Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006 - (Page 13)

I t’s good to be home. It’s especially good to be home in a time of crisis because tough times force us to return to fundamentals. And there is nothing more fundamental than home. Many of you are visitors to New Orleans, but it won’t take four years for the Crescent City to be forever in your blood. So I feel in a way, that we are all home tonight. city in times of unbelievable political callousness and corruption. Even in these times there are still neighbors that will turn their backs on neighbors. Yes, this is Louisiana, and we are home tonight. Through a tireless single-minded campaign to expose lies and sanctioned injustice, Dr. King never lost faith in the ability of humans to behave better. He didn’t settle. He succeeded. Certainly his single-mindedness is what is required of us, at this time, to rebuild New Orleans. Don’t settle. Succeed. Catchy slogans aside, when we look around here, we see destruction, anguish, and uncertainty. Let’s look deeper into ourselves and find possibility. That’s why it’s important to mark the reopening of New Orleans with the triumphant return of Tulane, Xavier, Loyola and Dillard I also feel a special honor in speaking to Universities. Through first-class education, a generation marches you on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Day because it down the long uncertain road of the future with confidence. After all was Dr. King’s tireless activism that fostered is said and done, education’s purpose is to lead students to who our modern way of relating to one another. Yes, they are, what they can be, and who they want to be. The best way we are here tonight empowered with the feeling to be, is to do. And when we pass on the best of what we do, that that if we want to we can speak truthfully to one is quality education. another. We can work together. We can rely on one If we’re lucky, we only have a good 80 years or so on this another because Dr. King’s actions made his dream earth, and through education, those 80 are extended through our reality, and this rebuilding of New Orleans gives us the perfect opportunity to see if we’re ready to extend the legacy of Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement. Look around this room and realize that the final chapter of that movement still waits for a generation with the courage to write it. That’s why I say we are all home tonight. We are all home because Dr. King led the charge to victory over regressive, ignorant traditions that had long gone unchallenged because he was unwavering in presenting compelling arguments to make real the promises of the Constitution because he never succumbed to hopelessness and showed us what one citizen can achieve when armed with an evangelical zeal for freedom and a first-class education. It is most fitting to re-open our city’s finest institutions of higher education on the day we celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Though he is almost always reduced to a dreamer today, Dr. King was an achiever, a most powerful the generations that follow. Look around: exemplar of action. His last book is entitled Where Do We Go From Here: Paul Tulane put his life into this campus Chaos or Community? It is a question that is most appropriate for us in over 120 years ago. It’s still here — invitthis moment. ing us tonight. I spent many a night as a Dr. King worked in the shadow of slavery and discrimination. We are high school student in the Tulane in the shadow of the worst natural disaster to ever befall America. What Library. It’s here for us now, and will better way to celebrate him than by rising to a challenge? be here for young people looking for His challenge was to reverse 80 years of legalized apartheid — a veritable knowledge to define themselves and way of life in our land of freedom. Our challenge is merely to rebuild a great Winter 2005-06/LOUISIANA CULTURAL VISTAS 13

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005 Contents Letters Editor’s Column Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Louisiana State Museum After Katrina: “It’s time somebody woke us us up.” Missing New Orleans On Perilous Ground The Buildings of Louisiana (Architectural History by Karen Kingsley) Historic New Orleans Collection Louisiana Association of Museums Back to New Orleans Diary of a Displaced Person Jazz Notes (Music History by Bruce Raeburn) Cradle of the Stars The Terrible and the Brave Bookstand (Book Review by Thomas Uskali) Sound Advice (Music Review by Ben Sandmel) Forum (Commentary by James Lee Burke)

Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Winter 2005-2006

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