The Washington Informer: Regional

Superstar talk show host and media mogul Oprah Winfrey, weeping before a crowd of more than 30,000 at the 139th Howard University Commencement, said the key to success is to “know who you are” and to cleave to your integrity. “Everyone has a calling. There is a reason why you are here. I know this for sure. And that reason is greater than any degree.

It’s greater than any paycheck. And it’s greater than anything that anybody tells you that you’re supposed to do. Your real job is to find out what the reason is and get about the business of doing it,” she told the gradates who often responded with shouts of “Amen!” and “Hallelujah!”

She continued, “Your calling isn’t something somebody can tell you about. It is what you feel. It’s a part of your life force. It is the thing that you’re supposed to do.”

Though inspired and hopeful, many of the more than 1.4 million 2007 graduates across the U. S. will find themselves literally lost, unable to get the impressive job they’d hoped for and confused by advice from people in every corner of their lives.

Using a string of testimonies from her personal career, Winfrey told the audience at the historically Black university, known as “the Mecca” of Black education, to never allow the words of others to stop them from reaching their goals.

Her father forbade her to quit the TV anchor job at WJZ-TV13 in Baltimore in the late 1970s. But, she disliked the job and her bosses repeatedly criticized her. When they finally took her off the anchor desk and placed her on a talk show “just to run out my contract…That was the beginning…” she said to cheers and loud applause. “The Oprah Winfrey Show” has been number one in the nation for 20 consecutive years and has 48 million viewers a week in the U. S. and abroad.

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My integrity is not for sale and neither is yours.
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Anchoring “was my father’s dream for me. But, God had a bigger dream for me…And so I tried to live in the space of God’s dream,” she said.

The euphoric moment was emboldened by the fact that Howard University history has played such a major role in the overall advancement of Blacks. The brainstorming for arguments in the Brown v. Board of Education began at the Howard Law School.

The late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, civil rights activist Stokeley Carmichael and singer Roberta Flack are just a few of the names in the university’s alumni hall of fame.

But, even amidst the utmost fame and the success of having her own film company, Harpo Productions and “O, the Oprah Magazine”, Winfrey warned the graduates that opportunities will constantly come to “sell out” what they believe to be right.

She said her producers tried to change her name to Susie, but she resisted. And, over the years, she has been repeatedly warned that certain subject matters would cause her advertisers to flee.

“If I could count the number of times I’ve been asked to compromise and sell out myself for one reason or another, I would be a billionaire 10 times over. My integrity is not for sale and neither is yours,” she shouted to the cheering crowd.

Winfrey, who received an honorary Doctor of Humanities, is known for her passionate and compassionate style of communicating. Howard President H. Patrick Swygert introduced her by the words of poet Maya Angelou, “The only thing greater than Oprah’s accomplishments is the size of her heart.”

Her talk show topics often espouse themes and anecdotes that tug at the heart. Her speech was no different.

“You receive a lot of awards in your life. But, there’s nothing better…” she said as she choked back and wiped away tears, “…than to be honored by your own.”

Just as quickly, the audience broke into laughter as she quipped, “I’ll be calling myself Dr. Winfrey on Monday morning.”

Preceding Winfrey, honorary doctorates were also bestowed upon Julian M. Earls, executive-in-residence at the Nance College of Business Administration at Cleveland State University; Henry Luis Gates Jr., director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard university; Walter E. Massey, president of Morehouse College; and Irene Sue Pollin, founder of Sister to Sister: Everyone Has a Heart Foundation, Inc.

All of them credited their ancestry for their success. Winfrey did the same.

The loudest applause and cheers during her speech came in response to her recalling the advice of her beloved grandmother, Hattie Mae Lee, a maid, who worked for Whites.

Her grandmother charged her to grow up and “get some good White folk that are kind to you,” Winfrey recounted. “And I regret that she didn’t live past 1963 to see that I did grow up to get some really good White folks - to work for me.”

Now on the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans, Winfrey, worth $1.4 billion, is also known for her philanthropy; most recently for the construction of the “Leadership Academy for Girls” in South Africa.

Still there are Black youth right here in America that she described as being a part of America’s crisis.

“They’re falling and they’re failing. They’re dropping out at 50 percent and higher because we – our generation – didn’t teach them who they are. We have a responsibility to raise them up, to lift them up, to liberate them from themselves,” she said.

In giving back to communities, Winfrey implored the graduates to lean on Howard’s motto of “Truth and Service”.

She said, “The most important lesson I can offer you from my own life is that in order to remain successful and continue to wear the crown, as you walk the path of privilege, you cannot forget the less privileged that you left behind. You use your life in service, somehow to others and you turn around and give back what you’ve been given… You’ve come from a long line of giants whose shoulders you stand on, giants who graduated from this school and giants who never made it to school…I believe in the words of Jimmy Baldwin, ‘Your crown has been paid for so wear it.’”