On Jan. 22, former Georgia state representative and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams delivered the keynote address for the College’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. celebration. The official theme of this year’s address was “Moral Courage in the Face of Change and Uncertainty.”
The event was hosted by the Division for Institutional Diversity and Equity and co-sponsored by the African and African American studies department, Dartmouth Cancer Center, Dickey Center for International Understanding, Institute for Black Intellectual and Cultural Life, Office of the President, Office of the Provost, Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and Tuck School of Business. Approximately 250 people attended the event in the Hanover Inn ballroom, and more than 100 watched through a live webinar, according to senior vice president and senior diversity officer Shontay Delalue.
Dartmouth’s NAACP chapter president Jared Pugh ’25 centered his opening remarks on formerly incarcerated activist Ronald McKeithen. Before becoming an advocate for prison reform, McKeithen served a 37-year prison sentence for a robbery conviction under Alabama’s Habitual Felony Offender Act — which requires longer sentences each time someone commits a felony, according to Pugh.
“I offer Ron’s story not to invoke pity or even sympathy, but to demonstrate the power of someone who fights for what is right no matter and irrespective of circumstance,” Pugh said during his speech.
In an interview with The Dartmouth after the event, Pugh said he believes that McKeithen’s story was “incredibly and inconceivably empowering.” He added that if someone like McKeithen can face adversity, others can find “moral courage” and do what is right in spite of all the “immorality” around them.
Abrams then opened her address by jokingly calling out to Pugh, who is also from the South, and telling him, “You know better — you don’t upstage the person who’s coming!”
The former Democratic state representative alluded to the Jan. 20 inauguration of President Donald Trump, saying that the recent post-inauguration “flurry of action” has been “chilling” because Americans are “people of active imagination.”
“The flurry of executive orders was about understanding,” Abrams said. “We now know what we face. The question is, ‘What are we going to do about it?’”
Abrams decided to enter politics after the Rodney King decisions in 1992 — when police officers involved in the beating of King, a Black man, were acquitted — and subsequent protests at her alma mater Spelman College, she said.
After going on live television and accusing then-Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson of “not caring about Black people,” Abrams said she was initially reprimanded for her actions by the college. However, Jackson hired her the following semester to work in his Office of Youth Services.
“I could have just decided that I was done — that when you try to confront power, power wins,” Abrams said. “But … I am the progeny of those who never learned to keep their mouths shut.”
Abrams also recognized that Dartmouth — which has an “endowment that can rival small nations” — has given “life and … opportunity” to “folks whose minds can change the future.”
“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 to be as loud as they can about the future that they will stand to inherit,” Abrams said.
After the keynote speech, Abrams participated in a moderated Q&A session with Delalue.
Delalue asked Abrams how her identity “as a Black woman in leadership” influences her approach to “standing firm” in her values in the face of adversity.
Abrams responded to the question with an anecdote of her personal experience of not being publicly endorsed by former allies for the governor race because they were skeptical about a Black woman winning the governor’s race. While Abrams said she will not “hide” who she is when others make assumptions about her based on her identity, she is willing to “forgive” and “have a conversation” about why the assumptions are made.
“If we don’t acknowledge, understand and then help correct, then we are as complicit as anyone else,” Abrams said. “I don’t mind people being disconcerted. What I mind is them using that as an excuse not to learn.”
Student leaders from across campus, including Dartmouth Alliance for Children of Color president and Women of Color Collective vice president Cameron Moore ’25 and Native at Dartmouth executive board co-president Emma Tsosie ’25, were invited to meet Abrams before attending the keynote address, according to Tsosie.
Moore said it was “really inspiring” to listen to Abrams because she offered advice on “navigating conversations” with different types of people.
“I feel like it was just really motivational, and I could apply it to a lot of fears in my life,” Moore said.
Health Sciences Biomedical Library associate dean Stephanie Kerns said she thought Abrams’s speech was “incredible” and “inspirational.”
“It’s the little things that you can do to really make a difference,” Kerns said. “It doesn’t have to be the big, grand gesture necessarily, but sometimes it can be that.”
In an interview with The Dartmouth after the event, Delalue said “representatives from across the institution” make up a Martin Luther King Jr. committee that organizes programming to celebrate King.
According to Delalue, the Abrams keynote address was just one of many Martin Luther King Jr. celebrations on campus this month. Past events included performances by artist Inua Ellams on Jan. 10 and 11 and a multifaith community celebration on Jan. 23.
Delalue said she wants attendees of the event to take away the message that “we all have the ability to lead with moral courage.”
“It was loud and clear to me that moral courage is connected to action and the opposite of moral courage, I believe she said, was ‘moral cowardice,’” Delalue said. “So right there, there’s a choice.”
