Darwin Turner commencement address at the Mount Olive High School, Whiteville, North Carolina, May 31, 1967

Speaker 1: Testing, testing, one two three four. Testing, testing, one two three four. May 31st, 1967. Commencement at the Mount Olive High School, Whiteville, North Carolina, Dr. Darwin T. Turner, guest speaker. Testing, testing. May 31st 1967 commencement exercises at the Mount Olive High School, Whiteville, North Carolina. Dr. Darwin T. Turner, guest speaker. Testing, testing, one two three four. May 31st, 1967 Commencement at the Mount Olive High School, Whiteville, North Carolina. Dr. Darwin T. Turner, guest speaker. Mr. Brown: From Cincinnati, Ohio and attended public school and the University of that city, able to leave the college at the early age of 16, at which time he received an advanced degree in English. [inaudible] he was elected to Phi Betta Kappa Honors Society, and at the age of 15. He received a PhD in English from the University of Chicago at the age of 25. His experience is most notable. They include participation in many organizations. [inaudible] while working on his Masters at the University of Cincinnati he participated in weekly radio shows broadcast over Cincinnati stations. He [inaudible]. His teaching experience includes positions at Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia, and Morgan State College in Baltimore, Maryland. There he sat as chairman until the summer of 1966 when he was appointed Dean of the graduate school, the position he now holds. Mr. Brown: His writings are quite varied, they include children's shows, short stories and poems. In 1965, he published Images of the Negro in America, a book of course materials to be used to by schools throughout [inaudible] important in English and history. Just recently [inaudible] published his third guide to Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and he will publish his third guide to Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. Currently he is working on [inaudible] of writing by and about Negroes. Among his publications are articles and poems in many professional journals. His honors include membership of [inaudible]. In 1965 to 66 he received a scholarship [inaudible] program, sponsored by the [inaudible] Institute and University of North Carolina. Mr. Brown: And finally his professional qualifications include the following: Membership of the largest professional organization for English Teachers of America. And now [inaudible] part of Conference on College Composition and Communication, the only national organization in appointment devoted solely to an examination of professional English programs in college. He has served as president of the College Language Association, president of the Piedmont Regional Affiliate for National College of Teachers of English, and president of the North Carolina division of the College Education, and as state chairman for the achievement awards program of North Carolina sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English. In addition to the bold contributions he has been included on the list of teachers of English and on a list of [inaudible] by the National Council of Teachers of English. And now, I present you to Dr. Darwin T. Turner, Dr.Turner. Darwin Turner: Thank you. Mr Brown, ladies and gentlemen. Someone once said the major difference between an introduction and an obituary is that the corpse isn't forced to listen. I'd like to thank you for the introduction. You did not come here tonight to listen to me speak. You came to see students graduate. I'll try to remember that and be brief. What I have to say tonight is intended for the students. Those who are graduating, the others who are in the audience. It is not intended for the adults, for they are of a different generation. I suppose I must say we are of a different generation because expert teenagers inform me that having made the mistake of being born a few years earlier than they were, I have reached the age at which I am not to be trusted to understand the attitudes of the new generation. Darwin Turner: As a representative of this older generation, therefore, I have come to make a confession about us to you. Not so many years ago, when I would speak to students not so much younger than myself I would identify myself with the older people in the audience and I would say "We are trying to make a better world, which can be passed onto you, the students of today, the leaders of tomorrow." Now that I've grown somewhat older I've discovered that that statement was not quite correct. We are trying to make a better world but we're making it for ourselves. We are not ready to pass it on because we are too busy enjoying life. We look at you, we see children. Darwin Turner: For these positions which you deserve you're going to have to push some of us aside. You can't wait for us to die, we're too young. You cannot fight us, we're too strong. You can't out-slick us, we know the tricks. The only way you can push us aside is to out-know us. Now don't try to use that word in any English test you may get into, the teacher won't accept it, but the only way that you can get this position in life which