(jazzy music)
(audience applauding)
(jazzy music)
(audience applauding)
(gentle piano music)
(African drumming)
(audience applauding)
(audience applauding)
(speaking in foreign language)
- Grant peace, goodness,
and blessing in this world.
Grace, love, and mercy over all of us
and all your people, Israel.
(speaking in foreign language)
Bless us, source of being, all of us
as one amid your light.
(speaking in foreign language)
For by your light,
compassionate one, our God,
you give to us Torah of
life and love and kindness,
justice, blessing, mercy, life, and peace.
(speaking in foreign language)
So may it be a good thing in your eyes
to bless all people with
abundant strength and peace.
(speaking in foreign language)
Blessed are you, source
of life, maker of peace.
And let us say amen.
- [Man] Amen.
- On behalf of the Dean
of the Duke Chapel,
Reverend Dr. Luke A.
Powery, the Chapel staff,
and the Martin Luther King,
Jr. Celebration Committee,
I want to welcome you this afternoon
to this service of commemoration
celebrating the life
and legacy of the Reverend
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Reverend Dr. King was a
prophet and a preacher
who understood the power of words
and the power of people compelled
together by those words.
Dr. King used his
powerful words to proclaim
a vision for an America marked
by liberty and justice for all.
He used his poetic words
to shape the imaginations
of generations and used
his prayerful words
to call on God to change
the hearts and minds
of people who prefer the
false tranquility of lies
over the creative trouble of truth.
One note in manner of truth
telling about your program,
you will see the land acknowledgement
is Miss Derion Herndon, rather
than Mr. Derion Herndon.
So note that in your bulletin.
So let us use our words
together in honor of Dr. King
as we join together in prayer
using a prayer that Dr.
King himself prayed.
Most gracious and all wise God,
before whose face the
generations rise and fall,
thou in whom we live and
move and have our being,
we thank thee for all of
thy good and gracious gifts.
For life and for health,
for food and for raiment,
for the beauties of
nature and human nature.
We come before thee painfully aware
of our inadequacies and shortcomings.
We realize that we stand surrounded
with the mountains of love
and we deliberately dwell
in the valley of hate.
We stand amid the forces of
truth and deliberately lie.
We are forever offered the high road
and yet we choose to travel the low road.
For these sins, oh God, forgive.
Break the spell of that
which binds our minds.
Purify our hearts, that we may see thee.
Oh, God, in these turbulent days,
when fear and doubt are mounting high,
give us broad visions, penetrating eyes,
and power of endurance.
Help us to work with renewed vigor
for a whirless world, for a
better distribution of wealth,
and for a brotherhood that
transcends race or color.
Amen.
- [Multiple People] Amen.
(speaking in foreign language)
Hello, my name is Derion Herndon
and I am a member of the Lumbee tribe
and I will start this process off
with a land acknowledgement.
A land acknowledgement
is a formal statement
that recognizes and
respects indigenous people
as traditional stewards of this land
and the enduring relationship that exists
between indigenous peoples and their
traditional territories.
To recognize the land is
an expression of gratitude,
an appreciation to those whose territories
that you reside on and a way of honoring
the indigenous peoples
who have been living here
and working the land from time immemorial.
It is important to understand
the longstanding history
that has brought you to reside on the land
and to seek and understand
your place within that history.
Land acknowledgements do not exist
in a past tense or a historical context,
as colonialism is an ongoing process.
Therefore, we acknowledge that this space
and the greater university gathers on land
that is long-served as the
site of meeting and exchange
among numerous indigenous peoples,
historically the Shakori
and Catawba peoples.
It is also important to
recognize the eight tribes
that currently reside in North Carolina.
These include the Coharie, the Lumbee,
the Meherrin, Occaneechi
Band of Saponi Nation,
the Haliwa-Saponi,
Waccamaw-Siouan, Sappony,
and the Eastern Band of Cherokee.
We honor and respect these
diverse indigenous peoples
connected on this territory
in which we gather today.
Thank you.
(audience applauding)
- On behalf of the Duke community,
I'm honored to welcome you to Duke Chapel
for this celebration of
the life and the legacy
of the Reverend Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Each year we gather in this sacred space
to remember Dr. King's great contributions
to the struggle for civil rights,
to take stock of our continuing progress
and occasional setbacks
on the road to equality,
and to re-commit to building a nation
that lives up to its noblest aspirations
of freedom and justice for all.
This year's commemoration
is a fitting reminder
of the great promise of this institution
and others like it.
Communities of extraordinary people who,
by working together, have the power
to bend the arc of the
universe toward justice.
We are proud to train students
to be independent thinkers
and support scholars in
groundbreaking research
and in so doing, open up
new worlds of possibility.
At the same time, we set out
to harness these resources
toward the development of our society
and the economic and social
empowerment of our neighbors.
It is through these
dual missions that Duke
is helping to bring to life the legacy
of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
and as we gather here today,
let us honor his memory
by re-committing to serving our community
as we strive together
for equality and justice.
(audience applauding)
- Friends, this is a serious day
and I have an especially serious topic
to bring to us today.
On this Martin Luther King
Day, the City of Durham,
of which I'm honored to be the mayor,
is challenged by a moral
crisis in the life of our city,
the relocation of 280 families
from the McDougald Terrace
Public Housing Community
now about to enter its third week
because of concerns about
the health and safety
of their apartments.
Never have Dr. King's words
and the example of his life
been more salient in
Durham than they are now.
"We are caught in an inescapable
network of mutuality,"
Dr. King said, "tied in a
single garment of destiny.
"Whatever affects one directly,
affects all indirectly."
And that is certainly the
case with our neighbors
from McDougald Terrace.
All of us in this city
that we love so much,
are tied in a single garment of destiny
with the people of McDougald Terrace.
What we do to end this
crisis for our neighbors,
how we respond beyond
their crisis to their need
for safety and affordable housing
will define us as a
community and as a city.
Our hearts go out to
the relocated residents.
I have talked to many residents one-on-one
about the burdens they are
facing and I have been struck
by the way they have
weathered this emergency
with great dignity, unity, and patience.
