Seasonal & Holidays
In 1964 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered baccalaureate address
At Wesleyan University
Dr. King gives the baccalaureate address as part of Wesleyan’s Commencement ceremonies, Denison Terrace, June 7, 1964. He received an honorary degree from the University. (Photograph Above by Rudolph Vetter. Courtesy Special Collections & Archives.)
Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s baccalaureate address to the Wesleyan Class of 1964, civil rights attorney Theodore M. Shaw ’76 spoke from the podium on Denison Terrace.
“Don’t wait to change the world,” Theodore M. Shaw ’76 told the Class of 2014 in his Commencement address on May 25.
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Just as Dr. King advised the Class of 1964 to “go out with a determination to work against this evil system and to work hard in order to rid our nation of the injustices and the indignities that have clouded our days,” Shaw implored the graduates to tackle today’s pressing challenges, from global warming to income and wealth inequality to religious intolerance and ethnic hatred.
Shaw has argued cases in courts across the nation, including the Supreme Court, involving voting rights, education, housing discrimination, capital punishment, and civil rights. He has been named the Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and the director of the University of North Carolina Center for Civil Rights, after having served as professor of professional practice at Columbia University School of Law, and he is “of counsel” to Norton Rose Fulbright. For nearly a quarter century, he served as an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, concluding as director-counsel and president from 2004–08.
