Robert F. Smith’s Monumental Gift to Morehouse Class of 2019

When you gave the commencement speech at Morehouse, and then you turned around and paid off the entire student debt of the class of 2009. Who do that? It's a thought process. You didn't go down there and go, let me see some paperwork. You just said, I'm gonna pay. You know I have to check with everybody in here. I gotta see how much you got by the time I add it up. I get, I cover my four. I get my four ya'll. I need to know it's debts and I got you, come on. That would have been, you paid off the entire, what were you thinking, man? Well, I mean, the whole thing, I mean, you know, Steve's a beautiful man who gives tremendous amounts back, as you know, to our community. And so he jokes about that, but we have a responsibility to liberate as many of our people as we can. I will tell you that debt liberation is one thing. The knowledge liberation, frankly, will reverberate much more than that. Look, I've liberated 400 eagles, right, who now have the capacity to think a little more freely about how they can contribute to our society, our black community, okay? And you all now in this room, we got 20,000 people or so here. You have a chance, through the knowledge that you learn and you gain in the relationships, to liberate multiples of that, multiples of that. But it's one thing to say, man, if I just had that shot at capital, I'd be great. But it's the knowledge that is actually more important if you learn how to use a capitalist system to enable you and your family to excel. That's the important part. What we have to do, look, and I'm gonna say the Morehouse class, you've done a couple calls. We do a call the last Thursday of every month, and we get between 60 and 80 of the young men on. And Steve's been on a couple of times. We have different leaders to share in life, and thank you for that. Actually, I think yours and Roz's have been the highest rated. My mom was the highest rated. Yeah, okay. They love Roz. But I think what a big part of that is the knowledge that they gain enables them to think about how they can create more wealth and more capacity and more impact. And we've got to continue to convene in these sort of formats to do that. That's the one thing that other communities in the United States are ahead of us on. And so that's why I was so pleased with these young brothers pulling this together three years ago. And now to see the energy here, because this is the knowledge that actually matters in this economy. Because you all will go out and learn some things that will change not only your lives, but the next two or three generations of your family's lives. That's how we're gonna make up this wealth gap. That's how we're gonna create the opportunity gap. And that's how we're gonna make our communities, frankly, more self-sustainable.