Tyler Perry Spring Tuskegee Commencement Speech

thank you thank you so much I I must say that I'm so excited to be your commencement speaker here for the Tuskegee University graduating class of 2016 tu I just had I had to do that too I had to do that too President Johnson first lady Johnson all the faculty and staff chairman page and the students thank you so much for having me I it fills my heart with joy to be here on these hallowed grounds of this historic campus and to also to see your faces to feel the hope in this place it's electric your light is shining so bright today so congratulations to all of you graduates you have made it you deserve it and to all all the parents mama daddy grandma grandpa aunts uncles cousins brothers sisters nobody gets your loan so we celebrate you too thank you so much thank you so much and thank you for asking me to be here today I must say this is my first commencement speech and it is also the first time I've been given an honorary Doctorate so as of Monday morning I will be calling myself dr. Perry when I return studio being my first commencement speech I feel the pressure to say something that will inspire you something that would make you want to go out and take on the world so my prayer my hope and my intention is to try and do just that today I don't know if you know this but I did not go to college it wasn't that I didn't want to go which I said I was going through a very cold very difficult time in my life at that point and I had also had a front-row seat to watch my mother struggle to put my older sister through college and I didn't want to be that kind of burden on her I knew firsthand the hardship and I and especially you know because the truth be told I wasn't that good of a student I was smart but I didn't want to I didn't have the patience to learn a lot of the things that I thought I would that wouldn't serve me in life you know how hard-headed teenagers can be they think they know it all well I was one sitting there at school I would get so frustrated because I never thought that I would use a lot of what I was being taught in my real life and to give that a hardheaded kids some props there's a few things he was right about to a degree beside because I can honestly say in the 27 years since I left high school nobody has ever asked me about the square root of nothing nobody has ever asked me about the Nina the Pinta or the Santa Maria nobody is Jane and Suzie Kara had four apples for five miles they divide don't happen listen I never met Jane and I never met Susie I know somebody thinking why are you telling these young folks this they have to study they've learned all this well I just want you to know you're gonna use all of it but that's okay that's okay some of your face is the same right now you mean tell me I could skip college have been rich and successful like Tyler Perry while that is possible I want to tell you that the advantage that all of you graduates have over me this education this college degree that you have worked so hard for I envy you because if I could get back half the time and the monies that I spent and wasted because of what I didn't know I could have paid for everybody's education in this entire school you see here's the mess I go here we you see come on I only got 20 minutes to get through this listen maybe 30 maybe you see it was what I didn't know and didn't get in college that made it difficult maybe difficult for me to run my business in the beginning it was what I didn't know the basics of business that if hadn't gone to college I had to learn I could have learned them which would help me so much now don't feel sorry but I'm doing all right but my journey would have been so much easier had I taken advantage of the kind of education that you have been afforded here at Tuskegee when I was growing up my father was a carpenter he would take me to work with him and in the summertime you know it was really hot and I'd be out there with him and he'd be building these houses and the part that I hated most about this was when we had to put in the foundation the part that was very labor intensive there were the footings that had to be dug to a certain depth however tall the building was that's how deep the footings had to be it was painstaking you know digging these holes and I grew up in New Orleans so you had put in these 30-foot pilings sometimes in the ground to be able to support the building so but so just to know that then and then it had to be what we called formed where you put these boards around and then you had to tie the steel and after all that work was done you just poured concrete over it and here's the thing after it was all done if nobody ever saw it all that work was done and nobody ever saw no one ever cared about the foundation the only time you hear someone talk about the foundation is when a house is falling apart but when the foundation is done right nobody mentions it and when it's done right it can carry the weight of anything that it was designed to hold well that's what you've been doing here you've been building a foundation and one that will hold you up for the rest of your life now you know when I was a kid I would ask myself you know why is nobody paying attention this foundation why did this work have to be so hard have you ever wondered for some of you I'd had to be so hard to get through school or just make it from day to day well that's because what you were building had to be strong enough to support the weight of whatever you could dream and if you're like me you are a huge dreamer you had to have a foundation that is big enough and strong enough and bold enough to hold all of your dreams and handle them coming true that's why in life it's not always the even playing field what I mean by that is this while for some studying good grades may have come easy but for others every day here may have been a struggle for some mom and daddy