Photo caption: JOHN FOUNTAIN SHAKES hands during commencement with a member of the Class of 2023 at Providence St. Mel.
“When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him. Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more.” Genesis 37:4-5
Dear PSM Class of 2023: Haters gon’ hate — Let it shine.
Good afternoon… My message to you this afternoon can be summed up as three thoughts: Remember the Dream; Guard the Dream; Let it Shine.
Although we are only nearly halfway into the year, let me declare this afternoon that this is already a year to remember. A year when we have finally emerged—from the storm called COVID that claimed more than one million American lives, and that touched us all in some way by its infliction of death, loss and devastation.
But in the year of our Lord 2023, we have finally reemerged to a sense of normalcy. To a time when mass mask wearing, Distance learning and Zoom & Microsoft Teams sessions, cancellations, postponements, and necessary improvisations became indispensable and integral to education and learning for at least two years. They are no longer required.
Class of 2023, you have emerged victorious. Gloriously shining, like the glint off polished chrome, reflecting golden sunlight. Basking in the glow of hard work, academic excellence and achievement. As irrefutable proof that educating all of America’s children regardless of race or socioeconomic class isn’t rocket science. Is not the impossible dream.
As tangible fruit of the Dream called “Providence” here on the great West Side of Chicago. As evidence—45 years since some may have written her final epitaph—that “the Little School that Could” is still staying alive and well.
And in the deeply spiritual and meaningful words of that great modern philosopher—DJ Khaled:
It breaks my heart
They ain’t believe in us
They played themselves While you hatin’ and being jealous You could be over here embracin’ that love More love, more blessings, more life God did You either win with us, or you watch us win”
God did. I said, ‘God did.’
For at Providence-St. Mel, we believe that “with God’s help, we will either find a way or make one.”
Amen?
I am deeply honored, and also humbled, to stand here as your commencement speaker. For Chicago’s—Wesssst Siiiide—is where I grew up. Only a few minutes from here. In a place called K-Town that’s still gritty and tough.
The year was 1968… Times were stark. I stood at age 7, a little Black boy in the dark…
Angry red flames licked the pale night sky. That was the day I saw a part of my “Community” die. Embers and charred brick. Giant green soldiers with shooting sticks atop Army Jeeps. By the golden sunlight of morning, rolling down singed West Side streets. Past the smog of smoldering ash. Past dreams deferred. Past…
Past the last glimmers of hope that clung to life support. Barely ringing. Beeping. Life seeping… As the seeds of future generations lay unplanted, naked. The death of dreams stinging. Forsaken. Ask for whom the bell tolled. It was for me. It was for us. In the dark…
But Providence…
A great light shined in the darkness… Providence.
When light comes, it rises like a soft lingering melody. Sings honey-sweet, like angels on a morning wind. Brings hope again. Whispers in rhapsodies sublime. Of remedies divine. Of the restoration of harmonies over time. By human hand—when we work, plan, build & dream, in that order. When light comes…
And this is the beauty of Education. It changes us from the inside out. And that light—Class of 2023—now brightly beams from your faces. For you have earned the right to dream.
Indeed, my soon-to-be fellow Alumni, Providence St. Mel is the light that radiates from this West Side brick Castle. And her light now shines upon you, in you, and through you even as you stand this afternoon with one foot at the end of one journey and the other foot firmly at the beginning of another. You have become that light. But let me inform you, in case you didn’t know: You are also The Dream.
Remember The Dream
I say to you: Remember The Dream…
There once was a dream called Providence. Once, it was barely a whisper. Only a hope.
Providence—“the protective care of God or of nature as a spiritual power.” Providence.
A seedling, it took root in a community. And the winds of opposition and the rains of criticism, of hardship and the doubters arose like a violent and relentless storm. And yet, the dream that was once Providence here, on the long forgotten-and-abandoned isle called the West Side, where society wrote us off—as the “Permanent Underclass,” the “American Millstone,” the “Truly Disadvantaged”—that dream has survived and thrived.
And it has risen to become a grand oak of an educational institution that continues to defy the odds and naysayers. An emerald example of scholastic excellence.
