank Nicole I'm proud of her thank you for the selfie I think that's the first selfie I've done at a commencement so Nicole you're my first and of course I want to thank the Dillard University choir oh oh oh oh
3:13 oh oh that's all I can say like you you want to start something up in here right it's like now we got a commencement going on up in here that was beauti beautiful beautiful thank you so much I also want to recognize Senator Mary Landrew who is here let's give her a hand know she has been a strong supporter of this University I want to
3:44 thank the Dillard University Board of Trustees I want to thank the faculty the staff and of course your tremendous president Dr Walter Kimbro now my husband has been called a few things over the years but he has never had the honor of being referred to as the Hip Hop president so I also want to thank all of the folks from the University of New Orleans for hosting us here today and I know they're
4:15 hosting the folks at Southern University at New New Orleans for their commencement later on today as well so we wish them a wonderful day um and thank you for having us and of of course I've got to give a big shout out to all the family members in the crowd all of the family members especially to the mothers because it is the day before Mother's Day to all the
4:47 mothers Happy Mother's Day now now now graduates graduates you all handled your business right just because you were graduating didn't mean you come on now okay well if you didn't you have my permission to get up and go right now because there's nothing more important no no don't get up your mothers would kill you if you got up at this moment so just stay in your seats and when this is all over make sure you take
5:15 care of Mom but in all seriousness to all the moms out there as well as the dads and the grandparents the uncles the aunts the brothers the sisters all of you who have helped raise these graduates you have seen them through their ups and downs and you have poured your hearts and souls into these men and women so today is your day too and you should be very proud you really should and finally most of all I want to
5:48 congratulate the beautiful and handsome men and women of the Dillard University class of 2014 yay you all have come so far I know to make it to this day from all those early days when the girls were sneaking out of Williams Hall to go see the boys over at the duels oh yeah I did my
6:21 research to all those tests you cram for to the plans you're making now for your career careers to go on to graduate school you all have seen so much youve witnessed the school's rebirth after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina the new buildings that replace the ones you lost the classrooms that started filling back up again the service projects that you all have done to help this community bounce
6:52 back and I know along the way that each of you has written your own story of resilience and determination to make it here to this day for example as you heard Nicole was told back in high school that she just wasn't College material but now she is your class president and she's headed off to Yale for her graduate degree so there that's it and I know that that some of you may
7:23 come from tough neighborhoods some of you may have lost your homes during Katrina maybe you're like DeShawn Dabney a graduate who was raised by his grandmother ra that maybe that's that's your grandmother a't it Desa raised by his grandmother while some of his family members were dealing with issues maybe just like him you've been working part-time at jobs since you
7:54 were a teenager to make your dream of going to college come true and now today you're all here ready to walk across the stage and get that diploma and no matter what path you took to get here you all kept your hearts set on this day you fought through every challenge you encountered and you earned that degree from this fine University and in doing so you are
8:25 following in the footsteps of all those who came before you and you have become an indelible part of the history of this school a history that as you all know stretches back to well before the Civil War back to 1826 the year a child named Emperor Williams was born now Emperor was born into SL slavery but as he grew up he managed to teach himself to read and write well
8:56 enough to create a pass that allowed him to come and go go around the city without getting hassled but one day his master saw the past and he said where' you learn to write like that now just imagine the fear Emperor must have felt when he heard that question because remember back then it was illegal for a slave to learn to read or write so who knows what kind of punishment he may have gotten a beaten a
9:21 whip and even worse we don't exactly know what happened on that day but we do know that when EMP returned 32 after more than three decades in bondage he became a free man he decided to stay in New Orleans and he went on to become a minister even founded a church right here in town and in 1869 when abolitionists missionaries black folks and white folks came together to create a school for freed slaves here in New
9:54 Orleans Emperor was one of the original signers of the charter they decided to name the school New Orleans University because even though most of the classes would be taught at a high school level or below oh their aspirations were much higher than that and when they laid the Cornerstone for that University's first building down on St Charles Avenue Emperor got a chance to speak he said and these are his words he
10:26 said for 20 years I was a slave on these streets it was a Penitentiary offense to educate a negro I have seen my fellow servants whipped for trying to learn but today here I am speaking where a building is to be erected for the education of the children of my people he goes on to say I wonder if this is the world I was born in see in the course of his short
