Recently, Senator Reverend Warnock delivered the keynote commencement address to Morgan State University’s Fall 2025 graduating class in Baltimore, Maryland
Senator Warnock encouraged the Class of 2025 to use their voices to shake up the world, pushing them to challenge the status quo
Morgan State University, a Historically Black College & University (HBCU), has benefited from the $17 billion in federal investments secured by Senator Warnock since 2021
Senator Reverend Warnock: “So here, graduates. Do something more with your degree than just make a living, make a life”
Above: Senator Warnock at Morgan State University’s commencement
Photo courtesy of Morgan State University
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock (D-GA) delivered the keynote commencement address to Morgan State University’s Fall 2025 graduating class in Baltimore, Maryland. The Senator commended the university and its graduates for its rich history, academic excellence, and commitment to fostering Black leadership.
During his remarks Senator Warnock, an alum of Atlanta’s Morehouse College and the only sitting U.S. Senator to graduate from a Historically Black College & University (HBCU), urged the graduates to make their life’s project longer and larger than their lifespan and give themselves over to a mission bigger than themselves.
“So here, graduates. Do something more with your degree than just make a living, make a life. Decide to begin to work today, if you haven’t already decided what will be your life’s project, and make sure your life’s project is larger than your life span. If your life’s project can be accomplished in your life span, you’re thinking too small,” said Senator Warnock.
Senator Warnock also highlighted the important role of HBCUs in helping shape the next generation of changemakers, as well as his work to successfully secure $664 million in federal funding for Georgia’s HBCUs, part of $17 billion in investments the federal government has delivered to HBCU campuses throughout the nation since the Senator was elected to the Senate in 2021.
A video link of Senator Warnock’s speech can be found HERE.
See below Senator Warnock’s speech at Morgan State University:
“Hello, Morgan State University!
Come on, I’m a Baptist Preacher, you can talk back to me, we call it call and response, make some noise in this house! This is the day the Lord has made, we have come to rejoice and be glad in it.
Morgan State University, thank you so very much for this high honor. It’s great to be here with you for your 12th annual Fall Commencement Ceremony. I like to remind us at these ceremonies that while graduation represents the end of whatever degree you are pursuing, commencement is not the end, it’s the beginning. You have crossed the river, the ocean still lies ahead, and miles to go before you sleep.
It’s always great to be back in Maryland. I’m no stranger to this state. I had the honor of serving here my first senior pastor at Douglas Memorial Community Church, where they allowed a young man to experiment on them, until I became a pastor.
I want to thank your President, Dr Wilson, for that kind introduction and for his sterling leadership over this great institution, you ought to give your president a great big round of applause.
The third largest HBCU in the nation! All of us are family here today, whether you have or are being awarded a PhD or no D [Doctorate]. There are a lot of hands on these diplomas. This is about the village. Am I right? Give the village a round of applause.
It’s great to be here with my friend, my brother, Congressman Kweisi Mfume. Not just your congressman, but Chair of the Morgan State University Board of Regents. I have watched his career with great interest over the decades, and I remember his first foray into the Congress, and I was about where a lot of these students were when he had the Congress the first time. I didn’t know I’d be his colleague years later, but we’re so grateful for his voice and for his commitment to speaking truth to power. It’s great to have a liberationist is at the helm of the Board of Regents here at Morgan State.
Last but certainly not least, let’s take a moment and really celebrate the future, the mighty class of 2025!
Give them a great big hand! Give yourselves a great big hand because you deserve it!
This indeed is a special day. You have reason to rejoice. I’m always delighted to be a part of any college commencement, but as an HBCU grad, I know the unique history of places like Morgan State University. There must have been something special in the water or in the air in 1867, the year this school was born. And I was struck as I was reading and doing the research on Morgan State University, that you’re born, your first board of trustees met on Christmas Day in 1864, began to work on this vision that came into fruition in 1867. But your president, who is astute, and a serious thinker and scholar, was saying to me as I was coming in that some non-HBCUs were organized in 1867, the largest number of schools in higher education in the history of our country. Something special was in the air in 1867. I’m a graduate of an 1867 institution, Morehouse College, and I understand as a first-generation college graduate, the sacrifice that it took for you to get here. That’s why HBCU commencements are really a church service in an academic framework. Y’all acting real dignified, but I’ve come out here to hear a hallelujah, before it’s all over. Somebody’s grandmother is going to say ‘Thank you Jesus’ before we get out of here.
I speak from experience, because, as I said, I’m the first college graduate in my family. I’m number 11 out of 12 children, my folks, who were Pentecostal preachers, clearly read the scripture: Be fruitful and multiply.
