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MOREHOUSE COLLEGE PRESIDENT WALTER E. MASSEY'S SPEECH AT THE COMMUNITY
BUILDERS PRIZE CEREMONY
A Great 'World House'
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It is my distinct honor as president
to welcome you to Morehouse College and to this special occasion. For
134 years, Morehouse has enjoyed a reputation for academic excellence
that has produced some of the world's most outstanding leaders-perhaps
the most famous of which is Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr., class of 1948. A Nobel Peace Prize laureate and leader
of the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. King spoke eloquently about his dream
of a world in which our differences would not divide us. He said: "We
have inherited a large house, a great 'world house' in which we have to
live together -black and white, Easterner and Westerner, gentile and
Jew, Catholic and Protestant, Moslem and Hindu-a family unduly separated
in ideas, culture and interest, who, because we can never again live apart,
must learn somehow to live with each other in peace."
At Morehouse, we are working through our many educational programs and
community initiatives to keep Dr. King's dream and his legacy of peace
and non-violence alive. And so, we are delighted today -and we believe
that he would be-to inaugurate at his alma mater the Gandhi, King, Ikeda
Community Builders Prize.
It was at Morehouse where Dr. King formed the idea of the "Beloved
Community" that defined the course of his life's work. And now it
will be at Morehouse where that same idea can inspire the life's work
of others.
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