By Trevor Hunnicutt and Heather Timmons
ATLANTA (Reuters) – President Joe Biden’s speech at Morehouse College on Sunday was delivered without any interruptions from students or faculty critical of his Israel policies, but graduation speakers took the national spotlight that came with his presence to talk about race, Gaza and the US. politics.
Morehouse, one of about 100 U.S. HBCUs, or historically black colleges and universities, was founded in 1867 to educate black men recently freed from slavery. Alumni include civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., and several speakers, including Biden, invoked his legacy of civil rights activism.
Morehouse 2024 valedictorian DeAngelo Jeremiah Fletcher, whose beret featured a logo of the Palestinian flag with clenched fists, acknowledged that he had considered not giving a speech at all and then called for a ceasefire.
“It is my position as a Morehouse man, indeed as a human being, to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip,” he said. Biden applauded.
Some Morehouse students and faculty had called for Biden not to be invited because of his staunch support of Israel in the war between Israel and Hamas, which Palestinian authorities say has killed tens of thousands of people in Gaza and left many homeless and on the brink of famine . Israel is responding to the October 7 attacks by Hamas militants, which authorities say killed 1,200 people.
The college’s president, David Thomas, had promised to shut down the ceremony if it was disrupted, but the only signs of protest were small and quiet.
“Thank you God for this awake class of 2024,” said Pastor Claybon Lea Jr. in his opening evocation, praising the students for their political consciousness as Biden, sitting on the podium, smiled.
The pastor, who leads a Baptist church in California and is a Morehouse graduate, quoted a “Palestinian Jew named Jesus” and said all children matter, from Israelis to Palestinians and beyond.
Lea also called on God to grant Biden a “strengthening in his body, mind and spirit with a renewed resolve to lead this country and help us become what Martin King called the Beloved Community.”
HBCUs have a rich history of political activism, especially amid the civil rights movement, when students organized protests, marches and sit-ins to fight against segregation, racism and discrimination.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in Atlanta and Susan Heavey in Washington; Writing by Heather Timmons; Editing by Leslie Adler)
