PRINCE HALL
New Member
Please find a speech and a meassage that will cover all bases. Indeed, the writer needs no introduction. Again it's tight, and
will lift your thinking to another level.
Enjoy.
Trustee Vernon Jordan's Rankin Chapel Address
Howard University
Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel
Washington, DC
Sunday, April 14, 2002
Once again you honor me with the privilege of standing on this hallowed ground, this revered place, Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel, here at the capstone of black higher education, Howard University. My romance with Rankin Chapel is 45 years old, ignited when I was a student at the Law School. For those three years, I was here almost every Sunday morning, drinking from Rankin Chapel?s fountain, expanding my mind and broadening my horizons.
And over the years since my graduation, I have returned to this place seeking wisdom, guidance, comfort and inspiration. And to stand here where giants have stood is awesome, frightening and one of the great honors of my life. And I thank you for the opportunity to stand in this pulpit one more time.
There is no doubt in my mind that as graduates of this great University have taken their places in society, raised their families, earned a living, contributed to the community ? the moral, spiritual and intellectual values derived from this chapel have made an enormous difference in their lives ? whether they were fervent believers or doubting agnostics. I stand here as a witness to that truth.
So this is a uniquely special place in the University setting that adds leavening to the bread of life and prepares us to make our way in a world full of trouble. And make no mistake ? this world ? is in a whole world of trouble.
There is a war on terrorism in Afghanistan. There is a war in the Middle East between Isra?l and the Palestinians. Our friend and brother, a former Howard University trustee, Secretary of State Colin Powell is there now as a peace-maker. He is in our hearts and prayers this morning as he tries to reconcile what may be beyond reconciliation. India and Pakistan are poised at the borders, ready, willing and able to fight each other. We have ethnic fighting in Nigeria, political violence in Zimbabwe. . . Economic disaster in Argentina, a palace coup in Venezuela twice in one week, and a never ending recession in Japan. Aids, sickness, hunger, homelessness and poverty abound across the universe.
Here at home we have a president elected by one vote in the supreme court, a president who did not really and truly assume the presidency until September 11. John Ashcroft, who lost his senate seat to a dead man, is attorney general who spends more time covering up naked statues than he does uncovering naked injustice. Our national budget has gone from surplus to deficit. The national economy has gone from robust to bust ? unemployment, recession, layoffs, plant closings, restructurings and bankruptcies define the national economy, despite positive predictions and an up-turn in the markets. The Catholic Church is experiencing unprecedented turbulence, and confidence in business leaders and corporations is on a downward spiral.
Enron is the worst scandal in the history of corporate America and somebody is lying about how the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. A measure of Enron is that not one black executive was high enough to have an equal opportunity to participate in the scandal. Not one. And, the events of September 11 are etched, indeed embalmed, in our hearts and minds forever.
Yet a cursory view of black history suggests that none of this is new to black people. War, hunger, disease, unemployment, deprivation, dehumanization and terrorism define our existence. They are not new to us. Slavery was terrorism, segregation was terrorism, the bombing of the four little girls in Sunday school in Birmingham was terrorism. The violent deaths of Medgar, Martin, Malcolm, Vernon Dahmer, Cheney, Schwerner, Goodman were terrorism. And the difference between September 11 and the terror visited upon black people is that on September 11, the terrorists were foreigners but when we were terrorized, it was by our neighbors. The terrorists were American citizens.
I shall never forget September 11. It burns in my memory. I was in my New York office on the 62nd floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, which faces south toward the statue of liberty and the World Trade Center towers. As I sat talking with a colleague, my secretary seeing the first plane hit the first tower screamed out, and together we stood horrified and watched the second plane slam into the second tower of the world trade center. And I watched both towers crumble prior to evacuating my building, which was thought at the time to be a target.
