Shoeleather Journalism in the Digital Age

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Bakari Sellers challenges local high school students to be leaders now, not later at annual MLK address

Photo of Bakari Sellers
Bakari Sellers, above, was in Scottsdale to address Saguaro High School’s 25th annual “MLK Youth Voices” program and the city Community Celebrates Diversity organization’s 31st annual MLK Celebration Dinner. (Submitted Photo/DigitalFreePress)
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Dismissing a label given to today’s youth as “the leaders of tomorrow,” the youngest black elected official in the nation when he was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives in 2006 exhorted Valley high school students last week to embrace what civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Junior, coined “the fierce urgency of now.”

Best-selling author and political commentator Bakari Sellers was in Scottsdale to address Saguaro High School’s 25th annual “MLK Youth Voices” program and the city Community Celebrates Diversity organization’s 31st annual MLK Celebration Dinner.

“I hate when people refer to this group of students as ‘leaders of tomorrow,’” Mr. Sellers told the assembled students from nine area high schools. “That is the most perverse statement in our political lexicon because all of you are not the leaders of tomorrow: you’re the leaders of right now.”

Mr. Sellers recalled when he was part of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and its rally at South Carolina State University, near his hometown, and challenged the students not to wait to stand up for something greater than themselves.

“I began to think in that moment, ‘Here I am, on the precipice of change, playing my role in watching the world change around me,’” he explained. “But I’m only 19 miles away from my house, where I had the audacity to dream with my eyes open.  I was only 19 miles away from my home where I had the audacity to want to be more than my ZIP code.”

Mr. Sellers, now an attorney in Columbia, South Carolina, also praised five Saguaro students — Justice Hinds, Kingston Grant, Nayeli Lewis, Carolyn Morehead and Alexandrya Kayyali — for their courage in recounting for the assembled crowd their experiences as Scottsdale students, calling their level of oratory reminiscent of President Obama and Dr. King.

He also reminded the students of how Benjamin E. Mays, the president of Atlanta’s Morehouse College when King was a student there, defined ‘excellence’: “Whatever you do, strive to do it so well that no man living and no man dead and no man yet to be born could do it any better.”

“That’s why it’s so important for you to understand that your destination is just excellence.  That’s all King was asking from you,” Mr. Sellers said. “And what does that look like?  That means that if you want to be a scientist, be George Washington Carver.  If you want to be a songstress, be Nina Simone.  If you want to be a politician, be Nelson Mandela.  If you want to be a doctor, be Dr. David Satcher.”

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