Let Them Know

They’ll question your intelligence, minimize your future, then act shocked when you outstudy, outbuild, and outvote them. From a Livingstone College commencement stage, we deliver a sharp, funny, and deeply serious charge built around three words that keep repeating for a reason: let them know. 

We start with the brain. Not just degrees and GPAs, but the discipline to learn actively, speak clearly, and create value even when the world hands you limits. We reflect on how Black excellence keeps proving itself in classrooms, careers, and culture, and why HBCUs matter as engines of opportunity and leadership. 

Then we move to the heart: resilience that comes from history, family, and “fictive kin,” plus the kind of faith that refuses to be reduced to quiet acceptance. Finally, we talk imagination as a survival skill and a civic duty, connecting the fight for the vote to today’s attacks on voting rights, redistricting, and the distractions of social media comparison and constant posting. 

If you’re looking for a powerful graduation speech, an HBCU commencement message, or a real conversation about Black history, civic engagement, and personal responsibility, press play. Subscribe, share this with a graduate or a voter, leave a review, and tell us: what are you ready to let them know?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Let the church say amen. Now you can't say that everywhere. When you in uh what the Negroes when I was growing up called in circular culture, secular, but we called it circular. Billy Preston said, will it go around in circles? That's what the old folk, y'all don't know nothing about that. To my dear friend, President Davis, is doing an extraordinary, magnificent, and mighty job as president of Livingstone College. Give him some love and

Welcome And Shout Outs

SPEAKER_01 0:49

recognition up in here today. The money he's brought in, the meaning he's brought in, the mission he's brought in, the purpose, the passion, and the perspective. You need all of that to have a great institution. And now that we are under assault by vicious forces which seek to undermine us with the ignorant self. Now I know your parents said, My God, you've got a commencement speaker who doesn't know how to speak correct English. They ignorant self. I know I speak the king's English to the queen's taste. I know what a dangling participle is, not a piece of lettuce. I know a gerund and a noun and verb, but sometimes these people make you talk crazy. But what an honor it is to be here today back at my alma mater. Yes. And I'm from Detroit, so I'm gonna say what up, though. What an honor it is to be here today, not only under the signature of this great and grand uh president, but of course the great Bishop Starnes, whom I've known since almost 50 years. Back when he was a prodigy, coming up in Knottville, pastoring a church. That was my first year, because I started a little late in undergraduate. He was already pastoring on his way to big things. So I looked up to him then, and I look up to him now, and had I had the bandwidth, I would have shined his shoes before he came up here on the podium, and to all of the other distinguished uh academics and deans and heads of school and departments and trustee members to this great choir, to the officers of this great institution, to the parents who are here, to you, my brothers and sisters, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and most especially the graduates of the class of 2026. Now I'm not gonna be long because I know y'all trying to graduate, trying to switch them tassels, trying to make cheddar already, but I I want to share a few words uh with you and perhaps try to give some insight and inspiration about what you are about uh to confront. I want to thank Brother Scott and Sister Johnson for taking care uh on the way and for all the things that this great institution does. If I were to read, I know we had read for us the 145th Psalm, but if I could recall

What Graduation Demands Next

SPEAKER_01 4:04

another great prophet, Clifford Harris. That's for the young people, y'all. Y'all don't know. I don't tongue wrestle, I don't lipbox. Solitaire's all I do is big rocks. Let them know. So if I were to take a title, I want to say let them know. Alright? The first thing you ought to let 'em know is about your brain. That's why you at school. My daddy, who graduated eighth grade from Albinney, Georgia, because Jim Crow and white supremacy conspired against his educational expansion. The horizon of his imagination, however, was not occluded by the vicious intimidation of formal segregation. So my dad is saying, what they learn you in school today. Now you might think that's etymologically incorrect, grammatically incorrect,

The Charge: Let Them Know

SPEAKER_01 5:12

but every now and then, our African and American vernacular English is a warehouse of deep and profound insight. Because his point was