had money to write to check with tuition with ease but for others they had to make a choice between paying a bill and getting your books for some it was easy to focus and learn while others were distracted by problems that they were going through at home or working two jobs to make ends meet all that means is that you were being designed to handle different levels of success I mayn't you be told no one really knows what you went through to be able to sit in this very seat they don't know the hell all other turmoil but trust me when I tell you all of it was to make you strong strong enough to go through whatever you have to go through to get to your dreams coming through I want you to ask yourself this question today how much can my foundation hold as you think about that I need to warn you it takes a while to build a dream think about that when you get out there and you're faced with all kinds of challenges when you get out there in the world I want you to remember something what's in the well will come up in the bucket so thank God that Mama and Daddy and Big Mama and Grandpa and Tuskegee they put some good stuff down and your will so listen to me no matter what happens you've got good stuff down inside of you you can always count on it so you remember that but what happens if you get out there and you find yourself saying I thought I'd have this job by now or that job by now I thought I'd be working here or there by now why aren't they calling me back why haven't I been hired you see when you leave the protection of the walls of Tuskegee when you step out from under Mama and Daddy shadow because I'm gonna tell you something mom and daddy protected you is one thing but their form of that world out there is a whole nother thing to deal with so what do you do when you have work this hard built this foundation everything you are trying to build on it seems to not be coming together what happens if you find yourself at an interview and realize that you are being judged because of your name or because of the color of your skin or because of your size or because of who you love or where you come from what if in a few years you find yourself at a glass ceiling that the one in the career that you thought you so desperately wanted what do you do what happens when the job that you wanted or the career that you planned for it doesn't come right away what do you do well it's 1991 I was just about your age then and I had written my first play it was called I know I've been changed it was about adult survivors of child abuse and I wanted to do this show and just my intention was just to make enough money to be able to take care of my mother that's all I wanted to do that was my goal make the money and retire anyway I have moved I just moved to Atlanta to try and launch this place so I went to work I would always work you have to always work you've got to always go to work I've managed to save $12,000 and I put the show up working used car bill collector H&R Block tax return that wasn't quite right but I got my money out of it I thought 1200 people would show up that weekend but only 30 showed up my car payment print everything was tied up in and so I ended up homeless I ended up out on the street with no money and nothing to my man but I knew that that is what I was supposed to be doing I knew that I was on a good foundation I had put in the work this was supposed to work it was supposed to be successful but it wasn't over and over again it failed or so I thought from 1992 to 93 to 94 every year I was doing one show a year I would go get a job in between and they would tell me I couldn't take time off so I would quit now I'm not telling you to go quit your job I'm telling you what I did there's my story I would go tell my boss that I need some time off they said no you just got started working you just got this job he can't have any time off but I knew that that was my destiny so I kept on doing the claim every year I do it it failed fall short fall short until 1998 in 1998 in the seventh year me trying the seventh year of me try I was about to give up and walk away I had enough of it I was gonna do like my mother said she said baby go down to the phone company get you a good job making about $350 a week and some benefits and you'll be alright but how many know Mama's dream for you is not necessarily your dream for yourself I knew I was in the right place when one day I started getting notes from people this was before email who had seen the show they would say this really touched me this really helped me they started telling me how it had changed their lives how they were moved by it then I realized wait a second this story that I'm telling you about these adult survivors getting over things this isn't just about me or where I come from it's a healing for many people I saw it I got it and it hit me and my intention changed at that moment it was no longer about making enough money to take care of anybody it became about what it did for the people who saw it who saw themselves my entire intention changed in 1998 and everything in my life shifted after that I was still doing the same show I'm still doing the same things but because my intention changed my purpose in what I was doing this for had changed my intention became about how do I serve other people how do I lift other people when I realized that everything in my life began to fall into place so I want to talk to you about attention today what is your intention in your career why did you choose it what is your purpose because let me tell you whatever you set your intention as that is where you will land you know once I change my intention once it became about you gonna hear that word a lot intention once it became about going out on the road with my place to share what I had learned about life about faith and about God and about forgiveness once I had once I did that everything that I touched