COLLEGE PARK -- Civil rights leader Dorothy Irene Height told midyear graduates of the University of Maryland yesterday that she knew they didn't "need another assignment."
But the 90-year-old commencement speaker gave them one anyway -- to fight racial discrimination as they leave their college days behind.
"We have a special obligation ... to do a great deal of influential work in our democracy," she said at the first graduation ceremony to be held in the new Comcast Center on the College Park campus.
More than 3,700 graduates received their diplomas over the weekend during ceremonies held by their individual schools and departments. But several hundred, many with their families, came to the campuswide commencement ceremony to hear Height, the keynote speaker.
Height, the chairwoman and president emerita of the National Council of Negro Women, an umbrella organization whose members include more than 250 community-based groups and 38 national affiliates, has been a civil rights activist for most of her life and was active during the civil rights movement of the 1960s with leaders including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
"She has been a beacon for others attacking social problems of our time," said C.D. "Dan" Mote Jr., the university president.
Height, who received an honorary degree in public service from the university yesterday, said she fears that the current generation and especially African-Americans are forgetting the struggles of earlier generations.
"We have gone through doors that have been opened and we don't remember how they were opened," she said.
Height also said that she believes that Americans are not giving enough attention to racial matters. During the heyday of the civil rights movement, she said, "there was a feeling in the country that we were one people. ... The spirit of the March on Washington is not there [today]."
Height pointed to cutbacks in affirmative action as particularly worrisome.
She asked the graduates to keep working to use their college education to fight racism and help people who did not go to college. "There is something we can give back" to people who did not receive diplomas, she said.
Many graduates agreed with Height's message.
"It was very inspiring," said Keisha Sylvester, a 22-year-old from Riverdale Park who graduated with a degree in engineering. "It reminded me that we've come a long way, but we still have a long way to go."