Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm Encourages Graduates to Positively Change Society (1981)

for the past four years. But most importantly it is a new beginning, in that each of you can now proceed to bring to fruition your own personal career and occupational objectives. You now have the capacity to take the knowledge you have attained from your books and your professors and mold that education into a tool with which you can begin to carve out your place in our society. And while each of you have different pursuits and different aspirations, I hope that all of you share a common concern for your fellow human beings, and that you will use your education to help to really build a better world. H G Wells warned us some 60 years ago, that human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. And I caution you, that unless you have in your hearts a willingness to apply what

skills you have refined, to careers and objectives which are borne out of social responsibility, then on our society's investment in each of you has been wasted and we will move closer to that final catastrophe. There is an old but nevertheless meaningful adage which states, 'to those to whom much is given, much is expected'. And so while each of you can rightfully take pride in the accomplishments all of us are celebrating here today, you must of course be ever mindful that you have now entered a special group in this country, that is particularly vital to our future. And that most Americans your age, do not have your education and your opportunities. We face an ever present crisis of energy resources. We are confronted with an escalating arms race in which this nation and other world powers

are stockpiling armaments and atomic weaponry under the insane rationale that doubling and redoubling our ability to make war will somehow enhance the prospects for peace. And meanwhile we have yet to be able to accommodate the problems of the unemployed, the poor, and the minorities, who have been victimized by circumstances they have no control over and do not really often understand. The road to full economic recovery has yet to be traveled by our new administration. And I have a fear that we will be dealing with the economic consequences and recessionary trends of the past six years in this nation for a long time to come. And yet, for the multiplicity of problems that we as a nation are now facing, there is also an impoverishment of spirit, which has taken hold

and has caused many beautiful young people to reject political involvement and the goals of progressive social change. By contrast, we can take a look at American youth during the 60s and they believe James Baldwin when he said 'not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed, until it is faced'. And that activist period in our history taught all of us, that the young people of this country, then organized, then inspired can become a politically powerful force to be reckoned with. It was after all the involvement of the young people on many college campuses during that decade which eventually resulted in an end to this country's tragic involvement in the war in South East Asia. It was black and white young people,

working together, and marching together, which helped to bring the cause of civil rights into a national focus. It was the searching, questioning, young people in groups like Common Cause and environmental action, who demanded, that our government become more accountable and more honest to its citizens. But now at a time, when a renewed spirit, and a revitalization of our people is most needed, the National spirit still seems to be demoralized. The enthusiasm once evidence among young people has turned to disgust or apathy. People from all ages, and from all points of the political spectrum, have minimized their civic and political involvement because they truly believe that it is almost impossible to make any meaningful changes in our system. They do not heed the timeless

warning of Edmund Burke. Then he said, 'that the only thing that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing'. I stated earlier that I truly believe, that the primary responsibility of the educated individual in our society, is that he or she must translate the knowledge gained by the educational process into a commitment to share the opportunities which abound in this country. In other words, my graduating friends, your education has a context, not just a political one, but also a social one, and a moral one. And when I look out into an