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tuition -- a steer -- to a rope and walked 100 miles across the state of Kentucky to Berea College, and Berea took him in. Sixteen years later he graduated, and the college asked him to deliver the commencement address.

He said then:

The pessimist from his corner looks out on the world of wickedness and sin and blinded by all that is good or hopeful in the condition and progress of the human race, bewails the present state of affairs and predicts woeful things for the future.

In every cloud he beholds a destructive storm, in every flash of lightning an omen of evil, and in every shadow that falls across his path a lurking foe.

He forgets that the clouds also bring life and hope, that the lightning purifies the atmosphere, that shadow and darkness prepare for sunshine and growth, and that hardships and adversity nerve the race, as the individual, for greater efforts and grander victories.5

"Greater efforts and grander victories." That was the promise made by a former slave more than 100 years ago. That is the promise you must seek to honor as you leave this institution and these ceremonies and enter the world beyond these grounds.

We wish you the best.

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(Julian Bond has been Chairman of the NAACP Board of Directors since February, 1998. He is a Distinguished Professor in the School of Government at American University in Washington, DC and a Professor in the Department of History at the University of Virginia.)

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