Inaugural Ceremony

Inaugural Address

"Let Us Make Man ... Morehouse Man "

The Inaugural Address of President Robert Michael Franklin ‘75 delivered on Friday, February 15, 2008, in the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel, Morehouse College

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Chairman Davis, trustees, president emeritus Massey, faculty, staff, students, alumni, donors, distinguished delegates from esteemed institutions and to all who love and cherish Morehouse.  I come to this moment in my life with a profound humility matched by my determination to see our great school rise to new heights of accomplishment.  This is a very special, personal moment for me as so many of my family and special friends are here to share in it. I’d like to ask my entire extended family to stand and I’d like to thank my mother, my wife Cheryl, and my children for their selflessness and generous support. 

My only regret is that my father is not here. Dad passed away in 2001, and he is the reason that I came to Morehouse. Although he did not attend himself, in 1968, he told me to sit and watch the funeral ceremony of Dr. King. As most of you know, the ceremony that began at Ebenezer Baptist Church concluded here on the Morehouse campus. I hope all of our guests will walk out to the Century Campus and observe the sacred ground where young Dr. King walked as a student and where our sixth president, Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays, delivered his eulogy. After watching the ceremony together, my dad looked at me and said “that’s where I’d like you to go to college.”

Three years later, I stepped off a Greyhound bus here with my mother. I like to tell the story about how she made the long ride back by herself. When she returned to Chicago, she told our cousin, the Rev. Walter Battle, tearfully that she had just left her child at Morehouse. He replied, “Dorothy, listen to what you just said. Some mothers are crying today because they left their sons in a morgue. Some mothers have left sons in jail, but you have left a son at Morehouse.” She reported that his words transformed her sacrifice into an investment.

Today, we gather not so much for one person’s inauguration as for an institution’s academic and moral diagnosis. An inauguration should be a moral checkpoint for all of us to ask, “Does Morehouse remain committed to the lofty mission that set her course back in 1867? Is Morehouse making good on the ancestors’ investments of prayer, money and hope?”

I am here to say today, that thanks to the collective contributions of all of our previous and current stakeholders, Morehouse stands on a firm foundation. Morehouse is as strong as she has ever been, and Morehouse is prepared to march forward as one of the nation’s premier liberal arts institutions.

Today, I’d like to declare that Morehouse will prepare 21st century Morehouse Men. And, I’d like to define those Morehouse Men as Renaissance Men with a social conscience. 

The vision for a Renaissance emerges from listening to Morehouse, feeling Morehouse and walking her sacred grounds for more than 35 years and more intensively during the past eight months.  Indeed, my overriding sentiment during the past eight months is that Morehouse is her traditions, her people and her dreams. In fact, we cannot talk about the Morehouse Man as a Renaissance man until we understand the institutional DNA manifest in her traditions, people and dreams.

Morehouse Traditions
The historian Jaroslav Pelikan has written that “tradition is the living faith of the dead, while traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” Morehouse traditions are rooted in a dynamic and profound faith.

Just up the hill from where we now sit is a building called Graves Hall. It is named in honor of our second president, Samuel L. Graves. Graves is our best known and oldest building.  Its pyramid-like steeple forms the trademark or logos that you see in our literature. It has even inspired the gesture Morehouse Men use to represent our pride and belonging. (Men of the house, salute!) The building was constructed in 1885. You should also know that the Century Campus in front of Graves is where Dr. King’s funeral took place. That same space was the site of an historic Civil War battle and the burial ground for fallen Confederate soldiers. Generations of Morehouse students who were sentenced, I mean privileged, to live there have special tales of joy and sorrow. We won’t bore you with them today, but listen to the words spoken by Morehouse alumnus C.T. Walker at the dedication of Graves Hall. 

“Let (this institution) rise til it meet the sun in his coming! Let the earlier light of the morning gild it, and parting day linger and play on its summit. So may the fame of this institution spread all over this broad land and even upon the burning sands of Africa may her trained sons wave the banner of the cross. Let its fame rise until the men sent forth shall cultivate literature in the highest degree, in the press, in the schoolroom, on the platform, and in the pulpit. Let it rise until its fame and thorough work shall surpass the expectations of its founders and friends, the pride of the Negro Baptists of Georgia and an intellectual lighthouse for the race. Let the men who go from these walls prepared for high work publish the fame of this institution by their varied knowledge and enlarged views, by their fixedness of purpose and their earnest desire to bless fallen humanity and write their name in bright letters in the temple of fame.”

