Maya Angelou's 1992 Commencement Address at Spelman College

did amend didn't me better man get him in look well he brought me from bitter man get him in bitumen the Sun is hot mighty bright let's get on the business get home tonight get in there bitumen bitumen bitumen auctioning slaves as a real high art bring that young girl out here Roy she's good for a strong and bitter man getting in Bitterman now here's a real good bad about 15 a great bad memory was a die home and clean look at her she show ain't homely like sheep in the Bible she's black becoming a better man get him in get him look where he brought us hey I'm gonna start at 3 can I hear 3 step up gents take a good look see I know you'll want wanna once you see that she's young and right and make a damn good breeder bitter man get a man bitter man look where he brought us she's good in the field she can throw and cook strip her down Roy let the gentleman look she's full up front she's ample behind examine her teeth if you got in mind look look here's a bit of three from a man who's 5325 kind of here 350 your money earning you much in the banks turn around go ahead let him look at a flame bitter man get a man bitter man look look 350 is a bid I'm looking for fold I here for 400 she's a bargain show boys a bid for 55 now look alive good a man get him in get him in don't mind it is that's one of the tricks turn around boy gonna please here six she's helped him strong she's well equipped make a good lady's maid when she's properly with being a man get him in bitumen at seven I'm gonna let her go seven seven seven she's gone strip her down Roy and bring the next one on better man get him in look where he brought us wrong oh hey miss Rosie when I see you you brown-bag of a woman wrapped up in your mind like last week's grocery list I say miss Rosa when I see you sitting and your old man shoes with the big toe cut out when I see you miss Rosie who used to be the prettiest gal in Georgia used to be called Georgia rose I say when I see you miss Rosie I stand up because through your life and even your destruction it is given to me to stand up ladies sisters my daughters I'm delighted to be here delighted I was so pleased when I spoke to the choir mistress and she said yes she would sing this song they would try to find it and my lord did they sing it my lord and when your president called me and said girlfriend I said how high do you want me to jump Ginetta just tell me how high and when because I belong to you you are mine you are absolutely mine I have given birth to each one of you because I have dreamed you I have loved you as your parents and your aunts and your uncles and your fathers and all your teachers have loved you we you are created we have invented you because we have stayed alive somehow miraculously people live in direct relation to the heroes and she rose there always and in all ways and it is imperative that you see yourselves as having been loved and are loved now it is imperative that you do so you are cared for you know that the first Africans were brought to this country in 1619 I don't mean to cast aspersions on my white brothers and sisters who may or may not be in the audience but that was I'm not signifying either that was one year before the Mayflower dock hello we have undergone experiences too bizarre to be included and mr. Alexander's phenomenon the book roots are in the television phenomenon roots and yet here we are did you know that in 1870 and 80 there were statements made in southern legislatures that by 1920 all blacks would be dead or gone here we are upwards of 40 million and that's a conservative estimate because I know people who swear they're more than 40 million black people in the Baptist Church hey that's it that's right they're not even counting backsliders AME see you me and the three black atheists in the world here we are and you are born right out of their heads right out of their hearts they have loved you you see you have already been paid for is that amazing already you do not have to pay for yourselves we have paid for you all those men and women who went before you have paid for you already and young men and women young women who are just starting into Spelman you have been paid for the reason you study the reason you do the best you can the reason you stand always as black cleans with something of the swindle and Bennett's and something of the your queenly nature in your walk remembering something of the sweet poignancy of your slave history in your voice that is your history to the reason you do so is so that you can prepare yourself as dr. Brown said to pay for someone who is yet to come that is the only that you have already been paid for because you have been loved now I'm sorry to say when a number people write about black people and romantic loves because they are so erroneously informed they would have us believe that white people make love and black people just have sex and however look look at the love ended in the literature in the Lord this is the shred from a 19th century folk song in which a black man spoke of the woman he loved he said the woman I love is fat and chocolate to the bone and every time she shakes some skinny woman loses her home and a shred again 19th century folk song in which a black woman's both of the man she loved this shred found its way into mr. WC hand his 20th century blues the black