I spent the rest of the day as many of you did ? watching the televised reports of the disasters for hours on end. Like you, I saw interviews with the survivors, the lucky ones who escaped the burning towers in time. I walked the streets of New York where there were sad, homemade posters with names and pictures of the missing, pleading for information about their loved ones.
The survivors and the victims on the posters were whites and blacks, Asians, Latinos and Arabs. They were Christians, Jews and Muslims. They were executives and janitors, bureaucrats and messengers. They were rich and they were poor. They were young, old and middle-aged. They were republicans and democrats. Politically, some were on the far right; some were on the far left, and some may even have sympathized with some of the terrorists? ideas.
But they were all Americans. And in the eyes of the terrorists, they all stood for values that are central to the American fabric, and that was enough to make them targets, just as you and I and all our loved ones could be targets today.
Black Americans hold America?s values dearly. At times, it seemed as if we were the only ones who did. When this nation was in the grip of racism and segregation, it was black people who reminded America of its basic values of freedom and democracy. It was black Americans who helped America close the gap between its beliefs and its practices.
Now that America is warring on terrorism, it is black people who remind America that we know terrorism well. We know that dangerous rhetoric can lead to acts of lunacy that kill innocents. And we know that the surest defense against terrorism is affirmation of America?s basic values ... The values we have learned in our churches ... The values we have fought and died for in America?s every war, even in segregated armies.
What then is required of you ? students at the capstone ? as you study to prepare yourselves for the world beyond the academy? It?s a very different world from the time I sat where you sit. Look what we, black people, have wrought since my graduation from Howard Law School in 1960:
Black college graduates have increased from four percent to 17 percent;
Black lawyers and judges have increased from 2,800 to over 50,000;
Black engineers from 10,000 to 100,000;
Black elected officials from 300 to over 9,000;
Black consumer income totals a half trillion dollars, more than the gross national product of over 200 countries in the world.
Since then, five new leadership classes in the black community have been created:
The black elected official;
Blacks who have pierced the corporate veil ? from the boardroom to management to CEO;
Blacks who lead and manage traditionally white institutions in philanthropy, education, healthcare, unions and government;
Strong, enlightened, indigenous leaders of community-based institutions;
And, black entrepreneurs whose markets are no longer limited to Georgia Avenue and 125th Street.
That?s only a partial report. But what is clear is that if we have done so much when we had so little, think of how much more we can do now that we have so much more.
Let me leave you then with four guidelines to think about:
You are where you are today because you stand on somebody?s shoulders. And wherever you are heading, you cannot get there by yourself.
While you matriculate here, some parents have two jobs to help pay your tuition; before you arrived here some teacher kept you after school, pushed and pressured you because they were confident of your ability; some counselor persuaded you that Howard was the best school for you and found the scholarship support that you needed. You stand on their shoulders.
My parents took me to college where my father?s parting words were ?you can?t come home?. My mother wrote to me every single day that I was in college and law school to keep me focused and on the straight and narrow. I stand on their shoulders.
If you stand on the shoulders of others, you have a reciprocal responsibility to live your life so that others may stand on your shoulders. It?s the quid pro quo of life.
Oliver Wendell Holmes put it this way:
As life is action and passion, it is required that we share the actions and passions of our time at the risk of being judged not to have lived.
Herman Melville put it another way, he wrote:
We cannot live for ourselves alone, our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads and along these sympathetic fibers our actions run as causes and return to us as results.
Booker T. Washington:
No man who has the privilege of rendering service to his fellows ever makes a sacrifice.
In order for others to stand on your shoulders you have to be prepared, ready, committed to excellence, hard work and sacrifice.
Frederick Douglas was prepared
W.E.B. Dubois was committed to excellence
Thurgood Marshall was prepared
Mordecai Johnson was committed to excellence
Marion Anderson was prepared
Mary McCleod Bethune was committed to excellence
Martin, Medgar, Malcolm and others made the ultimate sacrifice ? they died on the battlefield of freedom. And they have bequeathed us an irrevocable legacy of service and achievement and we inherit this legacy in fee simple absolute.