But I decided as a kid, growing up in public housing, that my parents’ income ought not determine my outcome. I had a village that convinced me that God believes in in diversity, equity, and inclusion. That God raises up genius and talent and expertise and promise and possibility all over town on both sides of the track. And so I decided that I was going to Morehouse College. And I went primarily because that was the alma mater of Martin Luther King, Jr, whose vision and whose voice absolutely captured the imagination of this post-Civil Rights generation, baby.
I just wanted to be in the school. I just wanted to be a part of the environment that shaped Martin Luther King Jr. I just wanted to go to his school. I never knew at that point. I did not know that I would become the pastor of his church. God always dreams a dream bigger than the dream you’ve been dreaming for yourself. What you have achieved so far is impressive, but eyes have not seen. Ears have not heard, neither has it been revealed today what God has prepared for you. Exceedingly, abundantly, and above anything you could ever ask Him or imagine. I’m standing on tiptoe waiting to see what you graduates will become.
I went to school on a full faith scholarship. That’s when you don’t have enough money for the first semester.
The year I went to college, my folks’ annual income was equal to the tuition, room, and board of the college. We were short on money, but long on faith, long on love. We had a sense of humor. Faith and humor will take a long way. Love will open the door.
And I remember that when I arrived on the campus of Morehouse College, another great HBCU, there were young men there who were from prominent middle-class and upper-middle-class families, some of them, and you know how we have a sense of style in these schools, some of those brothers were already dressed in Brooks Brothers suits hadn’t been to the first class yet. Looked like they were working on Wall Street. Some of them were driving fancy cars. I said to myself, I don’t have enough clothes to be in this place.
And I looked at my dad as they were dropping me off on the campus. I told you my folks were Pentecostal preachers, and when you live in the house of a preacher, two preachers every day, instructions sound like scripture.
My folks had a way of speaking to me in King James English. My mom would say ‘Thou shalt wash the dishes, lest I smite thee with my rod and my staff.’ I looked at my dad just trying to get a few dollars to get through the first semester. And my dad had a lot of love, but he also had a lot of children, and he spoke to me in King James English. He said, ‘Son, Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have […] grace of the Lord Jesus, be with you.’ He gave me a great big hug. Mom gave me a great big hug. They got in the car, drove off into the horizon. Let me stand there.
Four years later, I was standing on the stage, some of those guys driving those fancy cars were driving past the stage when I was standing on the stage getting my degree. I did that because I had a fierce work ethic. I had a commitment to finish. I had perseverance, so discipline, I have all of that, but here’s the other side of the deal. I finished also because somebody gave me some Pell Grants, somebody gave me some low-income student loans. In other words, I had a path to progress. And the sad reality is that because of the short-sightedness of so many in the Congress, public leadership and public policy, it would have been tougher for me to do today than it was for me to get that accomplished all of those years ago. That’s the sad commentary.
So that’s why we need you 2025 graduates. That’s why we need the Spirit, the social consciousness, the perspective of these young graduates. Young people have a way of shaking up the world, pushing us to think outside of the box. Young people have a lower tolerance for contradictions between our ideals and what we have achieved, and we need that vision. We need that impatience with things as they are. We need the energy and the activism and the spirit of young it. That’s why we got to do something to make sure that young people all across this country, not just in four-year institutions, but in our community colleges and technical colleges, have a path because America can’t win unless its children can win. We need everybody from every zip code. I want America to win, and the only way America can win is if every child has a chance. That’s the legacy and the commitment of a place like Morgan State University.
It makes a difference when an HBCU graduate is in the House. Your chairman and I working through the Congress, we we’ve secured some $[1]7 billion for HBCUs all across this country. It makes a difference when there’s HBCU graduates in the House.
So thank God for you, Morgan State. You teach us the saying: ‘I’m tired of sailing my little boat far inside of the harbor bar; I want to be out where the big ships float — Out on the deep where the Great Ones are! And should my frail craft prove too slight for those waves and sweep the billows, oh I’d rather go down in the stirring fight, than drowse to death by the sheltered shore!’
You teach us how to dream. Places like Morgan State teach us how to say to everyone: ‘They’re opening up the way and the way, the way, high soul climbs the highway, while the low soul gropes the low and in between on misty flats, the rest drift to and fro. But to everyone, they’re opening up the highway and the low, and each one must decide the way his soul would go.’
Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays used to say that ‘We make our living by what we get, but we make our life by what we give.’ He said: ‘I have only a minute, 60 seconds in it. Forced upon me, can’t refuse it, Didn’t seek it, didn’t choose it, But must give account if I lose it. a tiny little minute, but eternity is in it.’
So make sure graduates that your minute counts. Make your minute count. Will you make that promise to yourself? Will you make that promise to the village, whether you live to be 99 years old? That’s just one minute. Make your minute count. So go forth and be the light.