woman saying he's blacker than midnight teeth like flags of truth he's the finest thing in the whole Sanders they say the blackness of their sweeter is the Jews that's romantic love but just a couple of romantic love poetry before I get to the self-love which I really want you to to realize to have with you before as you take this your diploma and your hugs and kisses from your beloved's have this too but before I go to self-love listen here's a romantic love poem of my favorite poet course I'm tickled so she's my favorite right now and another ten minutes I'll have somebody else that Miss Georgia Douglas Dunn 19th century black lady poet she wrote I want to die while you love me while yet you hold me there while laughter lies upon my lips and lights are in my hair yes I want to drive while you love me who would care to live to love had nothing more to ask or nothing more to give no I want to die while you love me and bear to that still bear your kisses turbulent unspent to warn me while indeed now that's lyrical poetry ladies that's the poetry that is in your hearts and that's the lyricism which is in your speech it is all yours you have earned it but before that you had it before you earned it because it is your inheritance now you know I believe that self-love is very important if you read my work you know I'm always talking about loving myself I never trust anybody he tells me he or she loves me as the person doesn't love herself or himself there's an African saying which is be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt I mean if he had some he cover himself first right so I like to look at self-love it is very important that it comes from within that you have a sense of yourself so that when you walk into an office you don't go alone bring your people with you bring everybody who has loved you with you say grandma come on let's go great grandpa you've been dead all this time come on let's go I have to go in here and have an interview come on auntie come on my friends come let's go and when you walk in people don't know what it is about you they can't take their eyes off you you may not be cute in the give'em sense you may not be meching model size in that particular sense you may not be any of those things but they can't take their eyes off you and they say of you in this incredible wave which I don't understand they say I don't know but she has charisma you know what you have is all those people around you so think of that anytime you have anything to do bring everybody with you that you can remember who has loved you and then you have that sense of having been paid for and when you walk in people will say now I think you're overqualified yes you will have that but you'd have that anyway I'm sorry to say so let us look at self-love I wrote a little poem for a woman who works in a factory and on the face of it you wouldn't think she had much going for her but the poem is called weekend glory she said some dicta folks don't know the facts posing and preening and putting on acts stretching the necks and straining their backs they move into condos up over the ranks they lend their souls to the local banks they buy big cause they can't afford then ride around town acting bored my job at the plant ain't the biggest bit but I paid my bills and stay out of death I get my hair done for my own self sake so I don't have to pick and I don't have to rape I take the church money out and then I head across town to my friend girl's house where we plan our round we meet our men and go to a joint where the music is blues and to-the-point folks talk about me they just can't see how I work all week at the factory then get spruced up and laugh and dance and turn away from worry with the sassy glands they accuse me of living from day to day who are they kidding sila day my life in heaven but it's sure in Hell I'm not on time but I call it swell if I'm able to work and get paid right and have the luck to be black on a Saturday night you know um I want to tell you something else about love you know that black people historically for centuries have laughed when they weren't tickled and scratched when they didn't itch and those gestures have come down to us as uncle Tommy and Aunt Jemima in young women I don't think we often enough stop to wonder how that black woman in the 19th century how she felt every time she said no ma'am miss Ann you didn't slap me when you hurt me I intend the hearty so she could make enough money so she could send somebody to Spellman or that black man who said no sighs no sir you ain't wrong I showed must be stupid so he could make enough money so he could send somebody to Morehouse a Morris Brown or show a Tuskegee are Hampton Institute at the time of this I don't think we often enough stop to wonder I think they were successful in the employment of those humiliating ploys or you wouldn't be here for me to talk to and I wouldn't be here to talk to you so we have to look where he's brought us wrong look there's a poem by mr. Paul Laurence Dunbar called masked I use it with the poem of my own which I wrote for a black woman who's a maid in New York City and a poem for Old Men on it's a triptych now this woman used to ride on the bus and if if if somebody missed the bus she'd laugh if someone pic caught the bus she'd laugh she laughed until I looked at her and I thought you know if you don't know black