It’s graduation week at universities across the country, so we thought we’d use this space to do two very important things. The first, of course, is to CONGRATULATE the recent graduates from our home, the University of Pennsylvania, but also the various other institutes of higher learning across the nation. In many ways, your hard work was probably realized in the personal and professional validation you received from your peers, professors, and co-workers. But there’s always going to be something profoundly satisfying about donning that funny robe, walking across that stage, and adding a new suffix to your name.
We’d like to start with Chadwick Boseman (aka “The Black Panther” himself) who delivered a stirring commencement address at Howard University. An alum of the esteemed HBCU himself, Boseman delivered a speech that highlighted the complex intersections of race and representation for him and more broadly for the culture in its current moment, sharing a story about his first acting job and his ultimate self-sacrifice to ensure further opportunities for three-dimensional representation of black Americans in the future. After the wild success of the Black Panther film, Boseman has emerged as a Hollywood griot of sorts—engaging in the kind of truth-telling and demanding the full rendering of himself and others of the African diaspora. That assumption of responsibility runs through his speech, which is worth watching in its entirety. “Purpose is an essential element of you,” he says. “It is the reason you are on the planet at this particular time in history.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G69cNuCQoJo
Here at the University of Pennsylvania, Makuu, the university’s black cultural center, shared two powerful photos of its cohort of 2018 graduates. The first depicts dozens of black students raising their fists in the Black Power salute, an homage to the Sixties protest moment that lent today’s social movements much of their vocabulary, tactics, and beating heart. This sense of history—these students clearly know theirs—grounds the second image, where the students assume Black Panther’s “Wakanda Forever” salute. Pairing these images connects the hard groundwork of this remarkable and revolutionary generation to the work of their forebears with a kind of genealogical perspective often missing from contemporary social movement organizing. We are proud to have watched these students grow and assume the mantle of their destiny.
In their continued commitment to covering historically black colleges and universities, ESPN’s sports-and-race platform The Undefeated provided a handy list of the commencement speakers for each of the nation’s 101 proud HBCUs. Some highlights (which either have surfaced on video or will soon, we’re sure) are journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones (Xavier University of Louisiana, May 12), newsman Roland Martin (Texas Southern, May 12), Penn alum and former New Orleans mayor Marc Morial (Johnson C. Smith University, May 20), and journalist and author April Ryan (Bennett College, May 5 and Claflin University, May 12).
We’d also like to draw special attention to Dr. Kellie Jones, who will receive an honorary degree from her alma mater Amherst College alongside Nigerian author (and fellow MacArthur “Genius” fellow) Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, political theorist Danielle Allen, and other esteemed luminaries this Sunday, May 20. Dr. Jones and the other honorees will give free, public lectures and conversations on Saturday, May 19; Kellie’s is titled “Women and the Dreamwork” and will be held at the university’s Pruyne Lecture Hall in Fayerweather Hall.
While his image has taken an unfamiliar hit after his tweet suggesting black people need not be Democrats, Chance the Rapper remains an inspiring figure for many due to his sincerity and orientation towards good works. Chance delivered a powerful commencement address at Dillard University, the New Orleans HBCU that traces its history to 1869. “The difference between goodness and greatness is going beyond,” Chance, who picked up an honorary doctorate in the process, told the graduating class in a speech that further contextualized the present moment. “You have to push forward and surpass their greatness in order to pay homage to their struggle.” Watch Chance’s full speech here:
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