Editor’s note: Below are excerpts from a graduation speech by Dr. Conrad Worrill offered in hope that it will help Black people in America understand the real meaning of these rites of passage for thousands of young people participating in commencement exercises.

Your life has just begun today, brothers and sisters. This is probably one of the most important days in your life as you make this transition, this rite of passage in moving toward another stage in your development as young Blacks in America.

I’d like to congratulate your teachers, parents, guardians, and extended family members who have supported you in reaching this critical stage of your life at this critical hour in history.

I want to have a brief but serious talk with you today brothers and sisters. It is being predicted that by the year 2000 and beyond, if the current trend continues, 70 percent of Black men in America between the ages of 16 and 28 will either be in jail, addicted to drugs or alcohol. Increasingly, this same trend is occurring with Black females in America. One purpose of our educational pursuits is to turn this devastating trend around.

What does all this mean as you graduate from this educational institution that professes to be dedicated to the academic and cultural development of young people like you? As young Black people, or Africans in America, about to enter a new stage in life, let me define what being Black really means.

First, it is color—your African ancestry.

Secondly, it is culture: practicing a lifestyle that recognizes the importance of our African culture in American heritage and traditions. An African culture that is geared to the values that will facilitate the present and future development of our people.

Thirdly, it is consciousness. We should always be conscious of our strength, beauty, and potential as Black people. In this connection, we should always interpret all situations from the standpoint of the greatest good for the greatest number of Blacks in the world. This is called the African principle.

Finally and fourthly, Black means commitment. It means a willingness to work tirelessly in the interest of your people and all oppressed humanity.

So it is today that I am challenging you to continue on the path of becoming independent Black people who are not dependent on others outside of our communities for the things we can do for ourselves.

I am challenging you, as you make this rite of passage, to prepare yourselves to become committed to the struggle for the just and common cause for the liberation and redemption of Black people worldwide.

This dedication to the common cause goes beyond the resources of one generation. It means we must always learn from previous generations. We must always learn from the wisdom of our ancestors, using this knowledge as a way of seeking and struggling for a better way of life for our people based on goals and objectives in our own best interests.

In other words, we must stop killing each other over material items and drugs that other people manufacture and bring into our communities. We must stop the killings!

We must seek to prepare the generations to come to develop the skills and resources for making our ultimate freedom and liberation a reality.

As the renowned educator, psychologist and historian Dr. Asa Hillard explains: "First we must see ourselves as an African people, or we will be unable to develop this critical frame. Second, we must understand not only the role that white supremacy has played in our subjugation, but also the role we ourselves have played by not participating self determination in our struggle to counter the Maafa, this is a Kiswahili term that means disaster or as Marimba Ani has conceptualized it to mean the African holocaust of Eurasian enslavement/colonialism.

Remember parents, teachers, and students—as our esteemed ancestor Dr. John Henrik Clarke has repeatedly warned, "Powerful people never teach powerless people how to take power from them." Education is one of the most sensitive arenas in the life of a people. Its role is to be honest and true and to tell people where they have been and what they are. Most important, Dr. Clarke points out, the role of education and history is to tell a people where they still must go.