seems to see major success my intention was to use what I had in life to use my gifts my writing and everything within me to lift people to motivate them to make them laugh to use the laughter as an anesthetic so that I could talk about things that were plaguing our community that nobody wanted to talk about things like domestic violence and molestation and break-ins and AIDS and HIV getting over heartbreak getting over things that that tried to take us out to talk about someone that no one wanted to talk about in this politically correct society and that is the name of Jesus you see to me my work is a how-to manual for the average person for people like me when I was growing up who couldn't afford their people who couldn't afford to take time off work while they figured things out for people who couldn't get in that car and go to the country club and play around the golf and work things out in their head it was for people like the people that raised me people that I'm not ashamed to own like many of us do once we get a few letters behind our name when my intention change so that everything in my life I begin to live in purpose and live on purpose I never thought about money or success again but it kept coming my way so much so that I was playing arenas even until this day twenty thirty thousand people come into the green arenas over a weekend packing the place just to see my live plays then on to incredible success in film with over about 15 movies grossing over a billion dollars then onto television where I provided jobs and made more millionaires than this all the studio's combined in a ten year period when Blacksburg in a 10-year period with blacks were absence from television in the film I help people like Idris Elba by giving him his first move I worked with Kerry Washington before scandal and taraji peahen stood before him pyre with Viola Davis before how to get one get away with murder and mrs. Lee Tyson the legendary Cicely Tyson she said that I helped revitalize her career and their many more nothing changed of what I was doing other than my intention so today I want to challenge you to know your intention as to why you do what you do and I promise you if your intention is right you will be successful but let me warn you what will happen when you successful because I don't want you to get out there get caught off guard at first you're going to be celebrated but when your success surpasses what your peers expect of you then you will become a target so now that you have set your attention now that you have your foundation let's talk about how to stay on course when the attacks come then I assure you they will come for you just as they did for me when my Tackett started I was shocked because I was so busy looking outside for the enemy to come and tear me down I didn't even realize that the enemy was standing right in my own backyard you see we as black people we have come through so much and we've endured so much that a lot of us not all of us but a lot of us still bear the stars of our ancestors we still feel that if one of us is up then that means that no one else can be - so in order for me to be up and get ahead then I can't celebrate you I have to tear you down that's the mentality that we have sometimes that's them from the time in our history that there was only allowed one person of color to be successful at a time I'll give you an example for Hollywood when we had a nickname it was successful there couldn't be another when Dorothy Dandridge were successful there couldn't be another when Sammy Davis was successful you know what I'm saying you get you get the picture here so expect some attacks it's all a part of you but remember this a hunter only shoots at a deer you can see if you ain't being seen you ain't doing nothing I can recall not too long ago being called the and a buffoon by one of my peers things were written in headlines at some of these Bob what's up with him in this dress Heller hairlines shocking why did he put these fat black people on TV when House of Pain came out Tyler this one is someone I saw it's a title of an article Tyler Perry hates black women another that said Tyler Perry hates black men I mean just absurd things that shocked to me because it was coming from inside from black folks I was blown away I thought how did these intellectuals with these degrees they're so smart how can they not see what I'm doing here how do they not get the power of what what's happening here for people that everybody else had given up on their comments certainly aback because I found myself fighting two wars I was sitting in Hollywood meetings at the board table telling them how important our stories are and how they need to be told and and how it was important that we keep our truths as they are but when I left out of the boardroom stepped out of that meeting I had to fight us to one comment that stuck with me is Tyler Perry this was a title of an article Tyler Perry is dangerous for black people I thought what I thought what how can they say this the people who were saying these things must not have known the experiences and my life and the people around me they had shaped me then shake my writing and my work like my uncle with his ashen knees who drank and fell in and out of love every other weekend on my arms who would get into an argument with her husband and cut him down 911 trade that he was okay or the woman that lived across the street from me who was largely overweight she had 10 children and she was on welfare and when I thought about all of these people and their stories I realized something that stopped me from being frustrated by what they were saying I quickly stopped paying attention to the naysayers when I realized what they were telling me was what they were saying is that my stories and the people that I was talking about didn't deserve to have their story told because they were an embarrassment to a