Just a reminder, Isabel Wilkerson will be giving her presentation, ” “Caste: How the hierarchy we have inherited restricts our humanity” from noon to 1 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 5, in Prem Sahai Auditorium (room 1110) in the Medical Education and Research Facility.
I’m about halfway through her book, “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.” It’s a very difficult read, as I anticipated. It’s full of horrendous descriptions of what those in lower castes suffered, whether from the time of the Nazis, India, or America. I can read it only for a short while and then I have to put the book down and take a break. I get so I feel like I need an inspirational lift.
And it just happened the other night. I heard a poem on TV I’ve heard before, “I am Somebody.” Although it was written in the 1950s by Reverend William Holmes Borders, a civil rights activist and senior pastor at Wheat Street Baptist Church, it was recited by Reverend Jesse Jackson in 1963.
I remember seeing Reverend Jackson cry the night Barack Obama was elected President in 2008. I never heard the original speech Reverend Jackson gave in 1988, during the second time he was running for President himself.
I think it was probably because I was focused on starting medical school at The University of Iowa. I began my studies in August of 1988 in what was then the summer enrichment program for minority students.
One of Reverend Jackson’s speeches contained the other memorable cry, “Keep hope alive!” You can hear it and read the transcript.
You must not surrender! You may or may not get there but just know that you’re qualified! And you hold on and hold out! We must never surrender!! America will get better and better.
Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive! Keep hope alive! On tomorrow night and beyond, keep hope alive! I love you very much. I love you very much. —Rev. Jesse Jackson, 1988.
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