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Fuller’s message

Posted on April 16, 2009 by Staff

Howard Fuller returned to Chapel Hill last week to speak as part of the university’s Poverty Awareness Week. Fuller was a key player in civil rights struggles in this area beginning as a student volunteer for the North Carolina Fund, which was set up to address poverty and its effects in the state. He later served as an organizer for the Congress on Racial Equality and helped organize the Lenoir dining hall workers strike in 1969.

Today, Fuller is the director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University and is a forceful proponent of efforts to reform education.

Whether he’s talking on that subject, reflecting on the past or looking at the challenges facing the country today, his message is consistent. In his speech to faculty and students at Hanes Arts Center, he showed a little of the fire that inspired so many others in this community.

“I hope that we have a generation of fighters in this room,” he said. “Let’s fight for those things that are needed to create a just America.”

Fuller said he felt a little sorry for President Obama because of all the pressure for change placed on his shoulders, but said the president needs to feel pressure from those advocating for social justice because he is surely feeling a pull from the other side.

He encouraged people to follow the path of conviction and not to be afraid to be vocal and relentless in their pursuit of a more just America.
Saying that we can’t enjoy the rain “without the thunder and lightening,” Fuller concluded, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”

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