‘Be excellent’
Gwendolyn E. Boyd was the keynote speaker Thursday at the 10th Annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Diversity Breakfast at Youngstown State University. A Montgomery, Ala., native, Boyd was one of five black students who attended Jefferson Davis High School. She was a math honor student and class valedictorian. She graduated summa cum laude from Yale University with a bachelor of science degree in mathematics.
By Denise Dick
Youngstown
It’s the responsibility of this generation of black leaders to help the younger generation reach for excellence, a mechanical engineer and civic leader told attendees at Thursday’s 10th Annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Diversity Breakfast.
Young people have to “be excellent, act excellent and think excellent,” Gwendolyn E. Boyd told those assembled in the Chestnut Room of Kilcawley Center at Youngstown State University. “That’s your major requirement.”
Another requirement is to know the language — both oral and written. Young people must know how to jump and do geography, to rap and to read, to divide numbers as well as throw a ball, said Boyd, who was the breakfast’s keynote speaker.
A Montgomery, Ala., native, Boyd was one of five black students who attended Jefferson Davis High School. She was a math honor student and class valedictorian. She graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor of science degree in mathematics. Boyd was then the only woman and only black in her program of 25 students at Yale University, where she became the first black woman to earn a master of science in mechanical engineering.
Boyd serves as executive assistant to the chief of staff at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory.
Though blacks have made much progress since the Rev. Dr. King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, there’s still a long way to go, Boyd said.
The Occupy movement of today has at its root some of the same issues the late civil-rights leader preached about — unemployment, poverty and access to quality education and quality housing, the speaker said.
As today’s leaders from the black community had help from those before them, they must aid the younger generation.
“Success without a successor is failure,” she said. “We have to prepare the next generation to take our places, but we also have to be proper role models.”
She encouraged those attending to be part of the new movement.
“We have to say to our young people, if you’re going to the top and the elevator is broken, that means you have to take the stairs one at a time,” Boyd said.