certain level of black people that's what they were saying and I got angry I thought who are they to say that your life and your story as a black person shouldn't be told because you don't look like what they want you to look like I got angry not just for me but for all of the people that I love and the millions of people that love what I do I was offended for the people that I grew up with and the people that loved me so much I was offended for the people that were maids and garbage truck drivers and hairdressers the people that shined shoes and wash dishes and scrub toilets and clean houses so that the very people that are talking about the work that I'm doing could get the degrees to be authorities on all things Tyler Perry but I must say when my anger subsided I wanted to understand this level of elitist ignorance they didn't take me long to find out that this lives in our culture as well there is a history of it it was Langston Hughes who said the Zora Neale Hurston one of the greatest literary minds of our times was a new version of the because her story spoke in a southern dialect I got it then and it also will go the other way where they say if you get too much education then you tried to be too white or if he speaks proper English you're trying to be white or you just take Whitney Houston who was booed at the Soul Train Awards about black people because she sounded too white it was in the color purple' where people boycotted because of the stories and the way that Alice Walker had depicted black men Alex Walker a black woman Alice Walker they boycotted the movie and then when it did win any Oscars they boycotted they said that Oprah was too white they said that The Cosby Show didn't represent us as black people so it goes both ways in my research I found something shocking what I found is that we as black people we have the greatest migration that you could imagine let me tell you what I mean by that tell you what we do to ourselves when some of us make a little money or when we get some degrees we don't want to be reminded of who we are and where we come from when we see someone that reminds us of our grandparents or our ancestors we get offended if we see an image of a black person on television that is overweight we get troubled and you know the thing that bothers me is I have never seen our white brothers and sisters apologizing for telling all sides of their story realizing that I learned not to apologizing for telling all shades of ours as an artist this is the art that I want to paint and I'm going to tell you this graduates just as I will never do it don't you ever change one brushstroke on your canvas because somebody doesn't like what you paint but they'll tell you what happened while they were talking my attention stayed the same to encourage to limit to inspire while they were murmuring I kept going higher I kept on building still get bit I kept on working why am i telling this number one so that you know how to stay on course keep your intention no matter what pressures come your way and also I'm telling you this because it's time that we stop running from where we come from to look for someone else to approve us I don't know why we went out to someone else looking for validation I want to tell you something we are enough you are enough your gift is enough live in your to share your gifts don't worry about who gets it if your aim and your intention is for right and to do the right thing you will make it and when you do don't run from us don't be embarrassed by us come back and help us you are the generation that has the power to do away with this kind of thinking you are the generation that could change this you can show us that all of our stories and all of our lives matter when I made money when I made my first million dollars I tell you what I did I went back and I set up shop right in the middle of our community in the hood I will never forget when President Obama was running for re-election in 2012 and he came to the studio and to see all of those little black faces lying in the streets holding their flags waving at the presidential motorcade came driving through the ghetto I saw hope in their eyes it made me cry because I realized that some of them know that they can do it too I recently bought Fort McPherson army base in Atlanta to build my new studio and it's right in the middle of one of the lowest income areas in Atlanta and I will hire many people from that neighborhood and trained them on how to run their own country it gives me so much joy to know that an army base that was established and built just a few years after slavery is now owned by a negro I say that to say this to you that our ancestors they walk their path your grandparents your mother your father we they all walk their path now it's your turn return to where you come from when you made it you have the foundation no your intention no that it's not going to be easy but just keep yourself on track know the value of what is already down and your will know that you are special know that you carry it you have the torch has already been bought and paid for now it's in your hands use it for good inspire somebody encourage somebody up lift somebody and finally return to where you got started build with us teach us show us what you've learned help us to see that we can do it too then having somebody else to know that they are just as special as you are may God bless you Tuskegee bless all your dreams bless you oh I think we can do a little bit of an infamous dr. Tyler Perry we appreciate mr. Perry dr. Perry we appreciate his willingness to agree to receive a degree from Tuskegee University and we appreciate our future with dr. Perry

Channel: Sue - Ham

Views: 349,335

Keywords: Tyler perry, tuskeegee institute, sulondia hammond, sue, thug motivator

Id: 1TUoWe-6E6c

Length: 27min 32sec (1652 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 18 2016