you want, is to know more than we know. Darwin Turner: And if you think that we are heartless, if you think we're selfish, remember, we are your parents, your friends, your relatives, members of your own race. If you think we're heartless, think about the world of those who are not your friends. Today, as the result of demonstrations, laws and some human good will, cracks are being opened in the doors of opportunity. But you'd better find a way to smash through those doors before they bang shut in your faces leaving you with bloody noses and injured feelings. And the only tool that you can use to smash through those doors and hold them open is knowledge. You must learn more. Darwin Turner: It does no good to say, as many say, that qualifying examinations for jobs are unfair to Negroes. It does no good today, to say that America has not given the Negro an opportunity for the kind of education which he needs. It does no good to say that America has not given the Negro an opportunity for culture. It does no good because no one is listening. The only question that anyone is listening to is, what do you know? In short, graduates, the world today has no time for the Negro who is sitting in the corner of the dance of life sulking because the music is not his tune. You must know more. Darwin Turner: Some things you will learn. You'll learn them as we learned, just by living. You will fall on your faces, and you'll learn. Life will hit you over the head, and you will learn. Some days, some weeks, some months, you will feel the very heart and soul are being torn out of you, and you'll learn. But even that is not enough. There must be some kind of formal learning, which continues. Now this may be both a shock and a disappointment for those of you who have worked very hard for 12 years, who are very proud tonight that you have reached a point at which you thought you had ended your studying. If you have ended, you're dead. Or you may get a job, work eight, 10, 12 hours a day, go home, sit in front of the TV set and have a baby, but you're dead, you're just waiting for the busy people of the world to find a little time to come along and bury you. There must be a continuation of your education. Darwin Turner: Now when this is said to most people, they think that one is talking about college education. Because, in the past, this was the only thing open for the Negro. The Negro who wanted to get somewhere in life had to go to college. He knew only too well that he needed that college degree in order to compete with another American youth who had only a high school diploma. The result was often terrible. The Negro who was not really interested in college because he did not want to prepare for the only professions that college could prepare him for, went to college, and selected one of the professions, and was graduated, and spent the rest of his life often doing a very miserable job in that profession. Not because he was ignorant, not because he was incompetent, but because he knew that life unfairly had forced him into a career that he did not want. Darwin Turner: Today things are changing. And there's a different kind of education that you must consider. This is the education of the technical expert, the specialist. Schools are being opened for people who are going into those fields. Now do not misunderstand me. I am not trying in some way polite way of talking about the schools for the ignorant. The people who attended these schools are the highly skilled, the mechanically-minded, those who can work in engineering. Those who are able to become the technicians, the specialists, without which our society cannot possibly survive. This is a field which is open as a kind of formal education past high school. Darwin Turner: There is the formal education of independent study. One of the most intelligent men I have ever known never got past high school, but he could talk and think circles around almost any college graduate I have known, because he continued to read and to study. Now, naturally because I'm associated with the college I tend to think also of college education. When I come into a town, even when I look at high school graduates, I'm doing a kind of recruiting for graduate school, and I'm not too early. Because it is recognized today that the time to begin to prepare students for graduate school is not when they reach the end of college but while they are still in high school, while they are still looking ahead. And we have recognized in education today that a Bachelor's degree just is not enough for people who are going into professions. For people going into medicine, for people who are going into law, it's obvious that further education's needed. But we've reached a point, even in teaching, at which the individual who has a Bachelor's is forced to continue to get more education. This is the world that you are being graduated into. The world in which you need additional education. Darwin Turner: One word more, and I'm done. I'd like to ask something of you, who are being graduated, and of the others of you who will be graduated in your own time. Do not let anyone or anything make you ashamed to be a Negro. We live in a