Tenth.
And, the question of the morning is: New Talented Tenth, “What shall you render unto the Lord for all the benefits he has given you?”
You, by your presence at this university, are the inheritors of a tradition. You are the runners in the relay race for freedom and justice.
The baton has been passed from Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass to W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, to James Weldon Johnson and Channing Tobias, to Mary McLeod Bethune and Mordecai Johnson, to Martin Luther King, Whitney Young, Roy Wilkins, Ruby Hurley and Fannie Lou Hamer, to John Lewis and Julian Bond and Ruby Doris Smith and Marion Wright Edelman – and from them now to you.
The baton now is in your hands and your first task, I believe, is to assess the situation.
What then is the state of Black America as you take the baton? When historians record the present moment in time, they can take their test from Charles Dickens:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness … it was the season of Light; it was the season of Darkness …
Let’s begin with the “best of times.”
Since 1970 the total number of Black elected officials in the United States has increased seven-fold from 1,469 to approximately 10,500.
The number of female Black elected officials has increased greatly. Black women were 10.9 percent of all Black elected officials. Now they are 35.9 percent.
Since 1970, there have been three Black United States Senators, two Black governors, eight Black lieutenant governors and one Black president.
Since 1970, the number of Black state legislators has quadrupled from 169 to 631.
In 1970, Mississippi had 95 Black elected officials. Today, it has 950. There are similar stories in most of the Old South: Georgia has 640; Alabama has 757; South Carolina has 547.
During this period, Black mayors have been elected and re-elected in most of the largest cities in the country.
Since 1970, the number of Black lawyers has grown nearly seven-fold from 3,000 to 20,000. Much the same story can be
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