This is the season of Advent. It is also the season of Hanukkah. It is a season of light. Scripture tells us that ‘The light shines in the darkness and the darkness overcometh it not.’ It’s not that it isn’t dark in the world. It’s just that we refuse to let the darkness overcome the light, let your light shine.
Keep the flame burning, a flame that was carried to the Western Hemisphere from the distant shores of an African west coast where we already knew God, a flame that was used to illuminate the books of our ancestors as they hid and read when it was illegal for them to read, and that led the path of slaves who fled by foot to freedom. Keep the flame alive, flame that was alive in Frederick Douglass, who traded bread with poor little white boys for the bread of literacy and the hope of freedom. Keep that flame alive. The flame alive in the distinguished graduates of this institution, Earl Graves and Kweisi Mfume, and April Ryan and so many others, and now it’s your turn to stand up and say, I got a light. I’ve got gifts. I have opportunity, I have possibility. Thank God for all of them. But it’s my time now, I’m going to keep the flame alive. I’m going to make sure that I make a difference in the world, the light shines, in the darkness and the darkness overcometh it not.
So here, graduates. Do something More with your degree than just make a living, make a life.
Decide to begin to work today, if you haven’t already decided what will be your life’s project, and make sure your life’s project is larger than your life span. If your life’s project can be accomplished in your life span, you’re thinking too small. You need to grab hold of something that it will take somebody else to finish. You give your life over to something larger than yourself. You will find yourself. We need that kind of idealism, especially in this moment where we’re dealing with spiritual wickedness in high places, the rulers of the darkness of this world.
Don’t you dare give in to this, the dystopian designs of an administration that does not know what America is really about. Don’t you give this country over to the autocrats and the billionaires. Don’t you know that our ancestors gave too much? They die too young. We sacrifice too much to give this country back to a distorted vision of yesterday. We’re not about to go back. You’re not about to erase us. We’re moving forward. Were pressing on the upward way.
I heard a confused man who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania, say in the wake of a terrible tragedy at the beginning of this year. Remember, there was a plane crash in D.C., and while bodies were still in the icy waters of the Potomac, he said, ‘I know what did this, DEI.’
That’s narrow vision. The truth is, aviation is one of the least diverse sectors in our economy. I met a young man named Ezekiel a few years ago who wanted to be a pilot. He had the aptitude, but years later, and $100,000 of his money, 10 years later, he was still struggling to be a pilot, because we haven’t created the pathway for all of the talent to emerge in our country.
So you keep the light burning, because young people have always been the ones to create in us a sense of restlessness, a conscientious discontent with the world as it is, and a determination to fight for the world that we can build together. Want to remind you in closing, and nobody believes a Baptist preacher when he says ‘In closing’, that we’ve seen tyrants before. We’ve seen racists and bigots before. We’ve seen xenophobes before. John Lewis didn’t have any reason to believe that he could win as he was crossing that Edmund Pettus Bridge, but he was 25 years old and foolish enough to believe that he can make a difference.
Brute force on the other side of that bridge, under the cover of law, he and Hosea Williams kept on marching. Not only did he cross a bridge, he built the bridge.
The young kid who grew up in Kayton Home, down in Savannah, Georgia, crossed that bridge into the United States Senate. We’ve seen challenges before, and we kept on marching.
When I was born, I told you that I’m the first black senator from Georgia, but when I was born, Georgia was represented by two outstanding senators, but they were both segregationists. One of them said, ‘We love the Negro in his place. And his place is at the back door.’ I came all the way to Baltimore just to tell you that I sit in his seat.
The light shines in the dark, darkness overcometh it not. The other senator was so distinguished that out of three administrative buildings in the Senate, there been over 2000 senators in the history of our country. He has a whole building named after him but he too was a segregationist.
And after I won the fifth time in less than three years, I’m not bragging, I’m just testifying. They came to me, and they said, ‘Senator, you’ve gone up in the seniority now, you can get a larger office. Matter of fact, you can move out of this building into another building.’ And eventually, I did move out of that building, but I had to stay there for just a few years. Because I love the prophetic and poetic irony that I was residing in the Senate office building of a segregationist Senator from Georgia.
I said I’m going to stay here for a little while, because after all his statue is in the vestibule of this building. His statue is in the rotunda. And because his statue is in the rotunda when I’m on my way to my office every now and then, I have to pass by his statue and when I pass by his statue I look back over my shoulder and I say ‘How do you like me now?’
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered. we have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered. Yet with a steady beat. Have not our weary feet come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
So don’t let anybody turn you around. If you have a mountain, just climb it. If you have river, just cross it. If you have a dream, just pursue it. If you have a vison, just do it. If you have an idea, just capture it. If you have a bad habit, just break it. A handicap, overcome it, a talent, just develop it, a song, just sing it, a testimony, just tell it, a sermon, just preach it.
If you have life, just live it! Let your light shine in the darkness.
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