Cory Booker Tells HU Graduates to 'Be Who They Were Created to Be' (379 hits)
Cory Booker’s commencement address to Hampton University graduates on May 13 was filled with inspirational words, humor and challenges. Booker, Mayor of Newark, N.J., told 1,015 HU graduates that while they have worked hard, they did not get where they are on their own.
“You are a part of a tradition,” Booker said. “Each and every one of the graduates here today does not stand here on their own.”
Booker said that he was humbled when HU President Dr. William R. Harvey invited him to give the commencement address. He spoke of his many connections to HU including writing his honors thesis while in college about one of Hampton’s illustrious graduates Booker T. Washington.
He talked about the many life lessons he learned from his father. Booker’s father grew up poor in North Carolina but with the help of family, friends and neighbors went to college, moved his family to a mostly white New Jersey suburb and became one of the first African-Americans to work for IBM.
