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Teach children what’s right, speaker says
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
As a people, black Americans have a lot to celebrate, but there’s still much work to do, the speaker at the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Diversity Breakfast told attendees.
Gwendolyn E. Boyd, executive assistant to the chief of staff at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, was the keynote speaker at the event Thursday at Kilcawley Center at Youngstown State University. Boyd, a native of Birmingham, Ala., also is national president of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., the nation’s largest black sorority.
“Dr. King showed us that one person can make a difference,” Boyd told those packed into the Chestnut Room.
She ran down a list of black pioneers and leaders of today in various fields: There was poet Langston Hughes, and now there’s music artist Will.i.am. There was Thurgood Marshall, the late U.S. Supreme Court justice, and now there’s Eric Holder, U.S. attorney general.
And we’ve gone from 1972 when Shirley Chisholm was the first major-party black candidate for president, to the election of the first black president in 2008 with Barack Obama, Boyd said.
“We’ve come a long way, and we’ve got a lot to celebrate,” she said.
But there’s still a long way to go, and it’s time to rise up and take action to ensure that Dr. King’s dream stays alive, she said.
“We need to make sure our children know what is appropriate” and to teach them history, Boyd said.
Older people have to help the next generation, she said. Young people encounter a lot of apathy and complacency,
“Dr. King said, ‘Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity,’” Boyd said.
Where are the voices speaking out when there’s a 50 percent high school dropout rate among blacks, she asked, or when babies have babies before they’re even over their own diaper rash?
“We need to speak to young women to encourage them to become virtuous women of God, not wall sockets for anyone to come and plug into,” Boyd said.
Young boys need to know that the amount of gold worn around their neck isn’t the measurement of a man, the speaker said.
“It’s time for us to speak up,” she said. “We need to help our young people know they can be anything they want to be.”
Growing up, Boyd enjoyed math but was discouraged.
“I was told black girls don’t do math,” Boyd said. “You’re looking at one black girl that did math.”
She grew up in Montgomery, Ala., a daughter of a single mother, graduated from Alabama State University and Yale University and became an engineer.
Diversity awards
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Diversity Awards for 2011 were presented Thursday during a diversity breakfast at YSU. The recipients are:
Student diversity; Heather DeCoskey, Brandi M. Veigh and Richard Opoku-Nsiah.
Undergraduate achievement: Mark Jones Jr. and Christina M. Yovick.
Community service: Susan Moorer, coordinator of P-12 at the Beeghly College of Education,
Distinguished service: Sherri Lovelace-
Cameron, associate professor of chemistry.
Mentorship: Michael Beverly, senior coordinator/multicultural student services; Ana Bobby, manager of library operations at the Maag Library; and Joan L. Boyd, professor of health professions.
Lifetime achievementaward for leadership and service to the Youngstown community: Alfred Bright, professor emeritus of art.
Source: Diversity breakfast program