society in which to be Negro has sometimes been considered a badge of inferiority. In World War II in Germany, it was proved in the concentration camps that it is possible to make masses of people believe themselves inferior in a few months, in a few years. We Negroes in America have been subjected to this kind of brainwashing for over 300 years. It's no wonder that there are some who now believe that it is true. Darwin Turner: Now I would not deny to you that there are Negroes who behave irresponsibly, cowardly, ignorantly, foolishly. This is very true because this is the way human beings behave, regardless of race. Nor would I try to prove to you the worth of Negroes by naming individuals. If I wanted to, I could spend a half hour just citing instances of individuals of most of the countries of the world who have distinguished themselves in all professions, all the walks of life, all arts. Individuals who were of Negro ancestry, but who distinguished themselves in competition with all races of the world, but what would I have done when I'd finished? I would have named names for you and I would have talked about other people. Darwin Turner: Instead, I'd like to remind you of one often forgotten fact. You are the descendants of strong people, because the weak slaves died. Your ancestors learned to work hard, they learned to think quickly, they learned to understand people, because if they did not learn these things they did not survive into adulthood. If one today is trying to build a society, he would do very well to begin with people with these strengths, the ability to work hard, to think quickly and to understand human nature. In concluding, I would like to congratulate those of you who are being graduated this evening. I look forward to the day when some of you will stand outside my door, ready to tell me that it's time for me to move aside because I stand in the place you need. But when you come, come prepared. Goodbye. Speaker 4: Tonight, I'm still wondering if the graduating got the full impact of the introduction. I wonder if you realize, that the woman who introduced him said that he finished high school, finished college, is a Phi Betta Kappa man and a doctor, got his Doctorate degree, all at the age of 25. I was wondering if you were listening. If you weren't, I want to tell it to you again, and I hope it'll be an incentive to you to go on to do big things, like he has done. A young man, a very young man, there are not too many years between your age and his, if you look at him. Look at the possibilities, if you just work. Thank you Dr. Turner, for that great talk, for the sincere way in which you delivered it. And I know, that your message has made a deep impression, not only on the graduating class that you directed it to but on every one of us, and thank you again. Speaker 4: Excuse me I said, Dr. Turner. Speaker 5: Dr. Turner, Mr. Brown, graduating class, ladies and gentlemen. This afternoon is a commencement for me in many ways. Having taught the members of the graduating class for our four years, I cannot pass this opportunity to try to continue to drive the nail that I've been trying to drive for years. I will not make a speech, however, but I would like to say a few quotations that you have heard so frequently. "Whatever you learn, learn it as you live it. Learn it in the degree you count it in your heart to act on. learn it in the degree you count it important to you and can associate it with that you already know. Take what you learn, build it into character, and this is what to learn will really mean." "Though man a thinking being is defined, few use the grand prerogative of mind. How few think justly of the thinking few. How many never think, who think they do." "I believe that you should hear a little music, see a fine picture, read a little poetry and don't forget to do a little thinking every day of your life in order that the worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of beauty which God has planted in the human soul." Speaker 5: And last, is the poem that I love so dear. "The tree that never had to fight, for sun and air and sky and light. But stood out in the open plain and always got its share of rain. It never became a forest king, but lived and died a scrubby thing. The man that never had to toil, to gain and farm his patch of soil. Who never had to win his share, of sun and sky and light and air. Never became a manly man, but lived and died as he began. Good timber does not grow with ease, the stronger wind the tougher trees. The further sky, the greater length. The more the storm the greater strength. By rain and cold, by wind and snow. In trees and men good timber grows. Where thickest lies the forest growth, we find the patriarchs of both. Who hold counsel with the stars, whose broken branches show the scars of many winds and much of strife. This is the common law of life." Speaker 5: Will the graduates please rise? The power entrusted in me by the board of education, the principal of the school, I will now award you the high school diploma. Cynthia Bradley. Ardella Williams. Ella-Jean Williams. Melinda Brown. Jean Nanes. Judith Selatera. Liam Gawes. Adam Ruprai.