Durham Housing Authority
Director Anthony Scott
took over the Housing Authority shortly
after I was elected mayor, two years ago,
and he is an outstanding leader.
No one knew there were high CO readings
at McDougald Terrace until recently
and when they were discovered,
Mr. Scott immediately
made the decision to
relocate the residents
because their safety
was his first priority.
The crisis at McDougald Terrace and many
public housing communities in
Durham and across the nation
has been 40 years in the making.
The federal government has abandoned
the public housing it owns,
not even providing enough money
for the most basic repairs.
So in Durham we have,
over the past two years,
stepped in to do ourselves the work
that the federal
government should be doing.
In these two years, we've
allocated $15 million
in city funds to support
the Housing Authority's
renovation of several communities,
including the several hundred units
in the Daymar Court and
Maureen Road communities,
just a little ways from Duke Chapel.
In addition, just two
month ago, as you all know,
we put before the voters a $95 million
affordable housing bond,
$60 million of which
is for the Durham Housing
Authority's redevelopment.
And thanks to you, this bond
won overwhelming passage.
This bond issue will help
the Housing Authority
redevelopment several more crumbling
public housing communities
and it has freed up $7 million
in the Housing Authority's
funds for the improvement
of McDougald Terrace in this coming year.
But McDougald Terrace is 66-years-old.
As I hear from many of
the residents themselves,
it needs to be torn down and replaced.
We need to help these
families through this crisis
improve their housing in the short-term
and then replace it with
the excellent housing
that they deserve.
Throughout this ordeal, we have seen
an incredible outpouring of generosity
from the Durham Community to support
the McDougald Terrace families.
I know many of you have
contributed your time
or food or funds.
On behalf of our entire
community, I thank you.
You are helping us weather this storm.
But we must do more
than weather the storm.
When the storm is over,
when the seas are calm,
we must, as a city
government and a community,
do what the federal
government has failed to do
and that is use the
money of our housing bond
and whatever over resources
we need to make available
to house all of our
public housing residents,
in McDougald Terrace, in Olden Towers,
in Liberty Street Apartments,
and all of them in excellent housing.
These, other than the truly homeless,
are our most vulnerable neighbors
and we must make this right.
I know that's my responsibility
and I'll be working
on it everyday and I call upon
you to join me in that work.
For as Dr. King said,
"We are bound in a single
garment of destiny."
If we do this work well, we can truly make
the city we love a city for all.
Thank you.
(audience applauding)
(singing in foreign language)
- Awesome.
(audience applauding)
Good afternoon.
- [Multiple People] Good afternoon.
- On behalf of the Duke
Health family, greetings.
On July 21, 1930, when Dr. King
was a mere 17-year-old child,
Duke University Hospital opened its doors
to its first patients.
That same year, medical
school classes began
and the following year, the
School of Nursing opened.
While much has changed
over the past 90 years,
our core values have remained unchanged.
A focus on excellence and
taking care of our people,
whether they are our
patients and their families,
our faculty, staff,
students, and trainees,
or the broader communities
in which we serve.
This auspicious day
commemorating Dr. King's
91st birthday provides
us with an opportunity
to reflect on a personal level how we
can embrace the values that Dr. King
so eloquently articulated
and fiercely pursued.
For us, in the world of health,
one of Dr. King's values was
expressed quite poignantly
in the quote, and I quote...
In this quote, and I quote, "Of
all the forms of inequality,
"injustice in health is the most shocking
"and most inhumane."
End of quote.
Dr. King was, in words and deeds,
one of the most effective advocates
for equality in health and healthcare
to have lived in our time.
He understood long before most
of our leaders in healthcare did,
that socioeconomic and
environmental factors
were among the most
significant determinants
of health and well-being.
When Dr. King delivered
his fiery speech in Chicago
about segregated and
unfair housing policies
and paved the way for the
U.S. Fair Housing Act of 1968,
he was advocating for health.
When Dr. King pushed for funding
to provide high quality
education for poor Americans
and escorted children and young adults
to their newly integrated
schools across the South,
he was advocating for health.
And when Dr. King
launched and led campaigns
from Birmingham to Boston demanding jobs,
unemployment insurance,
and a fair minimum wage,
he was advocating for health.
So on days like today
when we're all celebrating
and honoring this unparalleled champion
for civil rights and equality,
we're also remembering one of the nation's
most effective champions
for health and well-being.
So it is my honor, on behalf
of all in Duke Health,
to again say welcome.
Thank you.
(audience applauding)
- As we gather here today in order
to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
we are challenged to
think about how he lived.
As an ardent activist,
minister, and organizer,
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. set out
to galvanize groups of people
to realize the power in their voices
and fight for their interest for justice,
for fairness, and for equity.
I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri,
just one suburb over from
where Michael Brown was killed.
I was just 15-years-old.
As I watched the Ferguson
uprising unravel,
in August of 2014, I
was forced to make sense
of the things happening around me,
including the protests.
For almost three consecutive weeks,
I watched the powerless become powerful
as they forced the rest of the nation
to bear witness to their struggle
and systemic issues in
the wealth, education,
health, and treatment of
black and brown people
at the hands of the police.
The people of Ferguson rose up
in the name of Michael Brown
and demanded a better nation
for black and brown people.
Dr. King's legacy continues to live on
through our current movements
that have manifested
across communities across the nation,
from Ferguson to Baltimore to New York
to McDougald Terrace in
Durham, North Carolina,
where black women have
been organizing for years
to shed light on the
disregard for low income
black and brown people in Durham.
Today, we will have the privilege
to hear from our guest of honor,
the first black gubernatorial
nominee in Florida,
Mr. Andrew Gillum.
Mr. Gillum epitomizes the legacy
of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
He works to empower and enfranchise those
in his surrounding communities,
as evident through his work and campaigns
like Bring It Home
Florida, in which he vowed
to register 1 million
new voters in Florida
before this year's Presidential Election.
This is the kind of leadership
that Dr. Martin Luther King embodied.