features you really would think she's laughing she wasn't laughing she was simply extending her lips and making a sound so I wrote a poem for her ladies is love howbeit broody I'll be a painful when I think about myself I almost laughed myself to death my life has been one great big joke a dance that's won't a song was spoke I laughed so hard I nearly choked when I think about myself 70 years in these folks world the child I works for calls me girl and I say yes ma'am for working sake I'm too proud to bend to PO to break so I laugh until my stomach ache when I think about myself and my folks can make me split my side I laugh so hard I nearly died the tales they tell sound just like lyin they grow the fruit but eat the Rye mmm I laugh until I start to cry when I think about myself and my folks and the little children but then we wear the mask that grins and lies it shades our cheeks and hides our eyes this debt we pay to humans I'll with torn and bleeding hearts we smile and mouths myriad subtleties why should the world be over wise and Counting all our tears and sighs may let them only see us while we wear the mask we smile but oh my god our tears to thee from tortured souls arise and we see the clay is vile beneath our feet and long the mile but let the world think otherwise we where the man look where we come now I know the thing most wanted in the world is a brief but pissy ass commencement speech this is your day but this last poem is for all our grandmothers all of them the great grandmothers the great greats in Greek Greek Greece she lays him down on the moist dirt now my grandmother I'm sorry to say has been dead 30 years and Mama could sing but when you ask mama to sing outside of the church mama would say sister gone you know mama came saying but when she sang in the church women would wind up their purses and throw him at the preacher but if you left her alone at home she would sing her shall not I shall not be removed so I would write I couldn't speak at the time I would write mama it is not removed my grandmother would put on her glasses she's yes mister mama no I shall not I shall not be removed she lays him down on the moist dirt the Canebrake rustling with the whispers of leaves and loud longing of hounds and the crackling of hunters and near branches she muttered lifting her head and nod toward freedom and said I shall not be removed she gathered her babies their tears slickers oil on black faces their young eyes canvassing mornings of madness mama is master gonna sell you from us tomorrow yes unless you keep walking more and talking less yes unless the keeper of our lives releases me from all Commandments yes and your lives never mind to live will be executed on the killing floor of innocence unless you match my heart and words say with me I shall not be moved in Virginia tobacco fields in the Red Hills of Georgia into the palms of her chained hands she cried against calamity saying you have tried to destroy me and although I perish daily I shall not be moved her universe summarized into one black body falling finally from the tree to her feet made her cry each time in a new voice all my past hastens to defeat strangers claim the glory of my love iniquity has bound me to his bed still I shall not be moved she heard the names swirling ribbons in the winds of history Pepa Mammon property creature ape baboon hot tail thing it she said my description can I pitch a tongue I have a certain way of being in this world and I shall not be moved no angel stretched protecting wings above the heads of her children fluttering and urging winds a reason into the confusion of their lives they sprouted like young weeds she could not shield their growth from the grinding blades of ignorance nor shape them into symbolic topiaries she sent him away over ground underground in coaches barefoot she said when you learn teach when you get give as for me I shall not be moved she stood in mid-ocean seeking dry land searching God's face assured she placed her fire of service on the altar and although clothed in the finery of faith and Semite when she appeared at the temple door no sign welcome to black grandmothers into here into the crashing sound into the wickedness she said no one not on 1 million ones dare to deny me God I enter as one and one thousand the divine upon my right impels me to pull forever at the latch of freedom's gate these mama and Grandma and great grandmama faces lemon yellow plum purple honey brown have grimaced and twisted down pyramids of lit years she stands today before the abortion clinic confounded by lack of choice in the welfare line reduced to the pity of handouts ordained in the pulpit shielded by the mysteries in operating rooms husbanding life in the Krylov holding God in her throat on lonely street corners hulking her body in classrooms loving children to understand them centered on the world stage she sings to her loves and loved' to her foes and detractors however I am perceived or deceived however my ignorance of conceits lay aside your fears that I will be undone for I shall not be moved look where we've all come from thank you you you

Channel: Spelman College

Views: 119,629

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Keywords: Spelman College, Spelman, HBCUs, Maya Angelou (Author), Commencement Address

Id: 70RH-h7QfP0

Length: 25min 22sec (1522 seconds)

Published: Wed May 28 2014