Campus celebrates and honors Martin Luther King
With the Falcon center conference rooms full of students, faculty, staff and community members, Fairmont State University joined with the nation in remembering the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. The Honorable Gerard Robinson served as the keynote speaker and delivered a speech entitled “Climbing to the Mountain Top with Martin Luther King: A REVIVAL.”
Robinson’s father was born in Charleston, WV in 1913. He lived with his grandmother who was born into slavery in what was then Virginia. Within one generation, Robinson’s family went from having a member in slavery to having a son serve as the Secretary of Education for the Commonwealth of Virginia. “In one generation. To see the change that can happen in one generation tells you how far we have come,” Robinson began. “I don’t pretend that we do not have challenges, because we do, but when we think of what can change within one generation, it gives us hope.”
As his speech narrowed, Robinson encouraged the audience to think of the importance of knowing our mountaintop moments. “For King, his mountaintop moments were not always the ones we would point to. I believe that some of them are moments where a brief encounter that led to the introduction of a critical leader, faith figure or thought.”
Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) became the most visible spokesperson and leader in the civil rights movement from 1954 through 1968. He is best known for advancing civil rights through nonviolence and civil disobedience, tactics his Christian beliefs and the nonviolent activism of Mahatma Gandhi helped inspire.
“We have our problems, but there are very few places on planet earth where we have the ability to move from poverty to prosperity in one generation. Where our students have the ability to read books available on campus and a whole world of books through a handheld device. You have an opportunity to in ways that King did not.”
Robinson closed by reminding the audience that when King gave his final speech and said “I’ve been to the mountaintop, I may not get there with you,” he never would have imagined the world we live in today. “We are the inheritors of the mountaintop experience. We can only understand the mountaintop by understanding the valley.”
Gerard Robinson is the Executive Director of the Center for Advancing Opportunity (CAO), a Washington, D.C.-based research and education initiative created by a partnership with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, the Charles Koch Foundation, and Koch Industries. The mission of CAO is to develop evidence-based solutions to the most pressing education, criminal justice, and economic mobility issues in fragile communities throughout the United States by working with faculty and students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and other postsecondary institutions. Robinson served as Commissioner of Education for the State of Florida from 2011 to 2012 where he managed several divisions with 3,000 employees. Prior to Florida, Robinson served as Secretary of Education for the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Gerard RobinsonMartin Luther King