As we listen to Mr. Gillum's words,
I encourage us all to
consider how we will use
our voices to empower those around us
and uplift our communities.
Thank you all for being
here to celebrate with us
and special thanks to Mr. Andrew Gillum.
(audience applauding)
- Hi, my name is Resilience Williamson
and today I'll be sharing a poem
about not just the sorrow but as well as
the sacrifice and the
strength and the power
that lies in black people.
To all my black brothers and sisters,
we are smarts, we are one of many kinds,
we are darn sure important.
We are melanated bodies of sunshine.
Through rain, sleet, and snow,
we still find the strength to grow.
Like the rose that grew from the concrete,
we are manifest of miracle shining light
into the next generation, lifting
the burdens without hands.
This is levitation.
This is the first step to freedom,
breaking the chains,
melts and weigh them down.
We mapped our dreams in the darkness,
we radiated enough black brilliance
to illuminate the night sky
and guide our children to freedom.
We are midnight constellations,
we are both black and magic.
We conjured up enough hymns of hope
to heal all that is broke but
we ain't broke, we are alive.
We waded through his water
and reached the other side.
We are powerful.
We were thrown into this battlefield
without supplies but still we survived
and we improvised, we are resilience.
It took us centuries to get here
but ain't God good and ain't we great.
Amen.
(audience applauding)
- God is good, y'all.
- That's right.
- Good afternoon.
My name is Adriana Williams.
I am a junior on the pre-med track
studying neuroscience with a minor
in African and African-American studies.
I am the Duke editor-in-chief
of The Bridge,
an online publication at Duke and UNC
that celebrates women of color.
I am also a proud member
of the Lambda Omega Chapter
of Delta Sigma Theta
Sorority, Incorporated.
Yep (chuckling).
It is my honor and privilege to introduce
our keynote speaker, Andrew Gillum.
(audience applauding)
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said,
"We must learn to live together
"as brothers or perish together as fools."
It is without question that the words
of Dr. King live on through
the mission and work
of our keynote speaker.
Mayor Andrew Gillum is a public servant,
community organizer, and
champion of voter equity.
While a student at Florida Agricultural
and Mechanical University
at the age of 21...
Yep (chuckling).
Mayor Gillum led a group of 1000 students
to protest Governor Jeb Bush's attempt
to end affirmative action.
He is the youngest person ever elected
to the Tallahassee City Commission
at the age of 23.
He served for 11 years before becoming
Mayor of the City of Tallahassee,
which happens to be my hometown.
He is more well-known, however,
for being the 2018 Florida
Democratic Gubernatorial nominee.
He was the first, as Deja said,
the first black gubernatorial nominee
in the Florida Democratic party's history.
During his gubernatorial campaign,
Mayor Gillum bought hundreds of thousands
of Floridians together, of
all identifies and beliefs
in pursuit of fundamental human rights.
He fought for Floridians
rights for well-paying jobs
and high-quality, affordable education.
He believes that healthcare
is a fundamental right
rather than a privilege.
He also believes that citizens
should not live in fear of gun violence
in our schools or communities.
I will forever remember
my first time voting
because Mayor Gillum was the
first gubernatorial candidate
I casted a vote for.
Although he came shy of
winning the 2018 election
by only 0.4%, Mayor Gillum has continued
to create change in spite of that.
Following his run for governor,
he was honored as one
of the Ebony Power 100
and named a 2019 Resident Fellow
at the Institute of Politics
at Harvard Kennedy School.
Mayor Gillum serves as the
Chair of For Florida Action,
a grassroots organization dedicated
to increasing the number
of registered voters
in the State of Florida.
You can also see him regularly on CNN
as a political commentator,
oftentimes along
with April Ryan, Angela
Rye, and Bakari Sellers.
Many of you know our keynote speaker
for all of his accolades and achievements.
As for me, this moment is extra special
because I know him as my uncle.
(audience awwing)
For as long as I can
remember, Andrew Gillum,
or as I call him, Uncle Andrew,
has been a champion of the people,
a man of purpose and action,
a phenomenal father and husband,
which shout out to his wife, my auntie RJ,
and someone I look up to more
than I can express in words.
It is my honor to welcome to the podium,
my uncle, Mayor Andrew Gillum.
(audience applauding)
- Beautiful speech, beautiful speech.
All right.
Oh, come on.
Come on, y'all.
Thank you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank y'all very, thank
y'all very, very much.
We are still below the Mason-Dixon Line
so y'all is still appropriate.
(audience laughing)
In case it comes out a couple of times
throughout my remarks,
it is not by accident
and it also is not forced,
it's just how I was bought up.
(audience laughing)
I want to thank Adriana, who
I could not be more proud of.
I will tell you, I forewarned
her that if she went
to personal or embarrassing,
that I had the last word
'cause I was comin' after her.
(audience laughing)
And I'm leaving tonight but she gotta stay
and graduate from Duke University.
She has always been a
young woman of grace,
of class, of style.
Her mother, who is my wife's line sister
in Delta Sigma Theta
Sorority, Incorporated.
I have known Adriana since
she was in holding position,
actually in her mother's belly.
I am extremely proud of
the example that she sets
for my younger daughter,
Caroline, who is a five-year-old.
She knows Adriana 'cause
every time Adriana
comes home, we pimp her out for
a little bit of babysitting.
(audience laughing)
We pay decent,
I think we at least meet the
$15 minimum wage standard
that I talk about
(audience laughing)
so often in politics.
But Adriana, we couldn't
be more proud of you.
I can not wait to see
what the future holds.
But I know one thing, the future
is exceedingly bright for you.
And not just for you but
judging by this program so far,
are these not the most exceptional
young people that we have seen.
(audience applauding)
Y'all are bad.
Y'all are bad, y'all are bad.
And you know what, with
a spoken word like that,
your name better be Resilience.
(audience laughing)
I know that much.
(audience applauding)
I want to thank President Price
for the opportunity to be here.
Mayor Steve Shore, I
have been in your shoes
and I understand what it feels like.
I know that unfortunately,
the crises are always coming,
they're always present.
