David D. Price, MDiv '17, was selected by his student colleagues as the class speaker for HDS Commencement 2017. The following remarks were delivered by Price at the Diploma Awarding Ceremony on May 25.
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"Caged Bird" by Maya Angelou (Excerpt)
Freedom is not always free. Many of us graduates can attest to the truth in this statement. On the one hand, today marks our freedom from school: no more grades, no more mandatory reading, no more mandatory writing. On the other hand, we realize this freedom had a price: we struggled through numerous all-nighters, hundreds of pages written, dozens of books read, and of course thousands of dollars borrowed. Yet, we are free.
We are free to illuminate that which is in the dark, to engage that which is inactive, and to serve the underserved. We are, perhaps, what Maya Angelou calls free birds who have numerous choices of roads to travel. Those birds who leap on the back of the wind, those birds who float downstream till the current ends, those birds who fly so high that they dip their wings in the orange sun rays and claim the sky as their own. We are free birds.
Oh, but I’ve lived long enough to understand that where there is a free bird, there is also a caged bird. While the free bird flies in the sky, the caged bird remains enraged on the inside. Yet, even in rage, the bird sings. Can you hear it?
Can you hear the bird?
Brothers, sisters, friends, and colleagues, we enter a world where there are hundreds of millions of people singing freedom songs. Some are locked in cages of patriarchy, others locked in cages of heteronormativity; locked in the cages of the prison industrial complex; locked in the cages of ableism; locked in the cages of religious intolerance; locked in the cages of illegal statuses; locked in the cages of racism. I heard the rapper Akon say it like this, “I’m locked up, and they won’t let me out.” Dr. Angelou says that the caged bird’s wings are clipped and their feet are tied. Yet, they sing songs on high. Despite the chains, they fight for freedom.
My grandmother, Lettie McCrory, knew all too well what it was like to fight and sing for her freedom. Born in 1922, she grew up in Jim Crow Mississippi prior to making her great migration to California. Grandmamma and a host of black women were the first scholars to teach me about intersectionality. Black women knew, and know today, that the fight against patriarchy and racism and unjust laws are in many ways the same fight. They understood that getting out of one cage means little unless we are free from all cages. This afternoon you may ask the question: how do we escape, destroy, and break the locks on the metaphorical and literal cages? Grandmamma had an answer.
As a young boy, I loved visiting grandma and honestly I brought her spirit with me to classes and put her in much of my work here at Harvard. Every time I visited her home, she was always active. One of her favorite hobbies was gardening. I didn’t like to help much but I certainly watched while sitting on the porch, as grandma would sow seeds into the soil.
To get those seeds deep into the ground, deep into the fields of life, grandma taught me to find a good song to sing. You don’t have to be musically inclined or gifted but you need a song in your spirit. As Dr. Brad Braxton, one of the great scholars and practitioners that I was so privileged to learn from during my time at Harvard, taught me, “where there is no music the spirit will not move.” Grandma knew this to be true. So, before she began her days work in the garden of life, I heard her hum this hymn that says, “All of my help, all of my help comes from the Lord. All of my needs he has met. God has never failed me yet.” Grandma was a good Baptist. So, in every song she called on the name of the Lord but whatever your theology is, before you leave this place, be sure to find a good song to move the spirit.
Second, grandma taught me to till the soil of life. If you go to 11714 Wilkie Avenue you will discover that there is still a shed in my grandma’s backyard. I call it the sacred shed because in it she kept tools of transformation. Those tools of transformation coming from the sacred shed gave grandmamma the power to dig deep into the dried up, lifeless dirt. Before we can plant the seeds that have been gathered over the few or many years spent in these hallowed halls, we must first join the struggle to unearth the weeds and dead flowers and leaves that obstruct growth and progress.
If we go into our own sacred sheds, we will find in them tools of transformation. You may find a hoe for humanity or a shovel for society. You may use the axe of anthropology or the spade of sociology. You may use preaching and teaching, research and writing, non-profit and for-profit as tools to dig deep into the soil of society. But, friends whatever you do, don’t forget to go into your sacred shed and pull out your tools of transformation and use them because many corners of our world are covered with lifeless dirt that must be unearthed. While we’re working to unpack the lifeless soil of racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and xenophobia, we must replace it with life giving soil composed of love, respect, humility, humanity, compassion, empathy, and solidarity.
In the next step of the gardening process, Grandma said, “David, get me the fertilizer.” It was time to transition from pulling out the dead to putting in new life – and I quickly learned why roses don’t smell so good. What many of us know, and some will learn, is that America and the global community have been conditioned to lifeless tendencies that prohibit our society from understanding why we would need to change the dirt. So, as we embark to do transformative work, we know that people will reject this new life giving soil because it will not look or smell good. In fact, it will look and smell like a bunch of sugar-honey-iced-tea from a cow’s behind. And people will wonder how our methodology and pedagogy will produce sweet jasmine flowers of joy. The task will become overwhelming. It will seem daunting. Trouble will get in our way. We know the rain will come and the sun may refuse to shine but rest assured that our labor will not be in vain; our fight is for what is right. And come hell or high water, we will work toward that day when cages will be obsolete and the gardens of life will produce a bounty for all of God’s children to enjoy.
But, until that day, I pray as the civil rights legend Joseph Lowery said on the steps of our nation’s capital, “Lord in the complex arena of human relation … help us to work to that day when black will not be asked to get back. When brown can stick around. When yellow will be mellow. When the red man, can get ahead man. And when white will embrace what is right.” If we do this together, we’ll take a step toward freedom. Thank you.