Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Eugene Robinson returned home Saturday to where it all started for him. He told the 2009 Claflin University graduating class they are in the middle of a unique moment in history in beginning their adult lives.

“The words of encouragement you’ve heard since birth, that you could be anything you wanted to be, it’s true,” Robinson said to a packed crowd at the Seventh-day Adventist Worship and Convention Center.

Robinson was the keynote speaker for Claflin’s commencement exercises. He was also given an honorary doctorate from the university.

Robinson spoke about the subject that won him the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for commentary: the 2008 election and the historical ascension of Barack Obama to the presidency.

He said that, while African-Americans now hold positions of prominence, the nation is “still far from being a colorblind society.”

However, Robinson noted American race relations have come a long way since the first slaves arrived in Jamestown during the 1600s.

He recalled the night of Nov. 4, 2008 when Robinson was a panelist for MSNBC’s election night coverage.

He remembered hearing the news that NBC was going to call the election for Obama.

The first chance he got, “I picked up the phone to talk with my parents (in Orangeburg) to tell them that they had lived to see the election of the first African-American president,” he said.

Robinson then called out several graduates in the audience and asked them if they would allow anything to stand in the way of their dreams.

“Don’t let anything or anyone stand between you and your dreams,” he said.

He then got the audience to chant Obama’s campaign mantra: “Yes, we can!”

An Orangeburg native, Robinson grew up near the Claflin campus, where his mother, Louisa, was the head librarian for 40 years.

He said he walked through the campus everyday while he was a student at Felton Laboratory School next door at then-South Carolina State College.

As a young boy, Robinson witnessed the events that came to be known as the Orangeburg Massacre, the 1968 incident in which police fired on students protesting a segregated bowling alley and killed three young men.

His house was within viewing distance of the protests.

Robinson said he remembered peeking out the window to see police cars line the street. His father would tell him to get away from the window.

He said that while his speech sounded like just a story about him, it was also a story about the graduates.

He said the opportunities afforded to him represent similar opportunities for them.

The graduates are entering into a world full of limitless possibilities, he said.

Robinson encouraged the graduates to take the opportunity “by storm and enjoy every single minute of it.”

Robinson has worked at the Washington Post for the past 25 years, serving a variety of roles. Currently, he is a columnist and associate editor.

He is also a regular panelist on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and MSNBC’s “Keith Olbermann Show.”

He was educated at Orangeburg High School, where he was one of a few black students at the previously all-white campus. Robinson continued his education at the University of Michigan, where he was the first black student to be named co-editor of the student newspaper.

T&D Staff Writer Lee Tant can be reached by e-mail at ltant@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-534-1060.

You must be logged in to comment.