Dr. Vicki Patterson DavidsonCongresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) delivered a moving speech at Tougaloo College’s commencement ceremony earlier this month. While listening to her speech, I remembered the three times someone called me the ‘N’ word – once as an elementary school student, once as a high school student, and once as a sophomore at Tougaloo College. Each time, the racial epithet was uttered by a white male.
My family was one of the first to integrate the North Pike School District in Pike County, Mississippi in the 1970s – fifteen years after Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. I knew it was ignorance that drove others to call me the ‘N’ word during the 1980s and 1990s.
My daughter experienced a similar remark while growing up in central Mississippi in the mid-2000s. A classmate told her during recess that he “did not play with Black girls.” Heartbroken, I shared two quotes and a song with her later that evening. “Nothing in the whole world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity,” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and one by Oprah Winfrey, a native Mississippian, who told Wellesley College graduates in 1997 to “turn your wounds into wisdom.”
That evening we listened to “I’m Here” from the Broadway musical, The Color Purple – a song which resonates with so many Black girls and women across our nation. “I’m Here” would later be performed at the 2010 Kennedy Center Honors celebrating Winfrey. My daughter decided to dress like Winfrey during Black History Month that school year. My daughter had turned her wounds into wisdom.
Mirroring the courage and strength of Fannie Lou Hamer, a prominent activist who frequently visited Tougaloo College during the Civil Rights Movement, Congresswoman Crockett addressed the state of American civil rights and liberties under the Trump administration. Crockett’s commencement speech was not disturbing. Her speech, full of wisdom, rang with relevance as she stood near the historic steps of the Woodworth Chapel below the steeple bell. The cowardly threats and reactions which followed are what continue to ring with prejudice, hatred, and ignorance nearly fifty-four years after Hamer delivered her famous “Is It Too Late?” speech at Tougaloo in the summer of 1971.
Known for its educational excellence and activism in higher education, Tougaloo College is no stranger to controversy. A private, historically Black liberal arts college that has hosted and graduated prominent civil rights leaders and politicians for years, Tougaloo is the same institution that educates and prepares future physicians, scientists, lawyers, educators, and researchers who serve Mississippi and the global community.
Tougaloo College students, faculty, staff, alumni, friends, and community stand together in wisdom without fear. We are not invisible. We are not silent. We are here.
Dr. Vicki Patterson Davidson is an alumna and an Assistant Professor of Education and Chair of the Department of Education at Tougaloo College.