FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MOREHOUSE COLLEGE GRADUATES 451 MEN
PREPARED TO REALIZE THEIR DREAMS

ATLANTA, May 17, 1999 - As almost 10,000 people witnessed the last Morehouse College Baccalaureate and Commencement exercises of the 20th Century, every speaker Ð from students to celebrities Ð offered messages, often with Biblical references, that wove a seamless celebration of hope, responsibility and enormous possibilities.

"Each of you has a sacred contract that you have come to this planet to fulfill," Oprah Winfrey told the 451 graduates Sunday during Commencement services on the Campus Green. "It is your job to figure out as soon as possible, what that job is. Real success comes when you learn to act as if everything depends upon you Ð everything Ð and pray as if everything depends upon God."

Sunday's Morehouse graduates included 30 students who are members of Phi Beta Kappa; eight summa cum laude graduates; 39 students with magna cum laude honors; and 120 with cum laude distinction.

The graduates will pursue a variety of careers that range from attending law school and medical school, to Wall Street and entrepreneurial projects, joining the military or local police departments, teaching for the Consulate General of Japan to public school students, and joining local politics and the Peace Corps. While Ms. Winfrey offered the Challenge to the Graduates, Lerone Bennett Jr. '49, executive editor of Ebony magazine and the Commencement speaker, told the graduates that now is the time to recreate the solidarity that formed the civil rights movement. "We have to ask every man, woman and child to lead, teach and preach, or get out of the cotton-picking way!"

The same energy and passion demonstrated by Fannie Lou Hammer, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and other African Americans who led the nation against segregation is needed to move African Americans to a new level.

"You graduates can be anything you want to be. You, or one of your brothers or sisters, can rise higher than anyone else in the next century," he said. "The only future we get is in the future we make and the future we take. We need graduates who can slam dunk science and technology as well as basketball."

The Rev. Dr. Otis Moss '56, chairman of the Morehouse Board of Trustees, provided a rousing Baccalaureate address Saturday afternoon that set a spiritual tone for the Commencement weekend.

"Lead a life worthy of your calling," Rev. Moss said. "You were called to be leaders, not just managers. Managers do things right. Leaders do the right thing."

Founded in 1867, Morehouse College is the nation's only historically black, private liberal arts college for men. The College enrolls approximately 3,000 students and confers bachelor's degrees on more black men than any other institution in the world.

Prominent alumni include Martin Luther King Jr., Nobel Peace Prize laureate and civil rights leader; David Satcher, U.S. Surgeon General; Louis W. Sullivan, president of Morehouse School of Medicine and former secretary of health and human services; and Michael L. Lomax, president of Dillard University and former president of The National Faculty.