Tougaloo College eaglets get a flying lesson from alumnus Tray Hairston, Esq.
Editor’s Note: Tougaloo College opened the 2025–2026 academic year with its annual Presidential Convocation, a time-honored tradition that brings together students, faculty, alumni, and supporters in celebration of scholarship, legacy, and new beginnings. The community gathered for the Light of Learning Ceremony (August 27, 2025), where first-year students were formally welcomed into the academic family and recognized for their commitment to excellence. The guest speaker was Jackson attorney and Tougaloo alum, Tray Hairston. Because of the significance of his remarks, especially in these times, the Jackson Advocate presents his speech in its entirety. It is entitled: “Celebrating Our History: Anchored in Excellence, Rooted in Social Justice, and Poised for the Future”.
To President Lee, to the trustees, faculty and staff, alumni, friends of the college, my beautiful wife, my children, my parents, my sister (who’s also a Tougaloo Alum) – and above all, the scholars of Tougaloo College: good morning.
My mother – she was a schoolteacher for 28 and a half years working with special needs children at both the Jackson Public School District and the Madison County School District. My father – he was a letter carrier for the United States Post Office for over 32 years.
My mother grew up in Scott County in Forest, Mississippi, and my father – he was born in Crawford in Lowndes County. As a child, I spent the bulk of the summer in Scott County on the farm where my grandfather, my uncles and my cousin and I would take care of the cows, bush hog the pasture, go to the sale barn, fix fence and ride horses late into the evening.
I spent almost every 4th of July in Columbus, Mississippi, with my dad. My grandfather Felix Hairston was born on the 4th of July. And although he passed away in 1986, all my uncles, aunts and cousins would still gather on Grandpa Felix’s birthday.
I went through a little bit of my family history because I think it’s important that you get to know me. And it’s my heartfelt desire to one day get to know each one of you.
Mark Twain said the two most important days of your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why!
Each of you sitting here today has clearly covered the first part of Twain’s equation. You were born. And by being here at Tougaloo College you are writing a chapter in a story that gets you to the second part of the equation and that is discovering your why.
It is an honor to stand here on this campus where sixty-four years ago, nine Tougaloo College students carried books, courage, and the United States Constitution into the then all-white Jackson Public Library. Those nine students sat down, and they began to read. And for that insistence on belonging, they were arrested. And for that cry for dignity, history now calls them the Tougaloo Nine. Their “read-in” in 1961 helped open doors that they were told would stay shut forever. And today, we walk through those doors because they refused to turn back.
One month ago (almost to the day), I stood before a packed room at the Mississippi Museum of Art at a conference called All In On Mississippi. AndI introduced a panel discussion on a topic that I believe is one of Mississippi’s most challenging and persistent economic development problems. That issue is Brain Drain. I said that the Brain Drain Problem is not just about young people leaving the state of Mississippi for better jobs or higher salaries. It’s also about not being seen, not being valued, not being given the opportunities to lead in the places we’ve called home our entire lives.
I talked about my experience as a lawyer. I talked about my experience serving as counsel and economic development policy advisor in the Governor’s Office. And I talked about holding a national certification in economic development and sitting for a two-day examination that rivaled the bar exam. I also talked about my own personal battles throughout my career fighting to be given the same chances as others who didn’t walk the same path that I did; who didn’t grow up where I did. And most importantly, I talked about those experiences juxtaposed to being given the same chances as others who may not look like me.
I talked about the fact that there were moments, more than I care to admit, when I thought about leaving. About taking my experience, my energy and my commitment somewhere else besides Mississippi. Somewhere that might feel easier. But I stayed.
I stayed because I believe Mississippi can be more than her history. I stayed because of the Tougaloo 9. I stayed because of professors like Dr. Jerry Ward and Richard “Dick” Johnson. I stayed because of alums like the Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, our Congressman from the 2nd Congressional District, and Justice Reuben Anderson, the first Black man to sit on the Mississippi Supreme Court. I stayed because Derrick Johnson, the President of the NAACP, stayed. I stayed because of mentors like U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate, who was the first Black federal judge in Mississippi and the jurist who had the courage to strike down in a ruling just last week House Bill 1193 which would have outlawed our strides towards diversity. I stayed because of the bravery of U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves in his 2015 speech at the sentencing of three white men who killed 48-year-old James Craig Anderson in a parking lot in Jackson, Mississippi, in 2011. I stayed because I want the next Black lawyer, or engineer or educator from Jackson or Greenville or Clarksdale to know that you can stay – right here in Mississippi; a state that I love.…and rise too.
But you know……the most important thing I said at the art museum that day in a room that included Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase; Mayor John Horhn, the newly elected mayor of the City of Jackson; billionaire and potential Gubernatorial candidate Tommy Duff; and Andy Lack, the founder of the nonprofit digital newsroom, Mississippi Today. I said that we have to be honest with ourselves: staying only works if we’re willing to change the systems that push people out in the first place. We don’t lose talent because we lack it. We lose it because we don’t recognize it. But my faith tells me that Mississippi is on its way to being a major competitor not only in the U.S. economy but in the global economy as well. And I firmly believe Tougaloo will be a part of that story.
