A DREAM DEFERRED BUT NOT DENIED BY DR. ROSLYN CLARK ARTIS
This is a beautiful time of the year, particularly on the campuses of our nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Excitement is in the air as perspective graduates receive their caps and gowns and begin making preparations for the moment they and their families have long dreamed of – commencement! At Benedict College, nearly 300 seniors who satisfied their degree requirements in December and May, readied themselves to march across the stage and receive the coveted diplomas that symbolize the achievement of their academic goals. Photo shoots were scheduled; announcements/invitations were ordered; and travel arrangements were booked. And then it happened…Covid-19, an international pandemic, hit the United States and forced colleges and universities around the country to evacuate their campuses and close their doors. Social distancing has become more than a catch phrase – it is our “new normal,” requiring
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campus leaders to postpone, and in some cases cancel, traditional May commencements in favor of “virtual commencement ceremonies.” As I reflected on our decision to postpone Benedict College’s May 9, 2020 commencement to August 8, 2020, it occurred to me that while not cancelled, the graduation delay represents a dream deferred for Benedict graduates. The poem, “Dream Deferred,” by Langston Hughes, is a seminal work that poses the question of what happens when a dream is deferred. As a black man in America during the early 1900s, Hughes understood that deferred dreams often became nightmares for black people in a country that refused to accept their humanity and universally labeled them inferior solely by virtue of the color of their skin. Reduced to back-breaking manual labor, entrepreneurship was difficult to dream and virtually impossible to realize. Moreover, as a result of inferior schools, that most black children were only
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