Prove Your Brain With Excellence

SPEAKER_01 5:22

what they learn in you. Learning is an active engagement. You ain't just sitting in class receiving as automatons the knowledge that is being articulated to you. You engaged in the process yourself. And in an age where white supremacy is trying to convince us that black folk ain't got no brains, we know the one saying it is as about as dumb as they come. Y'all know who I'm talking about, y'all know what I'm talking about. I ain't got to call no names, you know. I ain't got no trump cards, but I do have a deck. Let them know your brain. You dogging us, but we studying longer. Let them know your brain. We study chemistry and engineering and we studied psychology and English. Let them know your brain. Because as black people in America, the doubt they have about our intellectual capacity, or any minoritized group, or any group of people who have been played to the left or who have been left behind, we know that we are able to rise above and beyond. And we know that our schools attract all kinds of folk, not just black folk, but white folk and Latinos and Asian folk and those from around the world. Why? Because we offer opportunity to everybody. We ain't never tried to close our school doors, we ain't never tried to block nobody coming in. Let them know about that brain. That brain you have to memorize and articulate, to speak eloquently, like Brother Jerry, that brain you have to be able to come up with concepts that will confound those who don't believe in your fundamental intelligence, like George Washington, who looked at the black people and stole their teeth and put them in place of his own wooden obstacles. And yet we were able to give literally out of our own bodies. But we know that we were peanut farmers too, but not just farmers. We turned the peanut into something productive. Give us a minute, we'll make an hour out of it. Give us something limited, we will turn it out. Give us what your narrow conception is, and we will reproduce it with greatness. Lower us down into the pit of horror, and we'll become Jay-Z. God forgive me from my brass delivery. I remember vividly what these streets did to me. Imagine me allowing you to nitpick at me. Portray me like a pick a knee. We'll be Tupac Shakur. Or some of y'all call them Tupac Shacker. Just the other day, I got lynched by some crooked cops, and to this day, them same cops on the beach getting major pay. But when I get my check, they taking tags out. So we paying the cops to knock the blacks out. Show them what that brain can do. Articulate ideals, come up with concepts, express English that is noble and sublime, like Langston Hughes or Claude McKay or W.E.B. Du Bois, who said two warring ideals, two unreconciled strivings, whose darkest strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. Let them know what you got in that brain. But not only let them know what you got in your brain, let them know what you got in your heart. Because a lot of us got reason to give up. A lot of us got reasons to quit. A lot of us have obstacles and impediments that prevent our flourishing, but we kept on kept on. Kept on keeping on. We'll continue to keep going on. Why is that? Because we got something planted in us that didn't start with us. If your history ends at your birth, you are poor. History is before you.

Carry Your People In Your Heart

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Those who produced you, your mamas and your daddies, your fictive kin, as the great anthropologist Carol Stack calls it. That's what black folk do. Your play uncle and your play aunt and your play grandma, members of the same family, Jonathan Box said, rarely grow up under the same roof. You know how it is. You came to Livingstone, you found somebody who's like your brother, your sister, your cousin, your aunt. You found another daddy or mama because blood lines do not exhaust kinship. And so, what's in your heart, your ability to keep going when folks say you shouldn't keep going. That's the people we came from. Trauma has not traumatized us to the degree that it traps us. Yes, we may be traumatized, but you ain't gonna stop us. You had us enslaved, but we kept on singing slave songs that transformed this culture. But you didn't know we were entertaining you and emancipating ourselves. We said green trees abandoned, ain't got long to stay here. You said, ooh, Sarah, them songs show do sound good. We said, yes, master, they sure do. Because we were telling each other green trees when the springtime came, and Harriet Tubman come around here, we about to roll up out of this big place. And so we had coded language. Pharaoh was the overseer. So you thought we were talking about God, we talking about God's grace and plan of escape. Some of them trying to make us believe that religion is about pacification and accepting the condition we find ourselves in. No, it ain't. So God can ordain an inanimate object, but not a woman. The reason you don't want women preaching, because some of them can out preach you. Gina Stewart and Bishop Bashine McKenzie. The reason some men don't want women preaching, because they can't hold a candle. So what you do in low skills, they do in high heels with makeup and a nice weave if they happen to have it. Some of y'all didn't want a woman running for president because it reminded you a woman already running you at the crib.

Women Lead And Preach Too

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Thank God for them kind of women. They running everything. They know what the light feelers do, they know what time to pay the bills on time, they nobody get you up and out of bed, they nobody feel and close you. Thank God for women who run things. Excuse me, miss. What's your name? See, back in my day, we tried to have gang. I don't know how y'all get no women in this day and age. Well the women. I got sunshine on a cloudy day. When it's clean outside, I got the money for money. I can feel funny. What can make me feel this way? Show 'em what's in your heart that your people gave you. But finally, let them know what's in your imagination. I won't end on this because we're living in tough times. We know it's rough. The other day, the extreme court tried to gut section two of the Voting Rights Act. Y'all spoiled. Y'all been voting since you've been here. Negroes like me, and that's what my birth certificate calls me, a Negro. Now that was a nice term back in the day when they were using it because they was calling themselves a stuff.