And this is the great Civil Rights fight, the pathway to social uplift. The great equalizer, our hope as a people, our posterity: our children.
You, Class of 2023, are the light, the hope, and the dream in the grand galaxy of scholastic stars formed and shaped here in this space called Providence.
But I would be remiss if I did not tell you that with great privilege and power comes great responsibility. To that end, it is my duty then to charge you, class of 2023, with being Guardians of the Galaxy, guardians of this our great dream to Guard the Dream. To remember it. To hold it dear in the deep recesses of your soul. To keep it inside your hearts and minds. To protect it. To never forget.
For as they say in Game of Thrones: “Winter is Coming”—forces and foes, philosophies, thoughts, musings and theories—amid a rising negative ungrateful, unthankful generation that thinks it knows better. That unduly criticizes, condemns, and disrespects that which is good and righteous, pure, tried and true and built upon love. They are those who would destroy this dream
by their arrogant tinkering and self-serving undoing.
None of these, however, is more dangerous than the slow siphoning from our memory of our own history that can cause us to forget from whence we came. Or those great ancestors who led us here by their sacred dream, faith and self-sacrifice. Of lessons learned along the way of life;
Of how and why the Providence Road for educating Black children was paved this way. Class of 2023, you must be—we must all be—Guardians of The Dream.
Reflections of A Great History
I was told when asked to speak this year not to make this commencement address about the school’s founder, Paul J. Adams III. But the more I thought about it, the more it became clear to me that to not do so would be like trying to speak about the glories of the paintings that adorn the breathtaking ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City without mentioning Michelangelo.
For to absorb the beauty and awe of its 12,000-square-feet of painted masterpiece splendor inevitably summons a desire to know the artist whose labor, love, genius and sacrifice brought it into existence.
Well, I’ve been a lot of places, but I have never visited the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City.
But I have borne witness to the masterpiece at Providence in Chi City. I have witnessed up close the glorious portraits of a master painter that not even a 12,000-square-foot ceiling could contain.
It is a living masterpiece, of flesh, blood, heart and soul and educated young minds, born of the dreams of a little Black boy named Paul. A little Black boy birthed in the Deep South during Jim Crow. A Black boy bred in the segregated red-clay dirt of Montgomery, Alabama, where a memorial to countless lynchings of African Americans now stands.
I have witnessed this dream of that boy born to Patsy Lois and Paul Adams Jr. on September 14, 1940. His mother, an elementary school teacher and principal, was his guiding hand.
A dream born of a boy shaped by the haunting news at age 14, on that sweltering August 28, 1955, that rang across the South and shocked a nation: That the mutilated body of another 14-year-old boy from Chicago—Emmett Till—had been pulled from the Tallahatchie River in Money, Mississippi.
It is a dream shaped by memories, of walking home with nerves and sweat running down his hand, that day, thinking “that could have been me.”
That same year, that boy named Paul met a man named King. Joined the fight to make Freedom Ring. Joined the Montgomery Bus Boycott sparked by Rosa Parks. Marched against segregated lunch counters, across Edmund Pettus Bridge, and eventually all the way to Garfield Park, where Paul, the man, began to paint like Michelangelo, birthing a school not for the elite, but for children of the Ghetto.
That is the dream. Founded on the principle that all children are gifted. That if you raise the bar of expectation, and provide access to a quality education, they can achieve.
That education is neither Black nor white but more like the color of water: clear, pure and life yielding. And good teachers are not to be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their knowledge, their passion and their ability to impart lessons that enable our children to win.
Let It Shine
As I close, Class of 2023, I want to share with you that recently one of the alums who is administrator for one of my PSM’s alumni pages on FB openly rebuked me for posting awards, honors and my writings there, calling them “spammy” and essentially a distraction for other alumni visiting the page.
I told her I had violated no rules in posting. But I explained that if it offends, then I won’t post ever again on that page. I explained to her, however, in essence, that even after all these years, I remember the dream called Providence. That I am that dream. That I guard the dream.
And that I’m going to let it shine. I told her that every award, every honor, every story I have ever written, and every book are a reflection of the Dream called Providence.
