[Khalil Gibran Muhammad] History is a wonderful teacher
of the stuff of humanity,
of the kinds of stories that
drive people to do the things that they would not normally do, to find courage.
[Student] With all the protests that have occurred,
against the verdict of Mike Brown and Eric Garner.
[Khalil Gibran Muhammad] Sometimes you can find blue prints and strategies and tools in those history lessons,
but more than anything it's a source of courage and strength.
[Student] So why would, how would you characterize verbalism as an activism?
[Khalil Gibran Muhammad] There's this sense that talk is cheap, that the discussion
is more performance and it's not
going get us anywhere
and so I'm  ready to do something and what I often say in those moments
to folks is we all have a role to play.
[Student] Was there any pivotal or life changing experience that you went through in college?
[Khalil Gibran Muhammad] I think for students, knowing that and knowing intimately not just because someone told them or
tweeted it
but knowing intimately for themselves
that the hard work of social change
is in the everyday waking up, willing
to move the needle just a little bit
further. We could all go out here
and the lights, you know, come on and the cameras are there and then the moment is gone
and we could do it every single day
but at some point you have to sit down at the table. Doctor King was
keenly aware of how
a sense of history, a knowledge of the past
help to make us who we
are and to help us to become
something better, but that King
and the message that he gave to us,
his commitment to challenging power
at the highest levels of this land and
ultimately
speaking to people at the lowest places
in their lives.
Was the King whose history lessons
were not passed on
to the next generations.
We were told to, to look forward, to
not look backward.
Some of you have to have asked yourself the question, "how can we be here fifty years
later with the depressing
events unfolding right before our eyes?" What happened? Well Ladies and Gentlemen,
this is what happened. The unconventional man
became a conventional legacy. What do we have today
as a result of this conventional black
history
if any at all, is family-friendly
programming
of our history. Did the ten year old who
marched in the children's crusade
in Birmingham Alabama in 1963, who faced fire hoses and German Shepherds have the
luxury of family friendly marches?
Did the four little girls who died in the sixteenth Street Baptist church
bombing have the luxury of
hallmark made history lessons? The world is happening.
You cannot protect
your children from the realities of the
world
we live in. The only thing we could do is
actually to prepare them
by teaching them how this world came to be,
by using the history that we have,
by creating new narratives of the past, 
so that they might be empowered
and not be diminished
by the contradictions that knocked them over the head
by surprise. In the wake of the Zimmerman Trials
outcome, the President was
responding in a speech and when you
think about why the President said
in the African-American community at least there's a lot of pain around what
happened here.
I think it is important to recognize
that the African-American community
is looking at this issue through a set
of experiences
and a history that doesn't
go away. He said it, that's right.
The past doesn't go away.
Are Michael Brown and Eric Gardner and Tamir Rice, the harvest of our collective
unwillingness to confront the past.
History ultimately is an essential tool of empowerment.
It is a matter of life and death. It is in the debates
and the arguments, that, that, that they will have with each other about
what to do next.
It is in the uncertainty and in the ambivalence that surrounds, are we doing the right thing?
Will we ever get there? And I think if they know that, they'll be better prepared
to keep moving forward on these issues and to be that generation
that will help us solve this problem
in ways that
Dr. King's generation helped to solve earlier ones.
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