Protect Your Imagination In Hard Times

SPEAKER_01 15:36

That we now frequently use among ourselves. If you know what I'm saying. N-word, please. So the thing is, is that we had to have an amendment and a law to the constitution to allow Negroes to vote. Now y'all watching too much of your comics and your streaming that you feel you don't want to get up and vote. You know, you tired. People bled for that. People died for that. People got beat up for that. People got punched in the face for that. John Lewis got beat near to death, and women sacrificed their lives, and children your age marched and sat in for you to be able to vote. Now you playing video games or up on Facebook or Twitter or X or swiping left. Or trying to find who you can find on the internet. I feel sorry for your generation. I ain't saying you can't find nobody good, but we used to hang out at the club, at church. We didn't know Jesus was there. We were just following a fine woman. Oh my God, God's here too? What a bonus! Y'all dance with yourselves. We we had to go up and dance with somebody of the opposite sex or opposite, you know, self-annunciation. I ain't trying to dog nobody. What's your pronoun? Huh? I ain't dogging nobody. It ain't your pronoun, it's your proactivity. I ain't mad at nobody who's trans. I already believe in transformation, transubstantiation. You could be trans too. It ain't the trans people I'm scared about. It's those who claim to know their gender who act like a fool anyway. But in my generation, we had to go up to a say, uh excuse me, may I have this dance? Now she might turn you down, but at least she was just turning you down. In your day and age, 12,000 people know within one second. Because you put it on Facebook. I was standing right there. And

Social Media Pressure And Privacy

SPEAKER_01 18:00

now you on Instagram. She turned him down like a cold collar. That's what y'all doing. I feel sorry for you because you can't even live your life in privacy. You've got to have the world know because you've got to post everything you're doing. And sometimes comparison makes you feel smaller than you are. Stop comparing yourself to somebody else. Compare yourself to what you imagine you can be when God gave you the insight to become all that you are. Now they trying to gut protection two because now they redrawing districts like their Picasso. They redrawing districts to favor the right wing, to favor conservative white blocks of the voter in. Why? If you're so inferior, why they worried about you? If you ain't nothing, why are you trying to keep us from voting? Because you know you lying. You know you was lying, not we're lying, you was lying from the get-go. So I I beseech all of you, get registered to vote. Don't let them keep you from registering your opinion about what America is today. And so I would suggest to you that you choose different colors. We know orange apparitions have descended upon us, but you better raise up the blue. You better raise up what is serious. You better raise up what can help you. Don't vote for people who don't vote for you. Rock with those who rock with you. Let them know. Some of us thinking, well, this is the end.

Register Vote And Choose Wisely

SPEAKER_01 19:57

It ain't never been this bad. Read your history. This ain't the worst it's been. I don't know if y'all heard about it, but it was a thing called slavery. It was pretty bad. You think you in slavery because you got to get up for an eight o'clock class. Work from sunup to sundown, can't see to can't see. Had no rights that they were bound to respect, and yet our people kept going. Then after slavery, reconstruction. 12 years we had the ability to vote and put people in office, and they took that back because they thought that was too much. Anytime oppression has to concede progression,

History Perspective And Final Charge

SPEAKER_01 20:40

it ends up being horrible to them. So they think what you're doing to help yourself is harming and hurting them. And they still believe the same thing today. And yet we know their mediocrity is mind-numbing. One weekend they are on Fox News, the next weekend they're the Secretary of Defense. What kind of stuff is that? Mediocre, inarticulate, incapable of sophisticated thinking, and yet we still imagine a different future. We imagine it based upon what we've done faced. We know this ain't the worst. They were lynching us and castrating us and raping us and killing us and plundering us. And what did we do? We built black colleges. What did we do? We had sororities and fraternities, what did we do? We had voluntary organizations, what did we do? We built churches and prayed to a God that they don't know nothing about. While you're praying to God to keep us from voting, we're praying to God to keep us alive long enough to imagine a different future that will make this world a better place. Don't y'all give up. Let them know about your imagination. Let them know you serve a God who ain't never failed. Your God ain't gonna be voted out in two years. Your God on the throne forever. Keep going. Let them know. And when you let them know, you'll let them know whose God you serve and who you belong to. Peace.