From one rainbow to another

Wednesday night at the Jorgensen Center for Performing Arts, Dr. Maya Angelou delivered an impressive speech of hope. She encouraged everyone, not just students or young people, but all people, to reach their full potential, because we are not only worth it, but we owe it to ourselves and our ancestors who are the reason why we are here today and the reason this country is as great as it is.

Angelou started off in song and poetry. "When it looked like the sun was not shining anymore, God put a rainbow in the clouds," she sang.

As told in Genesis, "And God said, 'this is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds of the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life'...so God said to Noah, 'This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on earth.'"

"We have been paid for," Angelou said, by blood and sweat of our ancestors. Whether they be from Ireland or Germany escaping the potato blight, or from England or China or Korea running from religious or political persecution or bound and gagged and shipped from Africa; we not only owe a pursuing a good education and a successful future to our forefathers, but to ourselves. We owe it to the obstacles our grandparents, great-grandparents, great great grandparents and great great great-grandparents overcame for the benefit of us.

"I've come to talk to you about you," she said. After a bus ride from North Carolina, she joked, "when I say I'm glad to be here, I mean it; some people may say they do, but I really do."

"I used to go to the airport, but the problem was too many people recognized me, and I was glad for that, I worked hard for that. People would grab me and poke me and hand me their babies," she laughed.

Second-semester political science major Donald Thomas called it exuberating, and second-semester business major Terrance Johnson said it was inspirational. "I wish I could be a rainbow in the cloud," said sixth-semester HDFS major Kristen Wood.

She told a story of her Uncle Willie a man who was crippled with half of his body suffering from atrophy. He rarely ever left Stamps, Ark. because he was so conscious of his deformity. Yet, despite what he thought of himself, he was a symbol of hope for other people. She went back years later for his funeral to find that her Uncle had influenced more people than she ever expected.

"A great loss to Arkansas, that Willie...A great loss to the nation, that Willie...A great loss to the World," a man she met in Little Rock told her.

"Uncle Willie?" she said in disbelief. "William Johnson from Stamps, Ark?" Despite her uncle's handicap, his positive influence affected many people in his life, including the future black mayor of Little Rock and a white lawyer who became a member of the state legislature.

Her message was a call to arms. When we realize we can be rainbows in the clouds, we can accomplish great things for ourselves. We can help others and our country, and, like her Uncle Willie, we can all be beacons of hope. We are all be rainbows in the sky.

Her performance Wednesday evening was undoubtedly a night to remember.

"I can't even describe what tonight meant, it was the most amazing night of my life," said Kimberly Ayers, a fourth-semester natural resources major.