JACKSON — First lady Michelle Obama dropped a history lesson and urged nearly 800 graduates to fight for excellence and use their power and numbers in voting to strive for progress at Jackson State University’s Spring 2016 commencement. The commencement at Memorial Stadium in north Jackson, with nearly 35,000 visitors in the stands, was her 8th and final HBCU visit as the first lady. She has spoken at one historically black college or university yearly since her husband, Barack Obama, was elected president in 2008.
“Excellence is the most powerful answer you can give to the doubters and the haters,” Obama said to the graduating class. “It’s also the most powerful thing you can do for yourself because the process of striving and struggling and pushing yourself to new heights, that’s how you develop your God-given talents. That’s how you make yourself stronger and smarter and more able to make a difference for others.”
Obama touched on the Civil Rights Movement, the deaths of Emmett Till and Medgar Evers, and quoted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and discriminatory voting practices intended to keep African Americans from voting, such as being forced to recite the Constitution or correctly guessing the number of jellybeans in a jar in order to register. She also pointed out that while the state has progressed since the 1960s, there is still room to grow, especially under the passage of recent bills.
“If we fail to exercise our fundamental right to vote, then I guarantee that so much of the progress we’ve fought for will be under threat,” she said. “Congress will still be gridlocked. Statehouses will continue to roll back voting rights and write discrimination into the law. We see it right here in Mississippi—just two weeks ago-–how swiftly progress can hurtle backward, how easy it is to single out a small group and marginalize them because of who they are or who they love.”
“So we’ve got to stand side by side with all our neighbors—straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender; Muslim, Jew, Christian, Hindu, Immigrant, Native American—because the march for civil rights isn’t just about African Americans, it’s about all Americans,” the first lady added, standing in the same stadium where then Gov. Ross Barnett rallied Confederate flag-waving Ole Miss fans to support segregation in 1962.