If I am right that: (1) we stand on the shoulders of others; (2) that we have a reciprocal responsibility to others to stand on our shoulders; and (3) that we must be prepared, ready and committed to excellence, hard work and sacrifice then the fourth guideline is that you must find a place that will give context, contour and continuity to your life. A place where knowledge alone has its limitations. A place where your expertise in law, medicine, history, math or psychology reaches a stop sign. A place of spiritual sustenance ? a moral and ethical oasis ? a watering hole of values and ideals ? a sanctuary that?s like the tree planteth by the rivers of water ? unshakeable and immovable. A place ? that?s a rock in a weary land ? a shelter in a time of storm. That place at Howard is Rankin Chapel.
Every time I come here, I am reminded of my parents taking me to St. Paul A.M.E. Church as a youngster. There when I heard the steward pray, the choir sing and the preacher preach ? like Isaiah, ?I saw the lord, high and lifted up? and I?ve never gotten over it. I?m not asking you to believe. That?s the preacher?s job. I?m simply saying that as you pursue academic excellence ? come by here ? come by Rankin ? to get the good news, come by here to get your compass, your focus, come by here asking, pleading ? guide my feet while I run this race, for I don?t want to run this race in vain.
That is your charge to keep, your calling to fulfill, your rendez-vous with destiny as you come by here ? may you neither stumble, nor falter ? rather may you mount up with wings as eagles, may you run and not be weary, may you walk together children and not be faint.
? Let us pray ?
God of our weary years
God of our silent tears
Thou who hath brought us thus far on our way
Thou who has by Thy might led us into the light
Keep us forever on Thy path we pray
Lest our feet stray from the places our God where we met Thee
Lest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world we forget Thee
Shadowed beneath Thy hands, may we forever stand
True to our God
True to our native land.
Vernon E. Jordan, Jr.
Senior Managing Director, Lazard Fr?res & Co. LLC
Of Counsel, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld LLP
will lift your thinking to another level.
Enjoy.
Trustee Vernon Jordan's Rankin Chapel Address
Howard University
Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel
Washington, DC
Sunday, April 14, 2002
Once again you honor me with the privilege of standing on this hallowed ground, this revered place, Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel, here at the capstone of black higher education, Howard University. My romance with Rankin Chapel is 45 years old, ignited when I was a student at the Law School. For those three years, I was here almost every Sunday morning, drinking from Rankin Chapel?s fountain, expanding my mind and broadening my horizons.
And over the years since my graduation, I have returned to this place seeking wisdom, guidance, comfort and inspiration. And to stand here where giants have stood is awesome, frightening and one of the great honors of my life. And I thank you for the opportunity to stand in this pulpit one more time.
There is no doubt in my mind that as graduates of this great University have taken their places in society, raised their families, earned a living, contributed to the community ? the moral, spiritual and intellectual values derived from this chapel have made an enormous difference in their lives ? whether they were fervent believers or doubting agnostics. I stand here as a witness to that truth.
So this is a uniquely special place in the University setting that adds leavening to the bread of life and prepares us to make our way in a world full of trouble. And make no mistake ? this world ? is in a whole world of trouble.
There is a war on terrorism in Afghanistan. There is a war in the Middle East between Isra?l and the Palestinians. Our friend and brother, a former Howard University trustee, Secretary of State Colin Powell is there now as a peace-maker. He is in our hearts and prayers this morning as he tries to reconcile what may be beyond reconciliation. India and Pakistan are poised at the borders, ready, willing and able to fight each other. We have ethnic fighting in Nigeria, political violence in Zimbabwe. . . Economic disaster in Argentina, a palace coup in Venezuela twice in one week, and a never ending recession in Japan. Aids, sickness, hunger, homelessness and poverty abound across the universe.
