“I love my role model,
Sojourner Truth, who was an illiterate but brilliant slave women who could not
stand slavery or second-class treatment of women, but she never lost an
opportunity to speak out and one day she got heckled by an old white man who
stood up and said he didn’t believe anymore about her anti-slavery talk than
for an old flea bite. She snapped back at him, and said, “That’s all right. The
Lord willing, I am going to keep you scratching.” I think if we can all
remember that if there are enough fleas biting the biggest dog, and there are
enough of us who keep coming back when they flick some of us off, we will get
gun safety regulations, we will end child poverty. You just have to bite
whenever you see injustice, and if enough of us join that flea corps for
children, the flea corps against gun violence, the flea corps against child
poverty, we will transform our nation and make it un-American for any child to
be poor, for any child to be illiterate, for any child to be unsafe and unable
to grow up in our rich land.”
-Marian Wright Edelman
Like all
commencement speeches there are a few unavoidable clichés, but Marian remains a
brave and original thinker, in whom the passion for social justice has never
diminished. She offers the graduates the seven lessons she shared with her
three sons. They are worth a read.
You can find
both the video and the printed transcript @ http://www.coloradocollege.edu/commencement/
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