SALON

Saturday, May 12, 2012 7:48 PM UTC

Michelle Obama urges NC A&T grads to seek change

By

Topics: From the Wires,

GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) — The four North Carolina college students who started the sit-in movement for desegregation more than half a century ago shows what young people can do to change their world for the better, first lady Michelle Obama said during a commencement speech Saturday.

Mrs. Obama addressed a crowd of about 15,000, including more than 1,200 graduates of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, one of the state university system’s historically black schools.

In 1960, four of the school’s students put their careers and lives on the line by sitting down at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter a few miles away, asked to be served coffee and were refused. They returned day after day in greater numbers, and others across the South followed their example, until the company eventually was forced to end separate treatment for black and white customers.

North Carolina is considered a battleground state in the presidential election and the first lady’s visit was expected to generate goodwill within a core Democratic Party constituency as President Barack Obama seeks re-election this fall.

Mrs. Obama steered clear of references to politics and her husband’s re-election bid, though the audience cheered when the first lady told graduates: “We have the responsibility to protect the ground that has already been won, because it can just as easily be lost.”

President Obama has visited North Carolina more than a dozen times, including four since June. Most recently he blasted Republicans about student loan debt during a visit two weeks ago to the University of North Carolina of Chapel Hill. The Democratic National Convention will be in Charlotte this September.

Obama’s likely Republican opponent for the White House, Mitt Romney, visited a Charlotte manufacturing plant on Friday to blame Obama for the slow pace of economic recovery. It was Romney’s second visit to the city in a month.

Obama carried North Carolina over John McCain in 2008, with 95 percent of black voters supporting the Democratic nominee, according to exit polls. Whether they can deliver another win for Obama, as the state continues to grapple with unemployment rates that hover above the national average, remains to be seen.

North Carolina voters this week approved amending the state constitution to ban gay marriage. Obama followed the next day by becoming the first president to express support for same-sex marriage.

Mrs. Obama’s Greensboro address was the second of three spring commencement addresses for the first lady. She spoke at Virginia Tech on Friday and also is scheduled to speak June 17 at Oregon State, where her brother, Craig Robinson, is the men’s basketball coach.

___

Emery Dalesio can be reached at http://twitter.com/emerydalesio

More Emery P. Dalesio.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments are not enabled for this story.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations