I now call upon the Honorable John Lewis to deliver the 145th commencement
address of Boston University.
President Brown, members of the Board of Trustees, distinguished faculty and guests,
excellent administrators and staff, proud parents, family, students,
and friends, and to the class of 2018...
I must tell you that I am delighted.
Very happy, pleased, and honored to be here.
Thank you so much for having me here.
To each and every one of you receiving a degree or diploma today, congratulations.
You have my best wishes.
Because you have completed this assignment in your life, you can now recognize the value
of dreaming dreams and making them a reality.
This is a great day.
This is your day.
Enjoy it!
Take a long, deep breath.
Take it all in.
Roll up your sleeves, because the world is waiting for you.
Waiting for talented men and women to lead it to a better place.
Yes, the world is waiting for you.
The world would like for you to find a way to get in the way, or get in what I call
"good trouble," necessary trouble.
The world is waiting for your leadership.
The world is waiting for smart, gifted young men and women.
You know, we don't live just on this little piece of real estate we call earth alone.
This is a big world, but all of us must learn to live together as brothers and sisters;
if not, we will perish as fools.
There was a man by the name of A Philip Randolph.
With the Dean of Black Leadership during the sixties, he was the one that wanted us to march
on Washington, and he was there from time to time, maybe our foremothers and our forefathers,
all came to this great land in different ships.
But we are all in the same boat now.
That is true today.
It doesn't matter whether we are black or white, latino, Asian-American or Native American.
It doesn't matter whether you are straight or gay.
We are one people, we are one family, we are one house.
My young friends, my young brothers and sisters, I want you to consider two words: beloved community.
Beloved means not hateful, not violent, not uncaring, not unkind.
And community means not separated, not polarized, not locked in struggle.
Martin Luther King Jr, Gandhi, and Jesus taught us the way of love, taught us the way of peace,
taught us to respect the dignity and the worth of every human being—that there is the spark
of the divine in all of us.
And we must never, ever give up on our fellow human beings.
We are not animals as some people suggest.
I know some of you, you know, came here, student loans, and uh, your mothers and fathers, your
parents have paid the bills, and some of you still have bills to pay.
I know you would like to go out and get a great job as quick as possible and earn some money.
And maybe buy a big house, buy some designer clothes, maybe a shiny new car.
But I say to you today, if you want a better, more just society, you cannot wait for someone
else to do it.
Through your own efforts, through your own action, through your own creativity and vision,
you have to do it.
You must make our world a better place.
We have to save and lead this world better for generations yet unborn.
That is your calling. We have a right...
We have a right to know what is in the food we eat,
what is in the water we drink,
and what is in the air we breathe.
We must save this little planet.
If it hadn't been for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a graduate of this great university,
a man who loved this school, the faculty, the wonderful scholars and teachers, the researchers.
He spoke of Boston University on so many occasions.
When I was growing up in rural Alabama, I wanted to attend a little college ten miles
from my home, called Troy State College, now known as Troy University.
It didn't accept black students, so I wrote a letter to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when I was 17.
He wrote me back, and sent me a round trip Greyhound bus ticket and invited me to come
to Montgomery to meet with him.
In the meantime, I was accepted at a little college in Nashville Tennessee.
An uncle of mine gave me a 100 dollar bill and a footlocker.
I put everything that I owned in that footlocker and took a Greyhound bus to Nashville.
I put everything in that footlocker except the chickens that I had been raising,
the chickens that I used to preach to when I was a little boy.
So Dr. King got back in touch and heard that I was in Nashville, and he invited me to come
to Montgomery to meet with him.
And I will never forget it, never forget it.
A young lawyer met me at the Greyhound bus station in downtown Montgomery.
And drove me to the first Baptist church, pastored by the Reverend Ralph Abernathy.
And ushered me into the office of the church.
I saw Martin Luther King Jr. and Reverend Ralph Abernathy standing behind a desk
and Dr. King said, "Are you the boy from Troy?
Are you John Lewis?"
And I said, Dr. King, my name is John Robert Lewis.
I gave my whole name, but he still called me the boy from Troy.
This man inspired me to stand up, to speak up, to speak out.
When I was growing up, I saw the signs that said "white men", "colored men", "white women",
"colored women", "white waiting", "colored waiting".
I asked my mother, my father, my grandparents, and my great grandparents, "why?"
And they said "Boy that's the way it is.
Don't get in the way, don't get in trouble."
I got in trouble!
I got in trouble! Good trouble!
We need young men and women, smart graduates of Boston University, to go out there and
get in trouble.
I tell you, look, I got arrested a few times.
40 times during the sixties.
And since I've been in Congress, another 5 times, and I'm probably going to get arrested
again for something.
My philosophy is very simple.
When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation
to say something, to do something, stand up, speak up, speak out.
No matter what part of the United States or what part of the world you come from, we have
to save our democratic ideas and create a society at peace with itself.
So I appear to you, to be brave, to be bold, to be courageous.
I've seen men and women find a way to change things.
To live and see so many changes, simple thing like the coming down of signs.
The signs in our soul, they're gone.
And the only place that you would see these signs, the little signs today, would be in
a book, in a museum, or on a video.
You're smart, you're gifted, you have been chosen.
You have been called by the spirit of history to play a role that no one else can play any better.
Just think a few short years ago, black people and white people couldn't be seated together
on a Greyhound bus leaving Washington, D.C.
Just think that a few short years ago, in many parts of the American south, people could
not register to vote because of the color of their skin.
There were African Americans asked to count the number of bubbles on a bar of soap, the
number of jellybeans in a jar.
We tried to get rid of that with the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.
But some people not only gave a little blood—that's the only thing I did, I gave a little blood
on that bridge—but some people gave their lives.
I urge you, as you leave here, participate in the democratic process.
get out there and vote like we never voted before.
I wish you well.
I congratulate you.
Go with love, with hope.
Be hopeful, be optimistic.
Don't get lost in a sea of despair.
But be bold, be courageous, and all will work out.
Thank you very much.