To me, Tougaloo has never been merely a place where students take classes; it is a place where Mississippi and America come to be made better. From the quiet discipline of research that goes on in Kincheloe Hall to the moral noise of movements for justice in sacred places like Woodworth Chapel, this college has proven – again and again – that academic excellence and social responsibility are not competing priorities; they are the twin engines of progress. Your professors stretch the boundaries of knowledge. Your alumni draft laws, lead courthouses, run companies, heal patients, organize communities, and make art that changes how we see one another. The state of Mississippi is more competitive, more just, and more hopeful because Tougaloo exists, and our country is stronger because Tougaloo insists.
And this work is not abstract. That work is you. That work is your why! You are the scholars who will write the next chapter of this college’s story. Your curiosity in the classroom, your discipline in Kincheloe Hall, your empathy in Berkshire Cottage, your leadership in student government, all of it adds to Tougaloo’ s character and its credibility. You don’t just study the mission; you are the mission.
I want to take a point of personal privilege and talk to you about what it means to be a scholar at Tougaloo not only in the early 2000s but in this moment as well.
I came to Tougaloo College as a freshman in 1997. And as a freshman, my experience – wasn’t – unlike – many of my peers i.e., before declaring a major, we would take the core classes required of all new students like Mission Involvement which obligated freshmen to attend chapel every Wednesday. And we also had to take certain electives. During my freshman year, I happened upon an elective that piqued my interest in a profound way. That class was the Introduction to Philosophy.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit; I didn’t have a great appreciation or understanding of the term philosophy as an 18-year-old. In fact, I probably enrolled in that class because I thought it might be an easy “A”. Oh, but it wasn’t, nor was the professor who taught it – Dean Richard “Dick” Johnson. Through that course, Dean Johnson introduced me to John Rawls, Bertrand Russell, René Descarte, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Jean Paul Sartre and it forever shaped the way I viewed and approached the world and my life inside it.
After my freshmen year, I declared a double major in English and ICOHM with an Emphasis in Philosophy. ICOHM, a major that Dick helped to create at Tougaloo College, stands for Interdisciplinary, Career-Oriented, Humanities Major, and it’s the very major that some of the brightest minds from this college chose to declare. I’ve probably had over 60 teachers in my lifetime, but I can count on one hand the teachers who changed my life from grade school like Donna Loden to law school like Angela Kupenda. And it was because of Tougaloo professors like Dick Johnson and Jerry Ward that I submitted my application to be a United Negro College Fund Andrew W. Mellon Fellow. And as a Mellon Fellow, I studied with some of the best and brightest HBCU students in the country, gaining exposure to a network of talented scholars throughout the academy, attending an intensive summer long ideas camp at the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference where 25 rising juniors spent six weeks in the summer of 1999 in Atlanta, Georgia, on the campus of Emory University.
Because of Professor Johnson and Dr. Ward, I attended Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, in the Fall of 1999, and New York University in New York City in Spring 2000 on a yearlong exchange program.
So, what does it mean to be a scholar at Tougaloo College? It means you are called to the hard, joyful work of open debate and discourse in pursuit of truth. The pursuit of knowledge demands that we test ideas, not cancel people; that we disagree without disdain; that we prize evidence over echo; that we steelman the argument instead of straw manning it.
So here is my ask of you for the year ahead:
Seek first to understand. Ask the extra question that reveals what your classmate really means.
Bring your full story. Let your experiences – where you’re from, what you’ve overcome, what you believe – inform the conversation.
Be brave enough to change your mind when the facts or a better argument require it.
Be generous enough to let someone else change theirs without humiliation.
And most importantly, find a mentor. A big sister. Or a big brother. One like my big brother Jabari Edwards who is one of the strongest people I know. He is someone who faced perhaps the greatest adversity of his life but he did it with a smile on his face and an unwavering spine.
When we do that – when we model rigorous inquiry and compassionate respect, we strengthen the academy and ultimately, we strengthen our democracy.
Seventeen years ago, then-Senator Barack Obama gave a speech in Philadelphia called “A More Perfect Union.” He began with the Constitution’s opening promise and then faced, head-on, the discomfort of that moment – how to respond to painful words from his pastor without pretending that race in America could be wished away. He refused a false choice. He would not disown a man who had walked with him, any more than he would disown his own family or the communities that had formed his life. He insisted that people are complicated, that love and loyalty can coexist with honest critique, and that our union, though imperfect, can be perfected by truth-telling which is work that can be a blueprint for leadership as well as campus life. Examples of that include the work of Mississippi Today and the stories that they publish and the courage of the reporters who speak truth sometimes in the face of great retribution.
We need that same honest complexity today. We live in a time when the very language of diversity, equity, and inclusion is contested. Some hear those words and think of fairness overdue; others hear them and fear exclusion by a new name. Here at Tougaloo, let us resist the talking heads. Let us do the slower, braver work of seeing one another whole, acknowledging real harms and real fears, refusing to flatten anyone into a single story, and refusing to settle for a country where a child’s life chances are predicted by zip code or skin color. That is the honest work of building a more perfect Tougaloo and, yes, a more perfect union.
