It’s our favorite time of year – graduation season!!! And this season is full of shining examples of young Black men and women who are gaining attention for raising the bar on excellence. Many of them have been awarded a record number of scholarships, maintained G.P.A.s that are off the charts, and gained acceptance to several highly selective institutions.

The best part – many of these scholars are not shy about using these moments of recognition to be unapologetically Black. Donovan Livingston, a graduate of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, addressed his graduating class with an amazing speech that has been viewed over 8 million times and is being called “the greatest graduation speech ever”.

Livingston performed a spoken word piece titled “Lift Off”, which pays homage to the ancestors and their struggle with a corrupt system that blocked them from gaining knowledge.  He also made an appeal to educators to take a unique approach in teaching in order to help students reach their full potential.

Livingston was inspired to perform the poem when he recalled how a high school teacher blocked him from performing a spoken word piece at his graduation ceremony.

“She threatened to take me offstage or cut my microphone when she caught wind that I wanted to incorporate a poem,” Livingston told ABC News.

Livingston’s speech also called out the hypocrisy of quotas, the failure of standardized curriculums and “diversity initiatives” that meet requirements only on paper, but fail to address the conditions that affect a Black student’s ability to excel.

“An injustice is telling them they are stars, without acknowledging the night that surrounds them. Injustice is telling them education is the key, while you continue to change the locks.”

Whew! Well done, sir. You can watch the speech in its entirety by viewing it on the site for Harvard’s Graduate School of Education http://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/16/05/lift.