10:56 lifetime Emperor saw education go from being being a crime for black folks to being a real possibility for his kids and grandkids so no wonder he was asking whether this was the same world he'd been born into see for a man like Emperor getting an education could open up a whole new world of opportunity and education meant having real power meant you could manage your own money met you could get swindled out
11:27 of land or possessions when somebody told you to just sign on the dotted line sometimes even determine whether or not you could vote so most folks back then saw education as the key to real and Lasting Freedom that's why when New Orleans University and the other African-American college in town straight University first first opened their doors one of the biggest problems they faced was too many students as
11:59 that's right too many students many of these students barely spoke English they grown up speaking Creole or French you had ever seen the inside of a classroom or even been taught their ABCs but let me tell you those students were hungry you hear me hungry they studied like their lives depended on it they blazed through their lessons and that hunger for Education lasted for Generations in the
12:30 African-American Community here in New Orleans when an arsonist Set Fire to the school's library in 1877 they built a new one when those two original schools ran into financial troubles years later they started making plans to build an even bigger and better University and in the 1930s when white folks complain that this new school would mean too many black students on their
13:00 buses the folks at the school got the city to add a bus line just for their students because nothing nothing was going to stop them from achieving the vision of those early Founders and finally in May of 1934 they broke ground for this school Dillard University a university that would go on to produce some of the leading thinkers
13:31 and Achievers in our country and the day the Cornerstone was laid for your library the president of Howard University spoke these words he said their lies in this Southland today buried in unmarked Graves many a black genius who would have blessed this city and this section of our country if only his parents could have had before them the Dillard diversity you are now building and in the years since then
14:05 through segregation and depression through threats of violence and the flood waters of a devastating storm students like you have come here to study and to learn and to carry forward those hopes and dreams and today I stand before a sea of young geniuses oh yeah so
14:37 graduates I I hope that you understand that this day is not just the culmination of your own dreams but the realization of the dreams of so many who came before you and and and you should be so proud and so happy and so excited about your futures but what you shouldn't be is satisfied see because while it is a wonderful thing
15:09 that all of you are here today we have to ask ourselves what about all those Geniuses who never get this chance I'm talking about the young people right here in New Orleans and across the country who aren't part of a commencement like this one today kids no different from all of us kids who never made it out of high school the fact is that today yeah the high school graduation rate for black students is improving but
15:38 it is still lower than just about any other group in this country and while college graduation rates have risen for nearly every other demographic including African-American women the college graduation rate for africanamerican men has flatlined see and the thing is when when our young people people fall behind like that in school they fall behind in life last year African-Americans were more than
16:10 twice as likely as whites to be unemployed they were almost three times as likely to live in poverty and they were far more likely to end up in prison or be the victims of violent crimes now perhaps when you hear these statistics you might think to yourself well those numbers are terrible but I'm not part of the problem and you might be thinking that since you're not one of those statistics and you sitting here wearing
16:41 that nice black robe today you can go on your way and never look back but but folks like you and me we can't afford to think like that never see because we're the lucky ones and we can never forget that we didn't get where we are today all on our own we got here today because of so many people who toiled and sweat and bled and died for us people like our parents and
17:13 grandparents and all those who came before them people who never dreamed of getting a college education themselves but who worked and saved and sacrificed so that we could be here today we owe them we owe them and the only way to pay back that debt is by making those same kinds of sacrifices and Investments for the next
17:44 generation and and I know sitting here right now that task could seem a bit overwhelming I know it could seem like the deck is stacked way too high against our young people and the truth is that some of the problems we Face structural inequality schools that lag behind workplace and housing discrimination those problems are too big for one person to fix on their own but that's still no excuse to stand on the
18:16 sidelines because we know that today education is still the key to real and Lasting Freedom it is still true today so it is now up to us to cultivate that hunger for education in our own lives and in those around us and we know that hunger is still out there we know it we see it in students like DeShawn and Nicole and all of you who scraped and clawed so you could make it to this
18:47 day we see it in the single moms who work three jobs so their kids might have a shot at earning a degree like yours we see that hunger were all around the world and that young woman named Malala who was shot on her school bus in Pakistan just for speaking out in support of girls getting an education and the more than 200 girls kidnapped from their own School in Nigeria for wanting an