And if you need proof that this discipline of truth and courage bears fruit, look to the people who sat where you sit now.
Look to Congressman Bennie G. Thompson, a son of Tougaloo who has represented Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District since 1993 and become one of the nation’s most respected voices for security, voting rights, and accountability. He didn’t just make it to Washington; he took Tougaloo with him.
Look to the Honorable Reuben V. Anderson –Tougaloo graduate, trailblazer, and the first Black justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court. When Justice Anderson ascended to that bench in 1985, he altered what young Mississippians could imagine for themselves. And he still does, given that I witnessed him in action firsthand when he helped to inaugurate Mayor John Horhn in front of a diverse audience on a diverse stage – both racially and politically.
Look to Attorney Constance Slaughter-Harvey – Tougaloo alumna, the first Black woman to earn a law degree from the University of Mississippi, and later the first Black female judge in our state. She turned “firsts” into “futures,” mentoring generation after generation to step through doors and hold them open.
Look to Derrick Johnson – Tougaloo graduate and the president and CEO of the NAACP – who reminds America that advocacy anchored in community can still bend policy toward possibility. Look to his work around economic development and the recently launched $200M venture capital fund called NAACP Capital that will invest in fund managers and startups focused on closing gaps in disadvantaged communities.
These leaders did not agree on everything. They didn’t have to. What they shared was a Tougaloo-forged conviction that truth and service belong together – and that Mississippi deserves the very best of their minds and their hearts.
The Tougaloo Nine teach us that scholarship without courage is incomplete. Congressman Thompson, Justice Anderson, Judge Slaughter-Harvey, and President Johnson teach us that courage without preparation is reckless. You need both: the rigor to know and the backbone to act.
So, whether you are studying biology or history, economics or education, whether you’re training to be an artist who unsettles us in the best ways or a mathematician who solves problems we haven’t named yet; do it excellently, do it ethically, and do it for more than yourself. Let your degree be a promise to Mississippi that you will use your talent to lift as you climb.
I also want to speak a word of hope not only for Tougaloo, but for Jackson as well as my beloved Mississippi, and the fragility of democracy in this country that I love.
For Tougaloo: your partnerships, your faculty talent, your alumni network, and most importantly your students – your students position this college to lead in the sciences, in the humanities, in public health, in entrepreneurship, in teacher training and technology. The next breakthrough can be born right here on this campus. A campus whose property lines run through Hinds County, Madison County, the City of Jackson, and the City of Ridgeland. Tougaloo is intricately nestled between I-55 with property lines crossing over I-220 buttressing one of the fastest growing corridors in America: Highland Colony Parkway. I believe Tougaloo’s economic future is tied to creating direct access to I-220 and Highland Colony Parkway building a mixed-used development with housing, research, retail, healthcare and education on its bustling 500 acres.
For the City of Jackson: we have challenges we know by name – water, infrastructure, safety, and trust. But I believe in this capital city. I believe in its leadership. I believe in its creativity and grit, in its churches and its civic groups, its small businesses and startups, its classrooms and its kitchens. I believe Jackson can become a national model of how investment, innovation, and inclusion reinforce each other when we decide, together, to make them do so.
For the State of Mississippi: we will not be defined by our worst moments. We will be defined by our resolve to write better ones – by how we fund great schools, how we grow good jobs, how we keep talent at home, how we welcome new families, how we protect voting rights and expand economic opportunity. Mississippi has always produced extraordinary people. It is time to make our systems as extraordinary as our people.
And for America: I remain stubbornly optimistic. We are messy and magnificent, all at the same time. We argue, we stumble, we correct, we try again. But the promise that drew the Tougaloo Nine to a reading table and drew generations to polling places and classrooms is still alive. And we are not finished, and we will not fail. The work continues, and those workers are in this very room.
So, students, let me leave you with a simple charge drawn from this college’s living history:
Read courageously. Seek out ideas that stretch you and stories that humble you.
Build bridges. Find the classmate you disagree with and build something useful together anyway.
Serve somebody. Put your education to work for neighbors who may never learn your name.
And when your moment comes as it did for nine students in 1961, step forward.
One day soon, I may be called to serve Mississippi in new ways. And if that day comes, if the people of this state ask it of me – I want to be ready and worthy. But public titles are not the point. Service is. Whether you lead a classroom or a clinic, a courtroom or a company, a nonprofit or a neighborhood, carry yourselves as if Mississippi’s future depends on you, because it does.
Thank you, Tougaloo College, for the gift of this place, this mission, and this moment. May God bless you. May God bless Jackson. May God bless the great state of Mississippi. And may God bless the United States of America.
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At the conclusion of his address, Atty. Hairston conducted a call and response with students to reiterate the significance of where they presently stand in history: I AM – A TOUGALOO COLLEGE STUDENT! I AM – A TOUGALOO COLLEGE STUDENT! AM – A TOUGALOO COLLEGE STUDENT!