And without knowing all the particulars
of what this community faces but having
some sensitivity to issues
that face communities,
I would ask that you send prayers,
well wishes up for this
mayor, for this city council.
Even if you don't philosophically
agree, pray for wisdom.
If you didn't necessarily
vote or him and support him,
although I'm sure all of
you did overwhelmingly
(audience laughing)
find out what you can do
to strengthen his hand
and help to guide his leadership
so that he can be the best
mayor for the Durham Community
that Durham has ever seen.
I wish you well mayor.
Chancellor Eugene Washington,
congratulations on your appointment.
So, so exceedingly proud for you.
Provost Sally Cornbluff,
very, very good to see you
across this very formal
setting here we've got up here.
Vice President Kim
Hewitt, thank you so much
for being such a gracious host to me
since we arrived here on campus.
And then to all of you,
there's some formalities
that we gotta go through
but y'all are the VVIPs.
The ones who decided on Sunday,
on an afternoon when you could
be doing a whole bunch else
that you decided to come
and not think it robbery
to hear just a few of my thoughts
as we enter this new 2020 year.
And as I close my acknowledgements,
I can not, can not, can not, can not
end these acknowledgements
without acknowledging the Rattlers,
the members of the Florida
Agricultural and Mechanical
University Family.
(audience hissing)
Y'all, I know we're at Duke University,
but the Rattlers are present,
we tend to take over.
So I want to give a shout
out to my alma mater,
Florida A & M University.
(audience cheering and applauding)
And I'm especially honored this evening
because the first female president
of Florida A & M University,
Dr. Almira Mangum,
I saw coming down is also in the audience.
Will you just stand and wave, Dr. Mangum,
(audience applauding)
so that we can see you?
This is her hometown, y'all,
so y'all can give her that hometown love,
her home state rather.
And I gotta say this in the presence
of all of my Rattler Family.
I do this at the
possibility of some jeers,
but Florida A & M University was not
my first choice for college.
Bear with me.
(audience laughing)
My first choice for university,
because I didn't come from
a background in my family
where we went on to higher education.
My mother was a school bus driver
and my dad was a construction worker.
My dad had a third grade education
and my mother didn't finish high school.
I'm the fifth of seven kids in my family
and the first of my siblings
to graduate from high school
and go to college.
But I share that to say that
I got introduced to
this little known school
called Hillman College
back in the '90s as a kid.
Now some of y'all will know that,
others of you may be too young for it,
others of you may be too
young at heart for it.
But Hillman College
was popularized through
this little known show
called A Different World.
Now as a young person, who
wasn't very well-exposed
to higher education,
this was the first time
that I was able to look up
and to see myself reflected.
I saw people who looked like me,
who sounded like me, who may have come
from backgrounds that were similar to mine
and they were doing their thing.
And I would be remiss if I also didn't add
that when I saw Whitley
Gilbert and Jalisa,
I just knew I was going
to Hillman College.
(audience laughing)
And I'm not joking, y'all,
I went all the way through high school
and when I was a student
in high shool when,
and I know young folks may
not be able to relate to this,
but back then, you used
to have to fill out
a Scantron, that correlated the digits
of the school that you
wanted your SAT to be sent to
and obviously the SAT
Center would send it there.
So they had a big old long list
of all the universities.
And I am literally scouring this list,
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I...
(audience laughing)
I get through the Hs
and go over the Hs again
and then I realize
(audience laughing)
that Hillman is an HBCU, so maybe it's
at the back of the book.
(audience laughing)
And I go (chuckling) to the back thinking
maybe Hillman's gonna be
there and there is no Hillman
but I'm so convinced
that this is my school
that I go to the guidance
counselor, indignant,
(audience laughing)
that I have a defective form.
(audience laughing)
Long story short, she informed me that day
that Hillman College existed
only in the 9 PM hour
on Thursday nights (laughing).
The good news is, y'all, is
that I would find my Hillman
at Florida A & M University
(audience cheering)
and I would find my Jalisa there.
As we are here this evening to reflect
on the contributions of Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.,
the point is not lost on me that
as I stand here at this
podium that I am older
than Dr. King was when he died.
That causes two reactions for me.
The first one being, Gillum,
you gotta get off the ball.
What the heck are you doin'?
There's a lot of life that
you still have to live
and things that you need to accomplish.
And then the second thought that I have,
and this is really for our young folks
but also our young at heart,
age ain't nothin' but a number.
This man had the will to get out there
and to activate, to
create the kind of world
that in his heart and in his nerve
and in his sinew he believed
every single one of us,
regardless of the color of our skin
and where we come from, deserved.
Principally, he believed that black people
in this country deserved
to be treated as equals.
What a provocative notion.
As we celebrate Dr. King's life,
I hope that we take guidance,
not only from the past
and his many contributions,
but that we also use the past
to inform our work in the future.
Now Dr. King was in some cases a futurist.
This future that he talked
about was firmly grounded
in Dr. King's words of 1957 on the steps
of the Lincoln Memorial
in a speech entitled
Give Us The Ballot.
By this time, Brown v. Board
of Education had been decided,
boycotts all throughout
the South had opened up
doors of opportunity
that were previously shut
to people of color and
the only thing remaining
was the franchise, the right to vote
being extended in its most
true and honest fashion.
Dr. King called this wave of change
a great beacon of light,
of hope to millions
of disinherited people
throughout the world
who had only dared to dream of freedom.
He said give us the
ballot and we will place
judges on the benches of the South
who will do justly and love mercy.
And we will place at the
head of Southern states
governors who have not only
felt the tang of the human
but the glow of the divine.
For me, when I think about Dr. King,
I can't help but to revert
back to my own family
and the story of my own family.
Now I've gotta be honest,
frankly, like most
Black Americans, my
parents and grandparents
did not march with Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Nor did they march on Washington,
nor did they sit at lunch
counters in Greensboro
or line up at the Edmond
Pettis Bridge in Selma.
But I will tell you this much,
they made sure that a young man,
even at my tender age, knew the names
of the heroes and the sheroes who did.
All of those who stood in resilience,
who stood in their own courage,
who made sacrifice and struggle.
