MLK Day speaker challenges students to consider self less

RALEIGH — Aiming to respect the rigor of the academy while preserving the dignity of the sacred space on Shaw University’s campus Thursday morning, the Rev. Dr. Melvin Miller came from St. Paul, Minnesota, with a message called “Recapturing an Intergenerational Vision Within the African American Community.” It’s a heady title.
Then he examined his audience inside Thomas J. Boyd Chapel: Mostly college freshmen, some participating in their first chapel service at the university and wearing the signature dark blue blazers signaling their attendance at something with heightened priority.
In other words, Miller figured he’d be preaching to more people with gray hair.
“If I knew there were going to be so many young folk, I would have flipped the script,” quipped Miller, the senior pastor at Progressive Baptist Church in St. Paul.
He flipped it.
“If I had to play it a little differently for a younger crowd,” said Miller, setting up the tweak to his title. “I’d probably say we have to get over ourselves.”
This was the university’s annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day chapel service. King was the epitome of someone who got over himself, Miller said. Drawn into the Montgomery bus boycott at the age of 26, King’s civil-rights activism would earn him a Nobel Peace Prize, from which he directed the proceeds into more activism. His prize money back then in 1964 was roughly $54,000, which is about a half-million dollars today. But King got over himself, gave away the money.
“There is a greater goal in life than me, myself and I,” Miller said.
Michael Odemakinde is a Shaw University freshman from Lagos, Nigeria, where he said the me-first culture is not as pronounced as it is in the United States — not that there aren’t bad apples there.
“It’s everywhere, but the way we have been trained and been built [in Nigeria] is a little bit different, because we like to see people progress. Sometimes we bypass protocols just to help the other person,” Odemakinde said. “We should actually put people first. I’m looking for the betterment of you even more than myself.”
That’s what it’s going to take to recapture an intergenerational vision within the African American community, Miller said. It’s old school, but the proof of concept is undeniable, he said.
“We’ve lost that sacrificial attitude, the dignity and the respect that down through the ages has served as the glue for past, present and future generations,” Miller said.
The preacher told students whose mamas and daddies didn’t engage with them in an ideal way to consider themselves at home.
“This institution, Shaw University, serves as a monument to a host of the dreams of past generations,” Miller said.
Shaw University Student Government Association President Zaid Steele has been thinking along these lines for quite some time. Even before her presidency, some of the international students on campus approached her about the need for more cross-cultural information exchange.
“This semester, I want to make it a point where my administration is pouring into different organizations that don’t get a lot of representation on campus,” Steele said. “That brings a different type of student engagement.”
Thinking about Miller’s message, Steele said we have to get away from operating in silos and trying to be first and not helping somebody who might steal our shine.
“That’s the point: The next person you teach, you want them to do it better than you because it keeps us advanced, it keeps us on the top,” Steele said. That’s how we rebuild and strengthen Black communities, Black Wall Street, HBCUs, she suggested. “If you learned it, teach someone else just like you.”
A while back in Minnesota, where children were struggling in math and reading, Miller led an effort to develop camps with a focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Young people built go-karts, poked around computer keyboards to get comfortable with coding, competed in robotics, flew drones and received tutoring from college students.
“We were able to help students come up a grade or two in math and reading,” Miller said,
To address food insecurity, what started as a solid feeding program is on the verge of becoming a youth complex with a medical center that provides mental-health services. That feeding program — now replete with delivery vans and refrigeration equipment — provides at least 30,000 pounds of free food every month, Miller said.
“In case you didn’t know, this is a call to action,” said Miller, challenging the audience.
His three-point plan for the kind of innovation that helps the next generation is determining the problem, coming up with a viable solution and finding partners.
“When people see the work that you’re doing, they will help fund it,” Miller said. “We’re talking about reclaiming our rightful place as the architects of our own destiny.
“I am convinced we can recapture and reclaim our communities.”
Miller was preaching to the choir — a youth choir.
“Although he thought he [would be] speaking to an older crowd, his message was for any generation,” Steele said. “He poured into everybody in the audience.”