Another great tradition is the singing of the College hymn. We don’t simply sing it, we manifest it. You will see at the end of this ceremony that we clutch hands in a cross-over fashion, and we present each of the three stanzas as a moral drama in three acts: There is a pledge: “Dear old Morehouse, we have pledged our lives to thee…” There is a plea: “True forever to old Morehouse may we be, so to bind each son the other into ties more brotherly…” Concluding with a prayer in crescendo: “Holy Spirit, make us steadfast, honest, true to old Morehouse and her ideals and in all things that we do.”
      
But, again, traditions can live only if people wish to extend the living faith of the dead.

Morehouse People
Morehouse is also her people. Every Morehouse generation has produced its own saints, heroes and heroines. Talk to any Morehouse alumnus, faculty member, student or staff member and you will hear about the special people of yesterday. But, we have some extraordinary people with us now, as well.

Georgia Rolax is Morehouse. She is the College receptionist and sits on point in Gloster Hall welcoming the public and instructing students to silence their cell phones and remove their hats. What they don’t know is that she prays for our students and campus every morning.

Tobe Johnson is Morehouse.  He was a young political science professor when I was a student; both wee lads.  Through his teaching and mentoring of students, he is one of many who nurture our collective memory of the astounding era of President Mays.

Ezekiel Phillips is Morehouse.  He is a freshman who negotiated the dangerous streets of South Central Los Angeles and survived a few regrettable decisions. He saw Morehouse as his promised land. A protégé of Tavis Smiley, Ezekiel has embraced the ideal of a man of Morehouse and I have found him at 11:30 p.m. in our Learning Resource Center studying with classmates. Ezekiel declares that at Morehouse, he is surrounded by high-achieving men, and in order not to stand out, he has to study and strive for excellence.

Josh Packwood is Morehouse.  He is a graduating senior on his way to Goldman Sachs on Wall Street.  He happens to be Euro-American and brings much appreciated diversity to our campus. Josh was one of two Morehouse finalists this year for the Rhodes scholarship.  But, just three days before his interview, Josh’s father died. He had every reason to lose focus and abandon hope, but true forever to Morehouse tradition, he doubled his determination and represented us with great distinction. Morehouse has enabled Josh to learn through research tours to the London School of Economics and to China while bonding with fellow students who will be lifelong friends.

Morehouse is its people and its traditions. But, every year, 150 of our students are unable to return to begin their junior or senior year solely because of financial reasons. They’re smart enough to be here but, often, as little as $5,000 separate them from their aspirations to become Morehouse men. Thanks to the commitment and generosity of our terrific board, Morehouse is working hard now to solve this challenge and we call upon friends to assist in providing gap funding to help these students cross the finish line.

People fortified by noble tradition are empowered to dream, and dream big.

Morehouse Dreams
Consider three of our dreams. First, Morehouse is the proud steward of the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collection. It is a treasure trove of 10,000 personal papers, books and other memorabilia. Currently housed and cared for in the Robert W. Woodruff Library—jointly owned with the Atlanta University Center Consortium—we dream of becoming a national resource for materials on ethical dimensions of the civil rights movement.  We dream of housing Dr. King’s collection but, in addition, preserving and presenting the memorabilia and archives of other civil rights giants like Andrew Young, Joseph Lowery, Benjamin Mays, Sam Williams, Maynard Jackson, Julian Bond, Amos Brown and Howard Thurman. Dean Lawrence Carter and Professor Skip Mason have been custodians of an extraordinary collection of College archives that we are anxious to properly archive and share with the world.

Second, this Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel where most of us now gather is one of the city’s most revered gathering sites for special events.  Nelson Mandela stood here and received 38 honorary degrees in one hour; Bishop Tutu received $14,000 on the spot to continue his protest against apartheid. Some of America’s greatest preachers have stood behind our sacred podium. Great performers, such as Stevie Wonder and Leontyne Price, have adorned this stage.  Tonight, our world-class Morehouse College Glee Club will raise the roof with their powerful voices, along with the lovely mezzo soprano Denyce Graves, in a free concert. But for all its glory, there are only 2,501 seats here. There are 2,850 men of Morehouse. Do the math. If the president wished to gather and address the entire student body, it could not happen here. So, we are dreaming of and planning for a renovated and expanded chapel that will enable us to expand our character development and moral education programs. We hope to welcome you soon to a new revised standard version of the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel.