And the most beautiful
part of the sacrifice
and struggle is that
they were not convinced
that the moment that they were rendering
that sacrifice and that struggle
that they would be around
to be the benefactors of their labor.
I learned about them from my mom,
who was a school bus driver and my daddy,
as I said before, who was
a construction worker.
And when I think about my mother,
as a school bus driver, and try to put it
in some metaphorical context
of what Dr. King was doing,
I'm reminded of Dr. King's
journey through Montgomery.
And that simple demand of people
on their way to work,
from one place to another,
folks who just wanted to get to school
or to run their errands and to be able
to do it with fairness and to be able
to do it with dignity
and if they so chose,
to take a seat at the front of the bus
without their being any repercussion.
When I think of my
father's construction work,
and again try to figure it out
into a context of Dr. King's work,
I think of what he helped to build.
And I remember Dr. King's
journey for equal access.
And then I remember how
often must it have been
that men like my father built doorways
that they themselves could not enter.
My family story is one that holds
the legacy of Dr. King
and what he talked about
and so many of our
parents and grandparents
worked for day in and day out.
As Dr. King said, "Let's
build dykes of courage
"to hold back the flood of fear."
How many of y'all know that we've got
some fearful times and we're
living in some fearful times?
Well Dr. King gave us a
recipe to deal with this.
He encouraged us to lean into
our most courageous selves.
My parents told me that I had a duty
to march through every single doorway
that the Civil Rights Movement
had kicked open for me.
And that along the way that I would need
to open some doors for those
who would come behind me,
this idea of passing it on,
the ability to lift as we climb.
That said, the debt that
those folks paid for us,
these giants, whose shoulders
upon which we stand,
accordingly, frankly
according to my grandmother.
She said the only way
that I was gonna be able
to get on this journey
of paying this thing back
was to get my education.
Now my grandmother, who
had a third grade education
and was a mother to 16 children...
I know, I heard the groans.
(audience laughing)
They were from Georgia,
it was workforce, y'all.
(audience laughing)
My grandmother was a woman
of hard-earned wisdom
and deep compassion and instilled in me
a love of learning and made me appreciate,
quite frankly, wisdom.
And I didn't always associate
wisdom with anything
other that education but
my grandmother taught me
what wisdom was.
My grandmother, a woman who was
very stern in our upbringing
because my mother and
father would have to get up
so early in the morning to
tote themselves off to work,
they would load me and
my siblings into the car.
And we would drive just a
short distance down the block
in Miami, Florida and get dropped off
at my grandmother and grandfather's house.
My grandmother would let
us sleep a little while
before she would get us up
and get us ready for the day
and she would perform two rituals,
I would come to call them.
They were practices, it
was a lifestyle for her.
The first ritual was is that
before she would allow
us to cross the threshold
of the door, she would take
her bottle of olive oil,
it was also known as blessing oil,
and she would twist off
that bottle of olive oil,
that top, and she would dip that bottle
over into one finger and
take that residue oil
and she'd build a cross on my forehead.
It was her way of sending
me out into the day
with a blessing that no
harm would come my way.
And then my grandmother
would light into this mantra
and she would say, "Boy, go to school.
"Mind your teachers, get your lesson,
"and one day bring that education home."
She would say, "Bring it
home for your little brother
"and your little sister who don't know
"what an education is yet, bring it home.
"Bring it home for that little boy
"down the street that you play with,
"'cause God knows where he gonna end up."
And she was right, his name was Tyrone.
(audience laughing)
Tyrone was always in trouble.
If there are any folks in this room,
who carry the name Tyrone,
blessings to you and good luck.
(audience laughing)
But I digress.
My grandmama said, "Bring
it home for your mama
"and yo' daddy, who
get up every single day
"to go out there and slave
on somebody else's job
"in order to keep a roof over your head
"and clothes on your back
and food on the table,
"bring it home."
Now y'all, I didn't know all the way
what my grandmother was
trying to communicate
in those moments but what
I would come to learn
is that my grandmother was in many ways
describing what Dr. King described,
which was that we, all of us,
are tied up together.
And you've heard these terms already,
in an inextricably linked bond.
You see, during that
time, we believed that
if I did good in life, we
would all do good in life.
There was the belief that we
would end this thing together.
And the truth is, the
moments were not always good.
But the strength of those
bonds that sustained my family,
even during some of those darkest times,
when my four oldest
brothers all had run-ins
with the criminal justice system
and all earned criminal
justice backgrounds.
It was the strength of those bonds
that broke the chain of despair
and allowed me to attend
a world class institution.
It was those bonds, broken,
that allowed not only
for me to go to college but to see
my little brother and
little sister come behind me
and do the same thing.
You can't tell us we
don't know what it means
to see intergenerational
poverty disrupted,
thanks to the access to
a good public education.
(audience applauding)
So suffice it to say,
when I stood on that stage
in November of 2018 looking out
on that very, very large
crowd that had assembled
on the steps of Florida A & M University,
hoping to hear a victory
speech that night,
I gotta tell you, I had a
sense that ran through me
that I may have let my grandmother down.
I looked out on that crowd,
the people who I consider are the ones
who really lose when we
lose these elections.
These folks were from all walks of life
and they devoted countless
hours and days and weeks
and months and over
years into our campaign
and they put their faith in me
and I said, "I sincerely regret
"that I could not bring
this home for you."
And I've gotta be honest with you, Duke,
that lost hurt and
sometimes it still hurts.
And I put loss in quotes,
30,000 vote difference
and 87,000 votes not
counted, but who's counting.
(audience laughing)
The truth is, what I realized is that
the legacy of my campaign was never going
to be defined by victory or defeat,
by the precincts that
we won or that we lost,
by who came out on top in
the very end necessarily.
That night more than 4 million Floridians
from every corner of the state,
black, white, rich, poor, men, women,
young, and young at heart,
sowed up to support me
in my campaign because
we believed collectively
in the possibility of something better.
And I gotta tell ya, I still do believe.
