UMES
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A newsletter for stud ents, faculty, staff, alumni and friends CIRCLING
THE
Summer 2014
WORLD
Civil Rights leader addresses graduates
The University of Maryland Eastern Shore awarded some 500 degrees during spring graduation exercises in May where the Class of 2014 heard from a civil rights icon. Congressman John Lewis of Georgia delivered a compelling 14-minute commencement address that skillfully blended humor with advice gleaned from 50 years in the public spotlight. As is the tradition at UMES, Lewis shared the day’s speaking honors with Kiera Pettus of Piscataway, N.J., who delivered the student commentary. “Here we are,” said Pettus, who earned a degree in rehabilitation psychology (cum laude), “with our caps and gowns on … showing the world our thick skin – our head held high symbolizing we made it.” Lewis enthralled the capacity crowd in the William P. Hytche Athletic Center with self-deprecating childhood stories about raising chickens on a sharecropper’s farm in Troy, Ala., talked of meeting Nelson Mandela and shared his astonishment when Barack Obama became president in 2008. “If someone had told me when we were walking across that bridge in Selma, left beaten and left bloodied and unconscious that one day I would live to see a man of color as president of the United States, I would have said you must be crazy, you must be out of your mind,” he said. Lewis was badly beaten March 7, 1965 in Selma by police when he tried to lead a peaceful protest march across Alabama to draw attention to segregation and voting rights. It was a crowd control strategy that Lewis encountered frequently during the Civil Rights movement. But the violence that day captured on film and broadcast on TV news shows shocked the nation.
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A former member of the Ku Klux Klan who assaulted Lewis in May 1961 visited him after Obama took office to apologize and seek forgiveness. "His son started crying. He started crying. I started crying. He called me brother. I called him brother," the congressman said. He told UMES graduates, “You have the inner faith to help create the beloved community. It doesn’t matter, in the final analysis, whether we are black or white, Latino, Asian American or Native American.” “We are one people, we are one family, we are one house. We all live in the same house. Not just in the American house, but the world house,” Lewis said. Lewis also invoked the words of his friend and mentor, the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who famously said, “We must learn to live together as brothers and sisters, or we perish as fools.” King and Lewis spoke at the 1963 March on Washington, a turning point in America to end segregation policies and the rule of Jim Crow attitudes toward blacks. In recognition of Lewis’ historic appearance at UMES, the university arranged for each graduate to receive a copy of the congressman’s best-selling graphic novel memoir, “March.” “That was pretty cool,” said Jamaal Peterman of Glenn Dale, Md. “It’s an interesting way to tell an important story. I thought it was very well done.” Pettus challenged Peterman and her other classmates “to make a promise. Not for me, not for your parents, teachers or peers, but for yourself.” “Promise yourself that you will never give up on your dreams and never let obstacles stand in the way of what you were born to do,” she said. Lewis followed her with similar advice drawn from being a foot soldier on the rugged frontlines of the American civil rights movement. “Go out there and fight the good fight,” Lewis said. “And never, ever give up. Be bold. Be courageous. And find a way … to get in the way.”
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Page 7 Aviation/Engineering Building Construction Graduate Housing Concert Choir Trip
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