Third, men of Morehouse deserve a state-of-the-art student center with attractive new student housing. We want to provide a wholesome and secure environment for college-appropriate socializing.  Our dreams and plans include transforming and upgrading our campus to appeal to 21st century student expectations and campus needs. But, with all of the structural modifications that we look forward to making, the fundamental resource of Morehouse College lies still in preparing its students to lead a global Renaissance.

Making Morehouse Men: Renaissance Men with a Social Conscience
Renaissance is an intriguing concept. It means ‘rebirth.’ Amidst the difficult days of racial injustice during the early 20th century, there emerged in Harlem, New York, a group of men and women who began to document and celebrate the strengths, beauty, intelligence and spirit of their people.  That cultural phenomenon came to be known as the Harlem Renaissance. That era gave the world Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson and Zora Neale Hurston. They gave us sophisticated explorations of black life and culture that revealed and stimulated new confidence and pride throughout the village.

Producing Renaissance Men with a social conscience is a bold and vitally important agenda in our contemporary cultural situation where death and despair prevail. To become a Renaissance man is to become broadly educated and conversant with the classic texts and the large questions that define the disciplines in the arts and sciences. The Renaissance man or woman should know these classics, but also should interrogate the concept of classic to ensure that the canon of classics expands to include all of the voices of great people who have been excluded from the narrow Western roster of great texts. Renaissance men will expand the canon while contributing to a revised global canon of cherished human knowledge and achievement.

The social conscience is different from but incorporates the personal, private conscience. The personal conscience is the voice of morality and right reason that informs us of what is right and good, true and praiseworthy for individuals. However, many people possess a robust personal conscience, but do little to relieve the suffering of others. They manage to live comfortably with American opulence while most of the world lives in unspeakable poverty and social misery. A social conscience is the living voice of social justice that informs us of what is right and good and true for society, not simply individuals. Morehouse’s Renaissance men will possess an informed social conscience.

Dr. King called such people “transformed nonconformists” and noted that “this hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists. The saving of our world from pending doom will come not from the action of a conforming majority but from the creative maladjustment of a transformed minority.”

Morehouse Men as Globalists
Morehouse Men will not only be conversant with the classics and sensitive to social injustice, but they also will become global citizens while transcending their own parochialism. To accomplish this, we seek to dramatically expand opportunities for our American students to travel outside the United States. A Ghanaian proverb declares: Do not say that your mother’s stew is the best in the world if you have never left your village.  I want our Renaissance men to leave our villages and to take Morehouse values of justice, peace, community and service to the farthest edge of the world.

An important part of developing Renaissance men is equipping them to be ‘globalists’ early in their careers.  Consequently, Morehouse will intensify its already admirable curricular progress in the area of internationalization.  Indeed, we will be a global resource for educated and ethical leaders. This aspiration is firmly rooted in our past, in the outlooks of visionary presidents like John Hope, who traveled throughout Europe during the war to check on black troops and to build bridges of understanding. It includes the global ministry of Benjamin E. Mays, who served the World Council of Churches and informed the global perspective of Dr. King and generations of Morehouse students. It continued with Hugh Gloster’s efforts to expand our overseas study program. I was the beneficiary of those efforts and spent a year at the University of Durham in England. And, it has continued with the recent appointment of President Emeritus Walter Massey as chairman of the Salzburg Global Seminar and a member of the global advisory panel for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Our intent is to diversify further our student and faculty ranks as we prepare and challenge men of Morehouse to encounter a changing world.

From Making Light to Making Man
In my opening Convocation address, I focused on our College seal and its Latin motto inspired by the creation narrative of Genesis, et facta est lux (and then, there was light or “light was made”). Out of the chaos and darkness of a cataclysmic Civil War, our ancestors made light by founding Morehouse in Augusta, Ga.

The Genesis creation narrative continues beyond the making of light to making the rest of the natural environment and then to making humans. After the Creator gives shape to creation, the Creator looks around and discerned that something was missing. God confers with the gathered hosts and declares, “Let us make man.” In order to complete creation, God declares, ‘Let us make something new and special.’

Scholars have debated the meaning of this unusual first person plural pronoun, “us.”  To whom was the Creator referring? Some interpreters suggest that this is the heavenly host of cosmic and spiritual personalities. Some Trinitarian theologians have suggested that this was addressed to the Son and the Spirit. But, others believe that it was addressed to everything that had been created because all creation was infused with the divine essence. Under this hermeneutic or interpretive posture, the Creator says to all that precedes man, and all that will be necessary to sustain and support man as human, “Let us make man.”

Unmaking Man
But, in our current sitz im leben (Ger.) or situation in life, there are forces that seem determined to unmake man. I mention only three of them briefly, and how a Morehouse education must equip Morehouse men to contest them.