Just as no one bad day at school,
no one bad grade or bad
encounter with a teacher
could stop me from
bringing home an education
to my grandmother, no one election decided
by less than one half of 1% should stop us
from bringing home a better
future for our children.
As Frederick Douglass said...
(audience applauding)
True statement.
True statement.
As Frederick Douglass said,
"If there is no struggle,
"there is no progress."
That's the story of the
Civil Rights Movement, y'all.
That's the story of
America, I would submit.
Progress born of struggle,
resilience in the face of adversity.
On election night we had record
breaking turnout in Florida.
Our campaign may have come up short
but that same night our
citizens voted once and for all
to re-enfranchise 1.3
million former felons
(audience applauding)
through amendment four.
1.3 million people who
didn't have the right to vote
for decades and in some cases,
never had the right to vote,
but whose voices, if it's
the last thing that we do,
will have their voices
heard in our democracy
in November of 2020 and beyond,
and we're gonna work to make
sure that that is possible.
(audience applauding)
You see, that victory showed us
that change is really possible
but it's not necessarily
possible overnight.
But that if we all turned
out, if we all exercise
our democratic duty in
2020, then we can win.
You see our mandate in 2020 is that
our historical remembrance
of Dr. Martin Luther King,
is met with this moment, the
one that we now find ourselves.
Let's remind ourselves
of his discussion around
the fierce urgency of now.
You see, we have holidays,
we have memorials,
we have statues that celebrate Dr. King.
But the strongest monument that may be
the single most important
document that we have,
our strongest tribute to the legacy
of Dr. Martin Luther King and
what he fought so hard for,
along with our foot soldiers for justice,
may be the ballot itself.
The promissory note of
Dr. King's 1957 speech
on the power of the ballot
came to fruition years later
through the Voting Rights Act.
But we should value the
ballot as much as we value
the stone monuments in Washington, DC,
the street namings in
cities all across America
and the fire that burns for
him in Atlanta, Georgia.
Everyday we are fighting in Florida
and in Texas and in Georgia
and in North Carolina
to make the Voting Rights
Act mean something,
even as the other side,
whatever that other side
may be defined as, works
diligently to strip us
of that very hard-earned right.
We know the activist spirit
here in North Carolina
because many of you here have battled
the state efforts to suppress votes,
gerrymandering districts,
and rigging of elections.
Just last month, a
judge temporarily halted
a voter ID law.
In 2013, that version of a
voter ID law was rejected
when a judge said, and I
quote, "That that law targeted
"African-Americans with
almost surgical precision."
This is not by accident.
He tells us that it is
necessary to help time.
That's what Dr. King tells us,
it is necessary to help time.
Your votes are the help that we need
to make those leaps
forward in order for us
to truly have a reflective democracy.
What am I talking about, y'all?
I'm talking about
bringing Dr. King's spirit
and the legacy of his work
alive today in our communities
and there are a million things
in which we can engage in.
You all can think of a million things
right here in the Durham
Community that you could be doing.
North Carolina continues
to be a battleground state
for voting rights.
Out of this struggle, we've seen the work
of Reverend William Barber the Second.
Y'all can give him a round of applause.
(audience applauding)
He deserves it.
Through the Moral Monday campaigns
and the challenges that
this state still has to face
again to uphold Dr. King's legacy.
Dr. King said, "All we want from America
"is to be true to what you said on paper."
All we want from America is to be true
to what you said on paper.
Be true to the registration card,
be true to the voter roles.
Give us the ballot is
a history lesson y'all
but it's also a call to action.
It's a promissory note.
The right to vote is a promissory note
and guess what, in 2020
that promissory note is due.
Each primary, each general election,
is a chance for us to
commemorate his legacy
and to re-dedicate ourselves
to the hopes and dreams
of our ancestors and those who died
for freedom on our behalf.
While your North Carolina voter laws
do not allow college IDs,
the process, however,
do rather allow college IDs,
the process is so complicated,
that fewer than half
of the 180 schools here
have been able to complete it.
Y'all aren't alone.
In Florida, a federal judge
said that college campuses
must have voting precincts
and the Republican majority
in the Florida House said okay.
But in order for colleges
to have voting precincts
on campus, they must
exhibit that they have
sufficient parking for
people to come off campus
and vote on campus.
Now I don't know about y'all here at Duke,
I know y'all got fine facilities,
beautiful staff, wonderful administration,
but I don't know a single college campus
that has enough parking
spaces for its students,
let alone people that come off of it.
This is a covert attempt
to again suppress the vote.
Consider that Governor Roy
Cooper won by 10,000 votes
in the State of North Carolina,
with 500,000 undergraduate
students in the state.
Young people, for the first
time 18 to 35-year-olds
will outnumber Baby Boomers
by share of the electorate.
The largest percentage of the electorate
will be 18 to 35-year-olds.
Well y'all, these folks
don't go out of their way
to suppress the vote for no reason.
So some people say because
of these suppressive tactics,
does it make sense for
me to continue to vote?
Well that's a no-brainer.
I don't know about y'all, but the moment
somebody starts to get in my way
to erect barriers to keep me
from being able to access something,
that's when we go into overdrive.
We don't lay down and
let them roll over us.
(audience applauding)
We stand up, we fight back,
we demand our rights, and we win.
That is our obligation.
Your theme today is power to the people
and your power is
amplified by your numbers.
Duke and the colleges and
universities of this state
are at the center of power
and potential transformational action.
Y'all, we're in the academy.
We're not just in college,
we're not just here hanging out,
you're in the academy.
And the beauty of the academy
is is that you should not
depart this place the same way you came.
You should not leave this pristine campus
with the same biases
that you arrived with.
You should, in my opinion,
choose to be more curious
and less judging about what is different.
A lot of times, many folks take on
the blame the victim personality.
Well we're challenging you all
to take the next step
to pull back the layers
to think more critically
about the systemic structures
that stand in the way of your ability
to be able to live out and
fulfill your highest destiny.
When Dr. King was here in 1964,
he called out the appalling
silence of indifference
of good people who sit
around and say wait on time.
He went on to give the
audience a challenge.