Here at home we have a president elected by one vote in the supreme court, a president who did not really and truly assume the presidency until September 11. John Ashcroft, who lost his senate seat to a dead man, is attorney general who spends more time covering up naked statues than he does uncovering naked injustice. Our national budget has gone from surplus to deficit. The national economy has gone from robust to bust ? unemployment, recession, layoffs, plant closings, restructurings and bankruptcies define the national economy, despite positive predictions and an up-turn in the markets. The Catholic Church is experiencing unprecedented turbulence, and confidence in business leaders and corporations is on a downward spiral.
Enron is the worst scandal in the history of corporate America and somebody is lying about how the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. A measure of Enron is that not one black executive was high enough to have an equal opportunity to participate in the scandal. Not one. And, the events of September 11 are etched, indeed embalmed, in our hearts and minds forever.
Yet a cursory view of black history suggests that none of this is new to black people. War, hunger, disease, unemployment, deprivation, dehumanization and terrorism define our existence. They are not new to us. Slavery was terrorism, segregation was terrorism, the bombing of the four little girls in Sunday school in Birmingham was terrorism. The violent deaths of Medgar, Martin, Malcolm, Vernon Dahmer, Cheney, Schwerner, Goodman were terrorism. And the difference between September 11 and the terror visited upon black people is that on September 11, the terrorists were foreigners but when we were terrorized, it was by our neighbors. The terrorists were American citizens.
I shall never forget September 11. It burns in my memory. I was in my New York office on the 62nd floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, which faces south toward the statue of liberty and the World Trade Center towers. As I sat talking with a colleague, my secretary seeing the first plane hit the first tower screamed out, and together we stood horrified and watched the second plane slam into the second tower of the world trade center. And I watched both towers crumble prior to evacuating my building, which was thought at the time to be a target.
I spent the rest of the day as many of you did ? watching the televised reports of the disasters for hours on end. Like you, I saw interviews with the survivors, the lucky ones who escaped the burning towers in time. I walked the streets of New York where there were sad, homemade posters with names and pictures of the missing, pleading for information about their loved ones.
The survivors and the victims on the posters were whites and blacks, Asians, Latinos and Arabs. They were Christians, Jews and Muslims. They were executives and janitors, bureaucrats and messengers. They were rich and they were poor. They were young, old and middle-aged. They were republicans and democrats. Politically, some were on the far right; some were on the far left, and some may even have sympathized with some of the terrorists? ideas.
But they were all Americans. And in the eyes of the terrorists, they all stood for values that are central to the American fabric, and that was enough to make them targets, just as you and I and all our loved ones could be targets today.
Black Americans hold America?s values dearly. At times, it seemed as if we were the only ones who did. When this nation was in the grip of racism and segregation, it was black people who reminded America of its basic values of freedom and democracy. It was black Americans who helped America close the gap between its beliefs and its practices.
Now that America is warring on terrorism, it is black people who remind America that we know terrorism well. We know that dangerous rhetoric can lead to acts of lunacy that kill innocents. And we know that the surest defense against terrorism is affirmation of America?s basic values ... The values we have learned in our churches ... The values we have fought and died for in America?s every war, even in segregated armies.
What then is required of you ? students at the capstone ? as you study to prepare yourselves for the world beyond the academy? It?s a very different world from the time I sat where you sit. Look what we, black people, have wrought since my graduation from Howard Law School in 1960:
Black college graduates have increased from four percent to 17 percent;
Black lawyers and judges have increased from 2,800 to over 50,000;
Black engineers from 10,000 to 100,000;
Black elected officials from 300 to over 9,000;
Black consumer income totals a half trillion dollars, more than the gross national product of over 200 countries in the world.
Since then, five new leadership classes in the black community have been created:
The black elected official;
Blacks who have pierced the corporate veil ? from the boardroom to management to CEO;
Blacks who lead and manage traditionally white institutions in philanthropy, education, healthcare, unions and government;
Strong, enlightened, indigenous leaders of community-based institutions;
And, black entrepreneurs whose markets are no longer limited to Georgia Avenue and 125th Street.
