Greetings from the Newberry County Literacy Council. Our various programs to enhance literacy skills in our community are ongoing as described in recent columns. In today’s column I would like to share comments I made recently at Newberry College. I have been part of a College production called “Raise Your Voice” since 2012. We highlight voices, from speeches, essays, songs, and verse, that raise significant issues, argue controversial topics, and display courage. Students, professors and community members have participated. The performance this year was just by students, part of a class taught by theatre professor Patrick Gagliano. He asked me to introduce the performance which I have done often over the years. Since the performance and the introduction directly involve issues of literacy, I thought it appropriate to share this as the subject of our Literacy Council column. One of the uses of our ability to read is to find voices that speak to us. Here are my comments:
This performance is entitled “Raise Your Voice.” You will hear speeches chosen by seven students that dramatize the power of the human voice. As important as this is to me and these students, I understand it may not seem as interesting or important to you. But now that we are all here we ought to be smart enough and mature enough to want to make the best of it, to get something out of it. So, how do we do that? By talking about Muhammed Ali, of course. You know why I’m bringing him up. You know that he was one of the greatest boxers of all times. That he defeated Sonny Listen in 1964 to win the Heavyweight crown. That he kept the title through a number of bouts over the next three years, but in 1967 was stripped of his title and banned from boxing. And you know what he did. He didn’t a rob a store, or forget to pay alimony , or get in a bar fight, he spoke out. He raised his voice against the Vietnam War. He said (and I quote) “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?”
Well, his license to box was suspended and he was sentenced to five years in prison. He was an athlete at the top of his sport. But he risked it all to raise his voice.
Or take Edward R. Murrow. Who? Edward R. Murrow. I’m quite sure few will know his name. But in 1954 he risked his career as a national journalist with CBS and his reputation as a loyal American to challenge Senator Joseph McCarthy who had decided the nation was overrun with Communists and anyone who disagreed with him was a Communist. Few were willing to speak out. Murrow did (under death threats), on national T.V., and McCarthy went down.
Not many of us will raise our voices the way Ali and Murrow did, on a national stage about national issues. We simply will not have the opportunity. We do have the opportunity, though, to speak out at the local or state level. But how many of us will do that? Do you know that 45 percent of the children in the city of Newberry are below the poverty level? Did you know that in 2013, 72 percent of South Carolina’s fourth grade public school students were unable to read at grade level? That can’t be, can it? Shouldn’t we be raising our voice about this? Well, many of us avoid the issues that seem to demand that we speak out: issues of justice, poverty, racism, sexism, refugees, children’s health, nuclear war, lack of funding for education and on and on. In some cases we don’t speak out because we are just not interested, as in – sorry, not my problem. Or we don’t speak out because we don’t have the skill, the skill to craft an argument and write or speak about it. Or, we don’t have the courage – we are afraid that we’ll lose friends or reputation, or more seriously, our job, our income, or most seriously, our life. It’s not easy being Muhammed Ali or Edward R. Murrow.
As you listen to the speeches and as you leave, if you are so inclined, you might want to ask “what speech would I choose, are there issues that concern me and do I have the smarts and the courage to speak out, to raise my voice, even if I know I might be attacked for it, or risk a job, or lose friends?”
For all of us, reading brings us into a world of big questions and deep thoughts that can inspire us. And if we find words that inspire us maybe we are better able to speak out for ourselves and participate in the shaping of the world around us.
