Dr. Gates Inspires at Founder’s Day
posted by Wil Brown | May 4, 2018 | In NewsOn April 5, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. visited the campus of Fayetteville State University to commence the 151st anniversary of Founders’ Day. During his visit Dr. Gates made several powerful references to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ambitious efforts to unify the human race.
Dr. Gates is a prominent African-American scholar who conducts extensive research on issues pertaining to the culture, history, and literature of the African diaspora. Dr. Gates frequently explores the roots of the African diaspora to discover the common threads of our human existence. As the head of the African-American studies department at Harvard University, Dr. Gates has been responsible for perpetuating a sincere desire to explore the correlation between the land and lineage of the African diaspora. His work pertaining to genealogy has essentially become the crux of African-American intellectualism pertaining to the roots of black people all over the world.
The most important oratorical gift Dr. Gates gave to the campus of Fayetteville State University was the message of hope. Dr. Gates reminded us that it is important to re- main resilient as we face a variety of adversities throughout the journey of life on this planet. This reminder is
a metaphorical nugget of gold for all of the “dreamers” within the African diaspora. As we all know, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream. Actually, most of us within the global African diaspora have dreams about achieving something significant on this planet. However, how many of us will remain dedicated to the dream when it starts to look like a nightmare?
Although African-Americans often face extreme hard- ship when they are trying to act in the best interest of the African diaspora, seven ambitious African-American men were not deterred by the struggle. They remained persistent throughout their quest to develop an institution of higher learning for members of the African diaspora. Despite the many attempts to stifle their ambitious plans, this group of seven African-American men remained persistent on a path that lead to the development of the institution we now know as Fayetteville State University.
One hundred and fifty-one years later the tangible manifestation of their dream is still a thriving institution of higher learning.
In order to develop Fayetteville State University into something more than a dream, the founders had to create an aggregate of resources to materialize their vision. The seven founders of Fayetteville State University col- lectively utilized $136 to begin the mission of developing a place for African-Americans to pursue their scholarly interests. Although $136 is not a substantial amount
of money in 2018, significant sacrifices and extended periods of hardship were required to accumulate that amount of capital one-hundred and fifty-one years ago.
Adversity is guaranteed for dreamers within the African diaspora. Therefore, we must not fear adversity if we dare to dream.
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