I told her that in my commencement address today that I would tell you, Class of 2023, to let it shine. To never dim your light. For you are the dream. The embodiment of Providence St. Mel, and of an Alabama boy named Paul whose lifelong work now lives and shines in and through you.
That haters gon’ hate. But in the words of another PSM Alum, Cory Wesley: “Modesty is a privilege we can’t afford. You are the light & inspiration for a generation. We must shine.”
…So Let it shine, singing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us. A song full of the hope that the present has brought us.
Let it Shine, carrying this great light with which you have been bestowed. A light of Faith, Grace and Promise by which the Providence-St. Mel vision has gifted generations.
Let it shine. For you are equipped for the journey; Your foundation is sure, and Destiny calling.
I say to you, Providence-St. Mel Class of 2023: Always Remember the Dream; Guard The Dream; Let It Shine.
For in the words of DJ Khaled “We the best… We the best… We the best…”
Congratulations & Godspeed
Originally Written in 2014
Letter From A Grateful Son
Dear Mr. Adams, How are you? Well. I hope. It is hard to believe it’s been more than 40 years since I graduated from Providence St. Mel that warm day in June 1978, when television news cameras swarmed our commencement, which was supposed to be the school’s last in light of the Archdiocese’s decision to close it for “financial” reasons.
And yet, “Adams’ Castle” is still going strong. I guess you—and all of those who have embraced your vision and dream of education—have proved the naysayers, skeptics and even the haters wrong.
I know that you shy away from the limelight. That you don’t expect praise for what you believe you have been called to do. And I suspect you may be a little wary of the title—Adams’ Castle—by which I affectionately have come to call Providence.
So let me explain: Even more than the building’s resemblance to a castle is the impenetrable refuge it has provided for generations. It was its safety, the fertile learning ground we found there and the infectious faith in the power of education and in our ability to someday mount up on wings of knowledge, and soar.
Inside we found a man who saw us as educable. In whose eyes, each time we reached some new academic milestone, we saw delight and pride. For some of us, he was father—a stern and yet loving surrogate for the men who had abandoned us. He was mentor, a rock, unmovable. A Black man who stood, stuck, stayed.
He was keeper of the gate, the man who could make green grass grow even on the West Side. And if he was king of this castle, we certainly were not paupers. We were princes and princesses. And finally, when it was time to matriculate, we left prepared—unafraid to face a world sometimes cruel, often unfair, forever challenging.
Even now, we stand, having had the privilege of a royal education from the castle that still stands as the vision, heart and soul of one man: Not Joe Clark. Not Geoffrey Canada. Or Tim King… But Paul J. Adams III.
It amazes me how politicians and “educators” continue to go ’round and ’round with how to solve the crisis in urban education. This much is clear: They can spend billions more without ever making a dent.
I am reminded that once upon a time, the education of slaves was illegal. Today the truly enslaved still can’t read.
Yet, education remains the vehicle to freedom and the antidote to racism, classism and ignorance. I have resolved that the real issue about education really is about our will—our commitment to justice, freedom and equality.
This much is also clear: We were never some career stepping stone, but your life’s mission.
What’s clear is that long before the explosion of charter schools, there was Adams’ Castle. That you fashioned not a school for the elite but for all who want to learn. And to ever forget the man, the vision, the history, or the heart that is Adams’ Castle is to risk eventually extinguishing this lifeline of education for future generations of so many poor Black children whom society will undoubtedly otherwise leave to drown.
Mr. Adams, you are Providence St. Mel. And your legacy is countless lives changed. And this is the bedrock upon which the St. Mel dream rests: That for our lives one man was willing to give his.
And for all of us, I say, “Thank you. We love you” more than words can say.
With Love and Deep Admiration Always, JOHN.
#JusticeForJelaniDay
Email: [email protected].
John W. Fountain
John W. Fountain is a professor of journalism at Roosevelt University and a 2021-22 U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Ghana, where he is a visiting lecturer at the University of Ghana-Legon and researching his project titled, “Hear Africa Calling: Portraits of Black Americans Drawn to The Motherland.”
