The motivational impact of Dr.Martin Luther King Jr. and Tupac Shakur were brought to life again, as SouthernUniversity students compared the controversial civil rights and hip-hop era.
Members of the SouthernUniversity history club, along with the Student Government Association held aforum on Feb. 10 in Moore Hall auditorium to discuss the direction in which themodern generation is heading.
“The past affects us in everydaylife,” said Andrea Payton, president of the history club.
“If it wasn’t for generationsbefore us, opportunities would not be as great.”
The forum focused on taking alook at the importance of both civil rights and hip-hop while examining thedifferences between the two.
“The hip-hop generation is onethat tends to minimize or forget the previous generation,” said Arthur Tolson,professor of history.
“That generation involved selfrespect and made a tremendous contribution to where we are now.”
Students and faculty alike felt that as a result of nothaving a common goal, the modern generation has lost their fight andultimately, lost their identity.
“The hip-hop generation doesn’ttake advantage of everything we have,” Payton said. “We take it all forgranted, and that’s why we lack so much now.”
Students voiced their opinionson how they felt the wrong things tend to keep the younger generation motivatedand how a lot of young people choose not to think for themselves anymore.
“You’ll rarely hear Common orMos Def on the radio, because they talk about things you don’t hear inmainstream songs,” said Antoine Mitchell, a student at Southern.
“The mass majority of ourgeneration listens to the radio, which is our teacher. We listen to what’s hot,when we really should pick up a book.”
A large part of the forum wasbased on the contrast of two influential people from both eras, Dr. MartinLuther King Jr. and rapper Tupac Shakur.
Eva Baham, assistant professorof history, said that even though both men came from different angles, theywere motivated by the same things.
Both men saw the social problemsof the country they lived in and found different ways to speak out about it.While Shakur could reach people through poetry and verse, King could get throughin letters and speeches.
“Most people only know the lastfew lines of the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech,” Baham said. “What a lot of peopledon’t know is, the rest of the speech is a critique of economic injustice.”
Baham also spoke in reference toSkakur.
”When he was little and would get in trouble, his mom wouldmake him read the New York Times from cover to cover as punishment.”
Baham noted that she believesmany of us listen to Tupac’s music, but most of us are missing his message andthe fact that he got through to us is because he understood human nature.
To Baham, both men were artistsin their own respect and they both felt life “one beat at a time.”
The main idea of the forumconcerned the hip-hop generation’s needed to unite for the problem of racism tobe closer to extinction and the gap between the two eras to be closed.
“Until we come together, therewill always be a conflict between the time of civil rights and now,” saidCreighton Montgomery, a former marine and a student at Southern.
The forum was the first of threeblack history month informational forums. Notable women in public service willbe honored Wednesday Feb. 15, at 11 a.m. in the Smith-Brown Memorial Union.Omar Tyree will speak Wednesday Feb. 16, in the Smith-Brown Memorial Union at11 a.m.