First, the global crisis of personal commitment and family stability that threatens our cherished relational and familial foundations. If we cease to care for each other, if we lose the love of kin and of neighbor, if we fail to prioritize reviving marriage, family and parenting in black communities, then we will have gained the world materially while losing our souls. We will have sacrificed the gift of family and community on the altar of our narcissism and autonomy. Morehouse Men will be educated to nurture children, families and communities.

Second, there is the global rise of violence in a multitude of forms. From the senseless wars that dot the pot-marked earth to the omnipresence of guns that enable people who are having bad days to turn them into tragic days for others. Here again, Dr. King said that it takes a strong person to practice nonviolence in a world of violence and hatred. Morehouse Men will be educated as agents of peacemaking and creative conflict resolution.

And third, the dehumanizing impact of technology typified by the transformation of handheld technologies into virtual human appendages. Novelist George Orwell and filmmaker Stanley Kubrick warned of the mad evolutionary drift from primate to human to robot. But, we must not allow this technology, wonderful and mystifying as it may be, to dehumanize. Morehouse men will be educated to transform technology into a tool that frees us to invest quality time in community building and enjoying poetry, art, philosophy and, yes, Motown music.

These and other forces caused Benjamin Elijah Mays, our sixth president, to observe:

“I am uneasy about man because we have no guarantee that when we train a man’s mind, we will train his heart; no guarantee that when we increase a man’s knowledge, we will increase his goodness. There is no necessary correlation between knowledge and goodness.”

The project of making man is the ongoing work of the Creator. And that is the work to which Morehouse is committed—making Morehouse men. But, clearly, Morehouse cannot do this alone. There is a role for all of us to play in making the Morehouse man.

The Morehouse board of trustees must facilitate this desired creation by providing adequate resources and guidance to sustain our nascent renaissance.

The faculty must midwife new creation as they lead courageous conversations about, and discovery of, the global classics while also contributing to the wholistic development of Morehouse students.

Alumni must place their fingerprints in the clay as they support the school’s mission and give of their time, treasure and talent to ensure that our most vulnerable students can complete the last mile of their journey.

The community and public must affirm our creation by recognizing that education is a free society’s best investment in the future strength of civil society and our political economy. Enlightened policy and more resources must be devoted to enabling students from low-income families to access higher education.

All of our fellow institutions represented by delegates today must support this creation by striving to be the best that they can be, thereby inspiring all others, and by entering into partnerships that enable different institutions to complement one another’s excellence.

Let all of us ‘make man.’

That is why Dr. Mays was fond of quoting J.G. Holland who prayed:

God, give us men! A time like this demands strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and, ready hands; men whom the lust for office does not kill; men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; men who possess opinions and a will; men who have honor; men who will not lie; men who can stand before a demagogue and damn his treacherous flatteries without winking; tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog in public duty and private thinking.

But, I like the way another anonymous poet framed the creative process, declaring that:

When God wants to drill a man and thrill a man and skill a man,

When He yearns with all His heart to create so great and bold a man that all the world shall be amazed; watch His methods, watch His ways.

How He ruthlessly perfects, whom He royally elects;

How He hammers him and hurts him, and with mighty blows converts him into trial shapes of clay which only God understands.

And, while his tortured heart is crying and he lifts beseeching hands,

How God bends but never breaks when our good He undertakes,

How He uses whom He chooses and by every act fuses, by every act induces us to try His splendor out…God knows what He’s about.

So, today, let us remember dear old Morehouse…our traditions, our people and our dreams; our pledge, our plea and our prayer. For, God knows what we’re about.

Let us make men—men who in the face of fear and temptation embrace the words of C.S. Lewis:  “that courage is not one of the virtues, it is the form of all the virtues at the moment of testing.”

Let us make men…men who understand that their strength is measured by the depth of their respect for women and their desire to nurture children.

…Men who respect and celebrate diversity, and are secure enough not to be intimidated by the presence of different sexual orientations, but rather, stand in solidarity with those who are in the minority.

…Men who know how to dress for leadership and service, who will uphold the Morehouse mystique.

…Men who replace profanity with uplifting public discourse and life-giving spoken words.

…Men, confident, in the words of the poet Goethe, that “at the moment of commitment, the entire universe conspires for your success.”

…Men who heed the words of Rabbi Hillel that “the world is equally balanced between good and evil and your next act will tip the scale.”

Up, you mighty men, become co-creators of a better world!

Et facta est homo sapiens.