Two Commencements - 1965 and 2025

In 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King, my Antioch commencement speaker, was introduced as a man willing to live his convictions and to risk challenging “convention in order that they may have the opportunity to lead in humane causes and in the solution of humane problems”.

Even though racism remained evident in housing, poor schools, violence and communities where voting was made difficult, segregation was slowly ending through legislation. However, Dr. King recognized that laws don’t change hearts, but perhaps integration could.

He challenged us “to remove poverty from the face of the earth”. One fifth of Americans were living in poverty in spite of our having the resources and technology to end it. Giving our surplus food to the hungry was an easy start but we lacked the will to do it. Well off Americans were indifferent to the poor. As a nation, we lacked compassion. The loss of unskilled and semi-skilled jobs to automation and cybernation was a growing concern that needed massive work and retraining programs. “There is nothing more dangerous than to develop a society with a large segment of individuals in that society who feel they have no stake in it – who feel they have nothing to lose.”

Dr. King challenged us to find an alternative to war if mankind is to survive. “We must be willing to keep this issue before the conscience of the nation and the world” through demonstrations to stop the war in Vietnam”. If we love democracy, we must use America’s resources to support “democratic forces in the world”.

“Be ashamed to die until you have gained some victory for humanity” is our challenge to “becoming involved in all of the struggles of mankind, to make this nation, to make this world better. It means we must develop a sort of divine discontent.”

Dr. King vowed to never adjust to: segregation, discrimination, religious bigotry, “economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few,… the madness of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence”. I felt he had challenged me. Antioch had helped prepare me for that challenge.

Sixty years later (2025) the commencement speaker was Rev. William Barber II who could have been introduced with the same words used for Dr. King. While both addressed many of these same issues, Rev. Barber had a more religious bent than Dr. King’s which was more academic. I have been pondering whether this approach was intentional for it certainly brought a more unrestrained response with a rally-like quality. Rev. Barber calls this the Third Reconstruction. The Second was during Dr. King’s life when hopes were high. Now we witness an undoing of the progress that was made in the Second. Did we fail to understand when Dr. King warned us that “the forces of ill will in our nation, the extreme Rightists of our nation, the forces committed to negative ends of our nation, so often used time more effectively than the forces of good will” but it is “the appalling silence and indifference of the good people” that become “an ally of the insurgent and primitive forces of emotionalism and social stagnation”. I fear that I was not alert to, among other things, the political intentionality of judiciary appointments starting in the 1980’s.

Rev. Barber’s use of religion and the Christian Bible may well be an intentional attempt to reach white Christian nationalists who fail to recognize that Christianity involves caring for people, all people. That would be in keeping with his use of “we” instead of “I” because “we” need to act in great numbers in order to win this Third Reconstruction.

He proposes that we ask ourselves these questions for any piece of legislation: Does it live up to the Constitution? Does it establish justice? Does it promote the general welfare? Does it provide for the common defense? Does it insure domestic tranquility? Does it insure justice for all? If the answer is “No”, then we must take action to resist.

Poverty and racism aren’t just social problems. Greed is an ongoing problem with many if not most of the wealthiest Americans. Today four hundred people make $97,000 an hour while the minimum wage has remained at $7.25 an hour since 2009. Congress is voting on a budget that proposes cutting programs that benefit all Americans in order to pay trillions (via tax cuts) to the wealthiest people in our country and to increase military spending and immigration for deportation and detention. Rev. Barber didn’t list the cuts but these are some of them in order from the programs getting most cuts to the least: Medicaid, climate, education, food, other health care, transportation and infrastructure. These cuts are acts of violence along with denying a child a good education, not paying workers a living wage, not providing health care, having ghetto housing among others.

It’s depressing that the systemic problems within our society are basically the same as in 1965. Both Rev. Barber and Dr. King warned us (with different words) that the worst violence of all is our heart problem: an apathetic attitude that accepts all these injustices and forms of violence.

After 60 years, Rev. Barber’s words reminded me to try to resist in more ways than protesting through demonstrations in my community and letters to the editor. Perhaps I will join him at the Capitol on a Moral Monday and, if not arrested, visit members of Congress.

Penny Storm ‘65 is a Trustee. She lives in Titusville FL.