RIP.
Mrs. King spoke at one of the graduation ceremonies at Pomona while I was attending. I didn’t actually much care for her commencement address, to be honest — like much of her civil rights advocacy after her husband’s death, it struck me as more angry and divisive than the Rev. King had been. Perhaps that’s understandable, given her life.
Regardless, it’s another moment of passage in our nation’s history.
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Yep…
She Coretta Scott King was a good Person that stayed true to her beliefs until the end. She always managed to try and do the right thing even though it wasn’t popular.
Now…for great speakers…My favorite was Barbara Jordan, who I got to see when I was young. Her prose, wit and elocution were things of greatness.
Coretta Scott King was the graduation speaker for my graduation at Pomona in 1984 (not 1982, as your other post suggests, ***Dave). On the one hand, I have great admiration for her strength, passion, and high ideals in the service of equality. On the other, I will always be bitter about how she used her speech at my graduation to imply that we graduates were the priveleged benficiaries of racist policies, and that the only moral course of action was for us all to devote our careers to the remediation of any injuries done to black americans since the founding of our nation.
It may be that I misinterpreted her speech to some degree, and it may be that we were the benificiaries of racist policies. However, I felt and feel that a graduation speech should contain some element of celebration of the accomplishments of the graduates and the imminent life changes that will make them real adults. Her speech was a downer for me, and I felt she condemned us rather than celebrating us. She berated us for the injustices of the past rather than enlisting us in her cause. Frankly, I felt like she had abused the invitation to speak at our graduation.
By contrast, I saw Dan Rather speak when I graduated from the University of Texas with my PhD. His speech was not highly intellectual, but it was interesting and edifying, and it was properly celebratory. I could have done without those aspects of the speech which were intended to cater to the school spirit of the undergraduates, but in spite of its flaws, it was much more appropriate to the occasion than King’s speech was.
So I will remember Coretta Scott King as a great champion of equality and human rights, but as a poor graduation speaker.