19:19 education young people who were knowingly risking their lives every day just to go to school and in fact you've seen that hunger right here at Dillard your valedictorian three salutatorians are all from [Applause] Nigeria they studied hard at an early age earned scholarships to come here to this University achieved 4.0 GPA and now they
19:52 are off pursuing master's degrees work in software development teaching math and science young people here in the United States see now that's the kind of hunger for Education that we have to reignite in all of our communities it's the same hunger that gave life to this University the same hunger that Divine defin so many of our parents and grandparents including my own you see my parents never went to
20:23 college but they were determined to see me and my brother and all the kids in our neighborhood get a good education so my mother volunteered at my school helping out every day in the front office making sure our teachers were doing their jobs holding their feet to the fire she thought they were falling short I'd walk by the office and there she'd be I'd leave class to go to the bathroom there she'd be again roaming the Halls
20:53 looking in the classrooms and of course as a kid have to say that was a bit mortifying having your mother at school all the time but looking back I have no doubt that my classmates and I got a better education because she was looking over those teachers shoulders you see my mom was not a teacher or a principal or a school board member but when it came to education she had that
21:24 hunger so she believed that our education was very much her business and we need more people who think and act like my mother and all those mothers out there because the education of our young people is all of our business that's what emperor Williams thought that's what the folks here in New Orleans thought as they work to rebuild this campus after Katrina and as graduates of Dillard University that's how we need you to think every single day for the rest of
21:55 your lives you all have have opportunities and skills and education that so many folks who came before you never could have dreamed of so just imagine the kind of impact that you're going to make imagine how you can Inspire those around you to reach higher and complete their own education and and you can start small start by volunteering at an after school program or helping some high school kids fill out their college
22:26 applications show them the path that you took or you can think a little bigger you can get your entire congregation or your community to start a mentoring program maybe convince your new employer to sponsor scholarships for underprivileged kids or maybe you could think a little higher maybe you could run for Schoolboard or Congress or yes even president of the United States and then maybe maybe you could
22:59 build preschools for every single one of our kids maybe you could help turn that pipeline to prison into a highway to college help give every child in America an education that is truly worthy of their promise those are the kind of Big Dreams that folks who founded this University reach for that is how high they set their bar and so we owe it to those folks the folks who had the audacity to call their little schools universities and name
23:30 their baby boys Emperor we owe it to them to reach as high as they did and to bring others along the way as the history of this school has taught us no dream is too big no vision is too bold as long as we stay hungry for education and let that hunger be our North Star there is nothing graduates nothing that we cannot not achieve so graduates this is your
24:02 mission this is your obligation I want you to keep reaching higher I want you all to keep raising your bars let the Next Generation know that there is no greater investment than a good education and if you do all of this then I am confident that you will uphold that Duty and write your own chapter into the legacy of this great University and let me tell you something I cannot wait to see the world that your
24:31 children will be born into congratulations I love you all I am honored to be here I am proud of you God bless you and thank your families [Applause]
25:02 Mr President it is my privilege to PR present to you Mrs Michelle Obama candidate for the honorary degree of doctor of Humane [Applause] letters it gives me a great deal of pleasure to present this award to someone who has demonstrated what it means to serve no matter what station you hold in life you exemplify one of the tenants that we hold dear in our
25:33 mission that is to develop students who are culturally aware and concerned with The Human Condition you have demonstrated this through your work and your focus on Health Nutrition and the environment you have mobilized the entire country and you've got us all moving eating fresh vegetables and doing our part to conserve and protect the planet your work with military families reminds us of our responsibility to care for those who make personal sacrifices so that we can live and enjoy Peace and
26:04 Freedom in the greatest country on Earth you are the epitome of poise with power a role model for young women in America especially little black girls and while as a people we respect your great intellectual Acumen we love your dress game the arms out showing the guns and the hair is
26:35 Flawless therefore on recommendation of the faculty and with the approval by the dillet university Board of Trustees I confer upon you the honorary degree of doctor of Humane letters honorous CA with all the rights Privileges and responsibilities appertaining there unto [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]
27:08 [Applause] gradate dard e