Obama lauds Memphis high school’s dramatic improvement in commencement speech - The Washington Post: President Obama addressed graduates of a historic African American high school in south Memphis during a commencement ceremony Monday, marking a milestone for 155 seniors and a success story for an impoverished and long-struggling urban school.
Obama told the packed Cook Convention Center, about a mile from where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot in 1968, that the graduation of the Class of 2011 at Booker T. Washington High School was an “especially hopeful” occasion.
“Just a couple of years ago, this was a school where only about half the students made it to graduation,” he said. “Well, we are here today because every single one of you stood up and said, ‘Yes, we can. Yes, we can learn. Yes, we can succeed.’”
