Service Above All

[Music]

do me a favor

think of the very first time you heard

the word service

then think of how you serve or are of

service in

your communities and in the world today

when i was a junior in high school my

grandfather passed away

the week following his passing our

family hosted the usual memorial

services consisting of awake and a

funeral

during this time of grief and loss there

wasn’t very much that i remembered

in fact there wasn’t very much i wanted

to remember

but of the memories i do have one of

them i’m particularly fond of

in fact it’s one that i hold near and

dear to my heart

and that’s the story that my

grandfather’s former student

and athlete shared with us during his

service

this student got up before the church

and starts to tell

a story of how he was being threatened

with suspension

and in wake of his suspension the board

was going to host

a special meeting at this special

meeting

certain people show up and of those

people that show up

is my grandfather this student’s coach

and teacher

my grandfather not only shows up for

this student but he actually goes to

advocate before the board

for the student and in the words of the

student he fought for him

he did so in a way that this student was

able to stay in school

when i first heard the story i thought

that this was a story of victory

that included my grandfather that this

young student could share

but then i soon realized that with that

story and all the other stories that

everyone shared and

even some of the stories that i heard

before my grandfather’s passing

all of that meant one thing and outlined

one thing for me

and that was that my grandfather had

lived a life of service

that he was dedicated to living a life

of service

at that time i started to ask myself

what is service what does it mean to be

a person or to live a life

of service and what exactly was

i passionate about therefore i could

serve in that capacity because

let’s face it i was a 17 year old

teenager who

thought i knew everything and everything

i was involved in i was

passionate about well that turned out

not to be true

a year later i went off to college and i

enrolled in prairie view a

m university upon my arrival on campus i

saw the hundreds

of activities and organizations i could

throw myself into literally

but i promised myself we’re going to

take some time

we’re going to secure a good gpa one

that can maintain our scholarship and

also one that i could apply to law

school with in a few years after

graduation

once i had done that i told myself that

now it was time to approach

this idea of going out and becoming

involved on this campus

before i could go out and seek some of

those opportunities

one came to me and that was the

opportunity

of becoming precinct chair

i did not know what a precinct chair did

i knew of them but not of their duties

i quickly found myself being appointed a

week before

christmas break and with this

appointment i knew that there were

greater challenges that were going to

come

but of those great challenges i thought

that they might have been

the fact that i was one of the youngest

ones in the nation to ever be named

precinct chair or in fact that i was the

first one

to do so in this particular precinct

but i found that the greatest challenge

of it all

was in the idea that i was going to be

precinct chair

given the duty within this role to

organize and mobilize

9 000 plus black and brown students

at a historically black college and or

university

that university sits within a county

that has spent the last

five decades doing everything that they

could do to severely

suppress these students votes

and here i was now to organize and

mobilize

them i soon discovered my passion

and how exactly i was going to spend a

life of service

and that was through my activism and my

call

to advocacy service sounds like a simple

task

at this moment many of you are thinking

in your heads how you serve

how you served this year or how you’ve

served so far in your lifetime

but i want us and i challenge us to

think of service

in a different way in a different light

service is not you volunteering to feed

the homeless

every year and it’s not you going to

donate your old

used clothes that you no longer wear or

no longer want

to a clothes drive at your child’s

school

service is something that requires us to

make one a lifetime commitment to do

it’s a continuous commitment it’s not

one and then done

as an activist and social justice

advocate

but most importantly someone who

dedicates their life to service

i believe that my greatest purpose is

not to only live

a life of service but to inspire

others to do the same

you you and you

service sounds like this simple task

and i think for a minute i thought so

too

with our efforts of committing to

service we can create a domino effect

a domino effect that requires the person

that comes after us and the generations

after

us to do the same how do we do it

ask yourself these three things

first what are you passionate about

second what inspires you or

who inspires you what’s your inspiration

and lastly can your

passion be turned into a lifetime of

service

and do so in a way that inspires others

to do the same and for those of you who

think that you have yet to find your

passion

you might be right but i challenge you

to have the courage to raise your hand

when opportunities around you arise

when you least expect it you can find

your passion

you can find what you can spend your

life

committing to service doing i know i did

service is something that i feel

we should all be committed to

we should all inspire the generations

behind us

that come after us to do the same

i know that i never intended to be an

activist

but i know that through my role of

activism

and advocacy i can push

the envelope of injustice and equality

for every person

that it has been denied for every

marginalized

underrepresented overlooked person

and community and because i know that i

can do that through my activism

and my service through each of those

capacities

my service is not an option but it is

a must

now truth is activism advocacy

to be on the front lines of movements of

social ju

and tackling social justice issues it

was never something that had crossed my

mind before

i came to this illustrious campus

but since then i’ve learned that

service is something special

activism is something special

you might not need to go be on the front

lines of a protest

or to go lead a march downtown

to lead a social justice movement

but you might need to do something in

this world for the greater good

for the generations that are to come

that no one else

knows that it needs to be done or you

might be past the baton

and continue the fight for whatever it

may be

that needs change and you can lead it

how can you serve

thank you