That?s only a partial report. But what is clear is that if we have done so much when we had so little, think of how much more we can do now that we have so much more.
Let me leave you then with four guidelines to think about:
You are where you are today because you stand on somebody?s shoulders. And wherever you are heading, you cannot get there by yourself.
While you matriculate here, some parents have two jobs to help pay your tuition; before you arrived here some teacher kept you after school, pushed and pressured you because they were confident of your ability; some counselor persuaded you that Howard was the best school for you and found the scholarship support that you needed. You stand on their shoulders.
My parents took me to college where my father?s parting words were ?you can?t come home?. My mother wrote to me every single day that I was in college and law school to keep me focused and on the straight and narrow. I stand on their shoulders.
If you stand on the shoulders of others, you have a reciprocal responsibility to live your life so that others may stand on your shoulders. It?s the quid pro quo of life.
Oliver Wendell Holmes put it this way:
As life is action and passion, it is required that we share the actions and passions of our time at the risk of being judged not to have lived.
Herman Melville put it another way, he wrote:
We cannot live for ourselves alone, our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads and along these sympathetic fibers our actions run as causes and return to us as results.
Booker T. Washington:
No man who has the privilege of rendering service to his fellows ever makes a sacrifice.
In order for others to stand on your shoulders you have to be prepared, ready, committed to excellence, hard work and sacrifice.
Frederick Douglas was prepared
W.E.B. Dubois was committed to excellence
Thurgood Marshall was prepared
Mordecai Johnson was committed to excellence
Marion Anderson was prepared
Mary McCleod Bethune was committed to excellence
Martin, Medgar, Malcolm and others made the ultimate sacrifice ? they died on the battlefield of freedom. And they have bequeathed us an irrevocable legacy of service and achievement and we inherit this legacy in fee simple absolute.
If I am right that: (1) we stand on the shoulders of others; (2) that we have a reciprocal responsibility to others to stand on our shoulders; and (3) that we must be prepared, ready and committed to excellence, hard work and sacrifice then the fourth guideline is that you must find a place that will give context, contour and continuity to your life. A place where knowledge alone has its limitations. A place where your expertise in law, medicine, history, math or psychology reaches a stop sign. A place of spiritual sustenance ? a moral and ethical oasis ? a watering hole of values and ideals ? a sanctuary that?s like the tree planteth by the rivers of water ? unshakeable and immovable. A place ? that?s a rock in a weary land ? a shelter in a time of storm. That place at Howard is Rankin Chapel.
Every time I come here, I am reminded of my parents taking me to St. Paul A.M.E. Church as a youngster. There when I heard the steward pray, the choir sing and the preacher preach ? like Isaiah, ?I saw the lord, high and lifted up? and I?ve never gotten over it. I?m not asking you to believe. That?s the preacher?s job. I?m simply saying that as you pursue academic excellence ? come by here ? come by Rankin ? to get the good news, come by here to get your compass, your focus, come by here asking, pleading ? guide my feet while I run this race, for I don?t want to run this race in vain.
That is your charge to keep, your calling to fulfill, your rendez-vous with destiny as you come by here ? may you neither stumble, nor falter ? rather may you mount up with wings as eagles, may you run and not be weary, may you walk together children and not be faint.
? Let us pray ?
God of our weary years
God of our silent tears
Thou who hath brought us thus far on our way
Thou who has by Thy might led us into the light
Keep us forever on Thy path we pray
Lest our feet stray from the places our God where we met Thee
Lest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world we forget Thee
Shadowed beneath Thy hands, may we forever stand
True to our God
True to our native land.
Vernon E. Jordan, Jr.
Senior Managing Director, Lazard Fr?res & Co. LLC
Of Counsel, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld LLP