He said somehow we must come to see
that human progress never rolls in
on the wheels of inevitability.
Translated, you just
can't sit back and wait,
we gotta do something.
(audience applauding)
Aren't you glad that Dr. King chose to be
impatient about change?
Aren't you glad that Rosa Parks decided
that a message of wait was out of time?
I'm proud that she sat down so
that I can stand up here today.
These were individuals
(audience applauding)
who again gave sacrifice
without knowing whether
they would ever be the benefactors.
Because of the life of Dr. King
and the lessons of the movement he led,
they taught us that if we keep fighting,
if we refuse to relent in
the face of difficulty,
justice delayed does not
have to mean justice denied.
Disappointment does not have
to be cause for despair.
And even when others count us out,
and I dare say, especially
when others count us out,
we have the ability to get back up,
to keep fighting, to go for the power
that we know belongs to
us, and to come out ahead.
I know that's what I plan to do
and I hope that there are a
few people in this audience
who are gonna join me in that effort
at demanding and seizing power.
To quote the barb Cardi B,
and this may be the first
tie y'all done heard
Cardi B quoted in a facility like this.
(audience laughing)
Don't attribute all her
lyrics to me but just a few.
(audience laughing)
Cardi B says, "You can
knock us down nine times,
"but we gonna get back up 10."
The question is then, what are gettin' up
and standing up for?
And this is a question that has plagued me
even after the race.
Well, first thing, I think it's important
for all of us to recognize that we've got
a lot more in common than what divides us.
That I want for my family in most part
what you want for your family.
I want for my child to be
able to grow up as a child
and not have to be infused
with adult instincts
when he goes out to
play on the playground.
That shouldn't be too much to ask.
Those of us living in today's society,
I hope that we know we're standing up
for a good economy.
And when I say a good economy,
I mean an economy that produces jobs
that equal more than wages.
I'm talking about jobs that equal dignity.
What does it mean to have
a job that equals dignity?
Dignity means that you're
able to earn enough
to take care of yourself and your family
and maybe have enough to take a vacation
every once in awhile.
And y'all, that shouldn't
be too much to ask for,
jobs and work with dignity.
I want a society where our
students, our young people,
my young Adriana and others,
don't graduate places
like Duke and others,
don't mean to name drop Duke but others,
without being saddled under a
lifetime of burdensome debt.
That's what I want for my children,
(audience applauding)
my relatives, my family,
and my friends.
I want for our system, our society,
and I hope that my brothers and sisters,
regardless of where they come from,
the side of town they live on,
what their mother and
father do for a profession,
I want our courts and our
jails not to be broken.
I want a system that restores.
Once you've committed your sin on society,
your offense on society and you go to jail
and you pay back your debt to society,
you oughta be able to re-enter society,
have your right to vote, participate,
and make a good way for yourself
and for your families.
I want judges who are unbiased.
(audience applauding)
I want judges who are unbiased
and I want restorative justice to show up
in communities all across the country.
Where we don't just punish and get even
but we restore and make whole
and then make full contributing
members of this society.
I want a workforce that is
highly trained and highly skilled.
I want an education system in this country
that produces students who
are prepared for the future
but also an educational
system that pays teachers
what they're worth for
the work that they do
educating, supporting,
(audience applauding)
and moving our kids ahead.
Y'all, I want a healthcare system
where people aren't
terrified of getting sick
because when they get
sick they can't go to work
and when they don't go to
work, they don't earn a wage,
and when they don't earn a wage,
they can't pay their bills,
and when they don't pay their bills,
something gets turned off.
I want a system where
people don't have to rely
on the emergency room
for maintenancing care,
healthcare at its more expensive
and least efficient form.
And if you think that we're not connected
in this inextricably tied web,
for those of us with health insurance,
you do know that when those folks show up
in emergency rooms and
those costs get passed on
and your premiums are increasing
year over year over year
while you're saying, I'm
healthier than I've ever been.
We're all in this thing together, y'all.
Just as Dr. King states
plainly, "We are bound up
"in an inescapable network of mutuality.
"Tied in a single garment of destiny."
We're in this thing together.
Let's let the people
know from Washington, DC
all the way down to my
great state of Florida
that we are not going to fall
for their divisive tactics
that cause us to turn on each other
because of the way we look,
the language we speak,
who we love, the religion we observe.
That we are better than that
and guess what, there are more of us
than there are of them.
(audience applauding)
This is the America that
Dr. King dreamed for.
This is the America that he fought for.
He wrote in his words from A
Letter From the Birmingham Jail
he said more than a half century ago,
eight white clergymen
had put a public letter
calling his protest quote,
"unwise and untimely".
They asked, why quote,
"an outsider like Dr. King
"would come to a state like Alabama
"and create ruckus."
So from his jail cell, King
did not respond with anger
or with indignation but
with eloquence and humanity,
with resolution and resilience.
He said, "An injustice
anywhere, is a threat
"to justice everywhere.
"Whatever affects one of us directly,
"affects all of us indirectly."
Here in America, he taught us
my fate is connected to yours.
And that's true here because Dr. King
made five public appearances
right here to Durham.
He visited the Woolworth's
and White Rock Baptist Church
during the sit-in movements of 1956.
In 1964, Dr. King spoke
at North Carolina Central
and here at Duke.
Sadly, as we know, he did not
make his way back to Durham
that Spring of 1968
because he was called away
because of the Sanitation
Worker strike in Memphis,
where, as we all know,
his life was cut short.
He left us with this idea,
a challenge to do the work required,
to arouse the dozing
conscience of a nation.
Something worth remembering,
not just on this holiday
or an election year but always.
The idea of one year round
remembrance lives here
because your library is home to SNCCS,
the Student Non-Violent
Coordinating Committee.
And the one person, one vote website,
is a reminder of what
students like you all did
to make the vote a reality
of black life in America.
So history of electoral
justice is in the Duke archive
and both the present and the
future of electoral justice
are here in the seats today.
That is all of us, we are the
future of electoral justice.
I chose those words for a reason.
Elections ought to be just.
Elections ought to be fair.
