Voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams’ Jan. 22 keynote address for Dartmouth’s Martin Luther King Jr. celebration focused on the pressing need for moral courage, which she said involved a willingness not merely to hold power, but “to share that power, and to believe in the freedom that comes with that power.”
Echoing the theme of this year’s MLK celebration, “Moral Courage in the Face of Change and Uncertainty,” Abrams told the 250 people gathered in the ballroom of the Hanover Inn and other Dartmouth community members viewing a livestream video of the event that it is important to band together to combat injustice, wherever it comes from and whatever shape it takes.
“Moral courage provides shelter. It provides sustenance, and it provides change. And in the words of Dr. King, it is a dream. We should all be able to dream. And I say to each of you tonight, as we discuss and debate, we have the power of moral courage. So get it done.”
One of six children raised in Mississippi to church-going, community-minded parents (her father was a shipyard worker, her mother a librarian), Abrams said her voting rights activism was spawned at Spelman College.
She served for 11 years in Georgia’s House of Representatives and was the Democratic nominee for governor in Georgia in 2018 and 2022. Abrams has launched nonprofit organizations dedicated to protecting democracy and co-founded businesses that support financial growth and infrastructure development. She’s also penned political thrillers, children’s books, and two New York Times bestsellers: Our Time is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America, and Lead from the Outside: How to Build Your Future and Make Real Change.
Abrams said she was dismayed by the series of federal executive orders this week directed at immigration and programs promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, among other issues.
“It feels like these have been terrible days,” Abrams said. “And in a moment where we know so many communities are under siege, when so many are being labeled as the problem, we are tempted to think that we are too late. That there was a date a few months ago where we could have created change, but now it’s done. That we have to live with what we’ve got.”
But that is not the case, she asserted.
“I grew up with parents and grandparents in a community that never believed that today was the last day,” she said, “because every next moment, every next action, every next decision—that’s possibility. What we have now is an understanding of the flurry of executive orders. We now know what we face. The question is what are we going to do about it?”
One of the executive orders would terminate DEI programs across the federal government.
Abrams said the programs don’t give people preferred treatment, but rather provide everyone with an equal footing, using the metaphor of providing a step-stool or ladder to people who are not tall enough to see over a fence.
“I’ve spent the last year and a half working on DEI,” Abrams said. “Part of our responsibility is to make sure people understand it. It’s been recently demonized because it’s working, because as a nation for (more than) 248 years, we have done the work of living up to our values.”
Earlier in her speech, Abrams said Dartmouth, with its resources, “is also giving birth and giving life and giving opportunity to extraordinary young men and women, to folks whose minds can change the future. And there is nothing more courageous in this moment than giving them permission to be the people they are, and to say the things they need to say and be as loud as they can about the future that they stand to inherit.”
For doing just that, Abrams commended Jared Pugh ’25, president of Dartmouth’s chapter of the NAACP, who spoke at the event about Ronald McKeithen, a fellow Alabamian who, after serving a 37-year prison sentence, devoted his life to public service. “Oppression and trauma is not an invitation to forego hope,” Pugh said. “In the words of Dr. King, ‘the ultimate measure of a person is not where they stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where they stand at times of challenge and controversy.’”
Abrams’ discussion of moral courage and leadership resonated with Emma Tsosie ’25, a member of the Picuris East Pueblo and Diné Tribes in New Mexico, who attended the keynote with her friend, Sydney Hoose ’25, a member of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma.
“One of the things that is sticking with me is this idea that nothing happens alone, especially when it comes to leadership,” said Tsosie. “Sydney and I are co-presidents of Native Americans at Dartmouth, and I think the fact that we have each other is so important, because everything that happens within a community is crucial when it comes to activism and organizing. That was a super powerful moment.”
Earlier in the day, Abrams spent time with students and also with Senior Vice President and Senior Diversity Officer Shontay Delalue, who moderated the keynote talk.
“On a personal note, she is a person of deep conviction,” Delalue told the Hanover Inn audience. “Just two minutes into conversations with her, you feel that her work is coming from a place of heart, her parents, her ancestors, and all those before her who have lit the way for her leadership. And I’m a better person tonight for it.”
Dartmouth’s Martin Luther King Jr. commemoration continued on Jan. 23 with a multi-faith celebration in Rollins Chapel, and will also include a Jan. 29 conversation on equity in higher education with Anthony Abraham Jack, inaugural faculty director of the Boston University Newbury Center, in Filene Auditorium.
