- Posted in All University
- Category: Campus News
By Eric Christopher Webb ’91
LINCOLN UNIVERSITY, PA – Philadelphia community development leader and lead pastor of Dare to Imagine Church in Philadelphia, Rev. Kevin R. Johnson, Ed.D., urged the more than 375 undergraduate and graduates students today to never settle and “flap their wings” like eagles during Lincoln University’s 156th Commencement Address.
Commencement Speaker Rev. Kevin R. Johnson, Ed.D.
Dr. Johnson, also vice chairman of the university’s Board of Trustees, is the president and CEO of Opportunities Industrialization Center (OIC) of Philadelphia, which assists unemployed, underemployed and disadvantaged youth and adults achieve self-sufficiency and empowerment through education, training, job placement, human services, housing and economic development.
“You can’t afford to settle,” he said. “What you are called to be is something that you can’t see, but even though you can’t see it doesn’t mean you stop believing the vision that God wants you to see. (And) not only must you keep believing and not settle, but today I exhort you to keep building and keep soaring like the eagles.”
He explained that Lincoln men and women were defined, more than anyone else, by the fact that they dared to be eagles.
Johnson added that what also distinguished today’s generation from the generations of the past was that they refused to settle, citing examples of Homer Plessy, who challenged segregation when he was jailed for sitting in the “white only section” on a train, Frederick Douglass, who rose from slavery to freedom to become one of the most eloquent orators America has ever produced, and Rosa Parks, who sat down and Martin Luther King, Jr., who stood up.
He even jokingly compared the chicken and the eagle, and their biggest difference that chickens didn’t dare or know how to use their wings to soar and fly.
“So I say to the men and women of Lincoln University, you are not chickens, start flapping your wings,” he said. “Every time they tell you that you are not worth anything, flap your wings . . . And flap your wings until Lincoln produces not just a United States Supreme Court Justice, but she produces the next President of the United States of America.”
Valedictorian Oluchukwu Oluwabori Agu, who earned bachelor’s degrees in computer science and accounting with a 4.0 grade point average, offered a similar message, declaring that graduates owed a debt to those that helped them and the gifts they had been blessed with to be their very best.
Valedictorian Oluchukwu Oluwabori Agu ’15
“We sit here today because we received the grace to study and understand, to push through when things seemed bleak, and to be strong when it was dark,” said the Randallstown, Maryland native. “Look at the miracle before you today, that an ordinary and average student would be blessed to be the valedictorian of his class. None of these abilities or blessings has been earned. We have been entrusted with these resources to cultivate and to utilize. What would it look like if we all cultivated these talents to draw out the best of ourselves, and serve our families and communities by using them wisely?”
Among others who also received degrees today, included Camden, New Jersey mayor, Dana L. Redd, who earned a Master’s of Arts in Human Services Administration from the university’s University City campus and Darius Braswell, who earned his Bachelors of Science degree in Political Science from its main campus, is the university’s first graduate to be commissioned in the U.S Army on the same day in the last 15 years.
Acting President Valerie I. Harrison, J.D., Ph.D., with Camden, N.J. Mayor Dana Redd ’15, MHSA as she receives her degree.
Braswell received his commissioned as a second lieutenant through the Reserve Officer Training Corps shortly after Commencement at a separate ceremony on campus.
In addition, the university also awarded Africa’s preeminent historian and prolific scholar, Toyin Falola, Ph.D., an honorary doctorate degree. Falola, who has several other honorary doctorate degrees and is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author of more than 125 books, numerous journal articles and book chapters on Africa and the African Diaspora as well as been invited to speak on all continents and in over sixty countries.
Honorary Doctorate Degree Recipient Toyin Falola, Ph.D.
“Lincoln is a success story and you are part of its success,” Falola told graduates of the nation’s first Historically Black College & University (HBCU) after recounting the contributions its alumni have made not only to U.S. history, but to world history. “The growth of Lincoln is now going to lie in your hands.”