It is not a privilege to vote,
although I feel privileged
to vote, it is a right
(audience applauding)
and that is what we all
have to work to defend.
So as I come to a close, y'all,
let's start living up to the legacy
of all of the foot soldiers and Dr. King.
What they marched for,
what they fought for,
what they bled for, what
they sacrificed for,
what many of them died for
on behalf of the future
that you and I could inherit.
Y'all, to whom much is
given, much is required
and I know you are the group
that is always asked to do more.
But because I know that if we embrace
all that we all have in common,
and there's a lot, if we can work together
in every corner of every community,
if we can leave footprints on every road
in every street and make our voices heard
in every ear by every
single vote that we cast,
then no matter how many times
they knock us down, y'all,
we will have the strength collectively
to get right back up, to
build on the work of those
who came before us and to make our union
more reflective and more perfect.
We are in the pursuit of the
perfect, we ain't there yet.
I got plenty of tales to tell
about how we're not
there yet and so do you.
But today we stand in America's promise.
Today we stand in a place where we say
we know we deserve better and by God,
we're not just gonna
remember all of the better
we deserve on MLK Day,
we will use it as a clarion call
to get right back to the work that we know
needs to be done in order to
transform our communities.
Let's decide that we
will dedicate ourselves
to registering more voters.
Let's decide that we're going to commit
all of our family members,
our cousins and 'nem.
(audience laughing)
We say 'nem, y'all may say and them.
(audience laughing)
And I mean even the cousins
you don't like talking to
(audience laughing)
because the best, and research shows this,
the best predicator of
moving a person to the poll
is the pure influence
that comes from people
who they know, love, and trust.
Not a TV commercial,
hello, not a radio ad.
Grandma, mama, daddy, granddaddy,
cousin, friend, classmate,
people who they know and trust.
Let's commit ourselves to that.
Why?
Because as Dr. King said,
"Let's build bridges and not walls."
Y'all, immigration is on the ballot.
Dr. King said, "Science
investigates, religion interprets.
Science gives man
knowledge, which is power.
Religion gives man
wisdom, which is control."
Science deals mainly with the facts,
religion deals mainly with values,
and the two are not rivals.
Why do I say that?
I say that, y'all because climate change
is on the ballot.
And if you think you safe,
you think about these 100 year,
200 year storms that communities plan for,
and they're not showing
up every 200 years,
they're showing up every other year.
Earthquakes, tornadoes, deadly.
Seven snow days in Chicago,
they may be happy about it
but that ain't right.
(audience chuckling)
That ain't right, y'all.
Climate change is real.
The function of education is to teach one
to think intensively
and to think critically.
Intelligence plus character,
that is the goal of true education.
Public education is on
the ballot this November.
Dr. King said the ultimate
measure of a person
is not where he stands in moments
of comfort and convenience
but where he stands
in times of challenge and controversy.
Decency, respect, and Donald
Trump is on the ballot.
Attribute that last comment to me
and not to Duke University.
It's the only time you
will hear that name.
Dr. King said, "Our lives
begin to end the day
"that we become silent about
the things that matter."
Yes, freedom and democracy
are on the ballot.
But we've got to do as Dr. King.
Our foot soldiers did, who
gave selflessly on our behalf.
I'm reminded of the Masai tribe.
You all may have heard of
the story of the Masai,
the folks from an East African village
who were known over the arc of history
of demonstrating excellence in all things.
They were excellent hunters and gatherers.
They stood an average six feet tall.
They were excellent warriors.
And they also had
something else in common,
any time a fellow Masai
would come upon each other,
they would address each
other the very same way
with the very same greeting.
And that greeting to me
is simple yet profound.
It simply was, and how are the children?
And how are the children?
And how are the children?
Because they are a society that recognizes
that how good we are, how good society is
is based off of how well our
children are set up to do.
Don't you know Dr. King was thinking about
how well are the children?
Don't you think Rosa
Parks was thinking about
how well are the children?
Fanny Lou Hamer were thinking about
how well are the children set up to do?
What if we had leaders,
community activists,
who were motivated by the idea
that my everyday work
is going to be aligned
so that I set up a better future
for the people who will come after me?
So y'all, let this holiday be a day on.
But also let this
holiday be a remembrance,
a re-dedication, for
each and every one of us
to re-assert what we are going to do
to make this union that much more perfect.
And in the words of my
grandmama, Ella Baker Jackson,
not the famous one but the
one who is famous to me,
Duke, Durham, and the broader community,
I need y'all to work with me
to bring it home November 2020.
God bless you,
(audience applauding)
best wishes and good luck.
Thank you.
(audience applauding)
Thank you.
(singing in foreign language)
Hallelujah, God.
(singing in foreign language)
Jehovah Jireh, my provider
(singing in foreign language)
(audience applauding)
- Thank God.
Thank God, thank you God, and we begin
and we end in your name,
the most gracious, the most merciful,
the most kind, the most generous.
Thank you for gathering us all here today.
Thank you for making us different
so we can come together and see the beauty
in our differences.
Thank you for Dr. Martin Luther King.
For sending him to us,
teaching America and the world
how to come together.
Thank you for this chapel,
thank you for Duke and all
the institutions of learning,
many of which were started in your name
to increase our own intellect
so that we can think of you,
so that we can remember you.
Thank you for the people
outside volunteering their time
to encourage us to vote, and
I encourage you to stop by
to make sure you're registered to vote.
Martin Luther King kept it together.
He has a quote,
"Intelligence plus character,
"that is the goal of true education."
Trying to bridge it and keep it together.
University of Pennsylvania,
laws without morals
are useless.
We have to keep it together.
Here at Duke University,
we pride ourselves
in trying to bridge knowledge and faith.
Whatever we do, we try to tie it to you,
so we thank you.
We thank you, we praise
you and we ask, help us,
guide us, protect us, forgive us.
We need your grace, we need your mercy,
we need your wisdom, we want to be better
so that we can make this a better world.
We ask this in your name.
Can I get an amen?
- Amen.
(audience applauding)
(African drumming)
(jazzy music)
