Dr. Julianne Malveaux

Drs. Julianne Malveaux, A.J. Stovall, and Sheila Flemming-Hunter, during the NAASLC.

Get into politics -Dr. Malveaux, president, Bennett College

By: Teresa Hughes, Associate Editor, The Rustorian

Posted: 2/28/09

Dr. Julianne Malveaux, president of Bennett College was a keynote speaker at the recent National African American Student Leadership Conference, at Rust College.

"We will fight the oppressor as long as we can. I am tired of our part in our own oppression. We have to acknowledge the role we play in our own oppression," said Malveaux, in a motivational speech to students.

Malveaux told the conference participants they must have a commitment to scholarship. She challenged students to make their voices heard. "Get into politics early, run for office, lose but run again." Find something to run for, she emphasized, including social economic justice.

She quoted from Dr. Martin Luther King's, 'I have a dream' speech. "We have come to our nation's capital to cash a check... and that check has come back marked insufficient funds."

Malveaux said the dream had not fully been attained, even with the election of the first African American, Barack Obama, as U.S. president. 1 out of every 4 black people are poor, unemployment is 7.2 percent to 11 percent for blacks, and that adds up to blacks accounting for 38 percent of America's poverty. "We need to deal with cashing the check," said Malveaux. She then reflected on King's statement, "The curse of poverty is an abomination in any age. It is a cancer, and cannibalism."

Malveaux asked the question, "How do you live asset free in America?" 30 percent of black people have no assets, no bank accounts, yet they have cell phones, and some even have multiple ipods; "Our ancestors were bodacious and they had none of this," she said.

To teach a slave is to excite dissatisfaction and a detriment to the community-at-large in 1831 law passed in North Carolina. "In reclaiming your greatness holistically be bodacious, if not you are spitting on the graves of your ancestors," she concludes with something for the students to think about.