President Bordewich, board of trustees, alumni, faculty, staff and everyone who is part of the Guilford College community for this honor, and for so warmly welcoming me.

Above all, congratulations, class of 2026. Congratulations to you, to your families and your friends. Today is a day for celebration, and I’m excited to share it with you – this celebration of all you’ve already accomplished and all that is to come.

Over my years as a teacher, my students have asked me plenty of hard questions. But no question was harder than one posed to me by one young man from the Baltimore School for the Arts.

We’d spent the year studying the early history of our city – Baltimore. In its early years, Baltimore had been the country’s third largest city; it became prosperous through banking, railroads, and commerce through its port. When my students walked Baltimore’s streets, they saw the signs, the remnants, of the glorious past: grand churches, towering monuments, stately homes, and an imposing courthouse. Other parts of Baltimore’s history, they were learning, was hard, hard as in harder to face: in those same glorious years, Baltimore was a slaveholding city where, even for Black people who were free,  racism and discrimination disturbed their lives. Many of my students were descendants of those early Black Baltimoreans.

That student – the one with the hard question -- was finishing up a final project. He had written and was preparing to deliver a speech: He would introduce the school to the story of a little-known figure, a free Black man named George Hackett; Hackett had lived in early Baltimore, during the 1800s before the Civil War.

George was a key to our learning about the city’s hard history: he was someone who spent his entire life fighting against the racism and discrimination imposed on him and other Black people in Baltimore. My student was excited to deliver a speech that would even include George Hackett’s own words.

We were in the middle of a rehearsal when this same student stopped, put down his script, and turned to me. “Professor,” he almost demanded, “Professor, why have you kept this history from us for so long.”

You see, in his research my student had discovered a story that no one had told him before. And it was not easy to understand. In George Hackett’s time, Baltimore had been a tough place to come of age: discrimination was widespread, jobs were scarce, schools and the voting booth were closed to Black residents.

That was hard history.

So why had we kept the story of George and the early history of Baltimore from my student for so long? I knew what he was getting at. Growing up, adults around him had sometimes told my student that “the past is the past.” They had sheltered him from difficult moments in Baltimore’s history. They worried that hard history might frighten, discourage or depress him. It might even make him love his hometown a little less.

I had to take a moment to think that day, “Why had we kept this history from him for so long? Why today do we cover up the hard parts of our past?”

Why do we as your teachers, your parents, your elders sometimes keep the difficult past from you? Why do we shelter you by whitewashing the past? Why do we sometimes think that if you – if you, young people -- know too much about the past – the good but also the bad, the easy but also the hard – why do we think it will harm you, hurt you, keep you from living your best lives? I wondered was I – was I as a teacher – guilty of promoting the notion that when it comes to the hard past, ignorance is bliss?

We paused the rehearsal that day at the Baltimore School for the Arts. And for a few moments, the students became the teachers. I listened. And what I learned was that, rather than being afraid of the past, my students were fascinated by it. Rather than being unsettled by hard history, they felt informed by it.

They didn’t worry that knowing more about the hard past – in the life of George Hackett and in the life of their city – would harm them or keep them from working toward their goals. Understanding the past helped them see how we have gotten here, to the trouble of the present. Nothing about the past would keep them from loving their city and contributing to its best future.

The most important lesson for me was one about finding inspiration. My students explained that when, amidst the history of slavery and racism in Baltimore, they had discovered George Hackett and people like him, and they were inspired. They had discovered heroes.

In a time when many people thought he should be little more than a slave, George was free and he built a family and a church, he served in the Navy and ran his own business. George campaigned for civil rights and when others wronged him, he went to the local courthouse and insisted that the law should protect him, his family, and his property. The history books had nearly forgotten George, but there we were, my students and I, rediscovering his remarkable life story. He inspired them.

That day inspired me too. And today I run a lab called “Hard Histories”, a space in which students and teachers, curators and librarians, public historians and the public, come together to find courage and then face the difficult past. We take our lead from those courageous students at the Baltimore School for the Arts. No more “ignorance was bliss.”

We’ve had enough of fearing or hiding from the past. Our work on hard histories is premised in the belief that young people – students like you  here at Guilford – have been taught, trained, prepared, and equipped with courage, fortitude, and a burning need to know where we’ve come from, and how we got here. We believe only by understanding the past – all of it, including the hard parts -- can we built the futures we aim to make for ourselves and for the world.

You will encounter those who will encourage you to fear the past: those who want to be sure that hard history is forgotten, suppressed, even whitewashed. In some places, this is happening in your names. You will hear that you – the nation’s young people, including the bright and educated among you – you will hear that you cannot take it, the difficult past. You will hear that it will harm you, wound you, undermine your ability to be great.

Today, my charge to you, class of 2026 is to take what you’ve learned here, what you’ve gained, take the courageous thinkers you are out into the world. And, when you come upon a monument or a historic site, when a next work assignment requires that you explain the past, when you visit a museum or a library, when you discover that history has been taken down, changed, erased, whitewashed, ask yourself – do you need protecting, to you need to be fearful? Remember that your time here at Guilford has taught you that you have the insight, the critical thinking skills, and even the courage to know and to understand even the very hard past.

I recently visited one of these place: a nation parks site that for the last 15 years had told a hard history: that of an American president who was also a slave holder. This gives us all a lot to think about, especially here in 2026 as we celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday. But I knew that each year, one million American visit this site — each in their own way mobilizing their courage and their critical thinking. But what I discovered is that park officials had ripped down all the site’s interpretive signs, disappeared all the text that helped guide visitors, erased all the history that went along with the place.

And I thought of you. I had heard you asking me, asking all of us “Why are you keeping this history from us?” What I saw discouraged me. I maddened me. It frustrated me. But thinking of you gave me hope. Keep asking those hard questions Class of 2026. History and this country that holds so much of our share past, needs you, your courage and your willingness to ask the hard questions, your willingness to face the hard past, and your commitment to making for all of us a better future.