President Joe Biden on Sunday told Morehouse College graduates that he had heard their voices of protest over the war between Israel and Hamas and that scenes of conflict in the Gaza Strip were heartbreaking.
“I support peaceful, nonviolent protest,” he told the students, some of whom wore keffiyeh scarves over their shoulders over their black graduation robes. “Your voices need to be heard, and I promise you that I hear them.”
The president told the crowd there was a “humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which is why I called for an immediate ceasefire to stop the fighting” and bring home hostages captured during the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Toward the end of his speech, which also spoke about American democracy and his role in defending it, was the most direct acknowledgment to American students of the campus protests sweeping the country.
Morehouse’s announcement that Biden will be the commencement speaker. has sparked some backlash among school faculty and supporters who oppose Biden’s handling of the war. Some Morehouse alumni circulated a letter online condemning school officials for inviting Biden and collecting signatures to pressure Morehouse President David Thomas to cancel it.
The letter argued that Biden’s approach to Israel amounts to support for genocide in Gaza and runs counter to the pacifism expressed by Martin Luther King Jr., Morehouse’s most famous alumnus.
Hamas attacks in southern Israel kill 1,200 people. The Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials.
Some graduates showed support for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by tying keffiyeh scarves around their shoulders over their black graduation robes. One student draped himself in a Palestinian flag. On the stage behind the president, scientists unfurled the flag of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The country is mired in an ongoing civil war that has plunged the country into violence and displaced millions of people. Many racial justice advocates have called for greater attention in the U.S. to the conflict and for American help to stop the violence.
“Thank God for this ‘woke’ class of 2024 that is in keeping with the spirit of the times, the spirit of the times,” the Rev. Claybon Lee Jr. said during a prayer at the start of class.
Valedictorian DeAngelo Jeremiah Fletcher said at the end of his speech that it was his responsibility to speak about the war in Gaza and that it was important to acknowledge that both Palestinians and Israelis had suffered.
“From the comfort of their homes, we are watching as unprecedented numbers of civilians mourn the loss of men, women and children,” he said, calling for the release of all hostages. “My position as a Morehouse man, no, as a man, is to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.”
Biden stood and shook his hand after Fletcher finished.
The speech, as well as a separate speech Biden gave later Sunday in the Midwest, are part of a surge in outreach to black voters by the president, who has watched his support among those voters erode as their strong support helped propel him into the Oval Office. in 2020.
After speaking at Morehouse in Atlanta, Biden will travel to Detroit to speak at the NAACP dinner.
Georgia and Michigan are among a handful of states that will help decide the expected November rematch between Biden and former Republican President Donald Trump. Biden narrowly won Georgia and Michigan in 2020 and needs to repeat, helped by high turnout among Black voters in both cities.
Biden spent the end of last week appealing to black voters. He met with the plaintiffs and relatives of the participants in the case. Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision that outlawed racial segregation in public schools. He also met with members of the “Divine Nine” black fraternities and sororities and spoke with members of the “Little Rock Nine” who helped integrate the public school in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957.
In Detroit, Biden was scheduled to visit black-owned small businesses before delivering the keynote speech at the NAACP Freedom Fund dinner, which traditionally draws thousands of visitors. The speech gives Biden a chance to address thousands of people in Wayne County, an area that has historically voted overwhelmingly Democratic but has shown signs of opposition to his re-election bid.
Wayne County also has one of the largest Arab American populations in the country, predominantly in city of Dearborn. The leaders there were in the vanguard “work-in-progress” effort that received over 100,000 votes in the state’s Democratic primary and spread across the country.
A protest rally and march against Biden’s visit is planned for Sunday afternoon in Dearborn. Another protest rally is expected later that evening near Huntington Place, the site of the dinner.