Gregory Hodge was the keynote speaker at the 2025 Martin Luther King Day celebration in Santa Cruz, California. Gregory is CEO for the Brotherhood of Elders Network, where Black boys and young men are empowered to flourish. He is a social change activist and organizational development consultant with Khepera Consulting, working as strategic meeting designer, racial equity trainer, facilitator, and coach. Gregory works with groups from small nonprofits and foundations to public industries, including school districts. As a community leader, Gregory served two, four-year terms as a member of the Oakland Unified School District, Board of Education, beginning in January, 2000, including a year as President of the Board. He lives in Oakland, California.
It’s an absolute honor to be here. Thank you for the kind introduction. Whenever you’re the last speaker, you have to adjust what you’re going to say based on what everybody else said. So thank you for all of your comments this morning.
I was asked to share a few comments about hope, and not to wallow in the dark places some of us have been in over the last several months. Some of us have totally pulled back, don’t watch the news, don’t talk to people much anymore, don’t get involved. But I had to think long and hard about it because, although I’m generally an optimistic person, it was tough for a moment. Dr. King reminded us of something worth remembering. He said,”Don’t allow the buoyancy of hope to be transformed into the fatigue of despair.” And then hidden in plain view, it came to me.
I look at my ancestors for inspiration, and they give me something to be hopeful about. Because I study and understand my history all the time, I look to the generations of the children who are yet to be born for motivation. Because all of us work on their behalf. My Native American friends say, “We’re working for the next seven generations of children who we haven’t even met.” And I look to everyday people like everybody in this room, who help each other out in tough times, to give us something to be hopeful about. Desmond Tutu, the Archbishop of South Africa, said, “Hope is being able to see that there is light, despite all the darkness.” Dr. King’s work and his powerful example, offers us light. He said this, “The ultimate measure of a person is not where they stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where they stand in times of challenge and controversy.” I would argue this is the time of challenge and controversy.
Within every human existence, no matter what period of history, there have been times of comfort and convenience, and there have been times of challenging controversy. Ours is no different. I think about the challenging controversy, the comfort and convenience of Native American land theft and attempted erasure of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and other leaders. I think about the enslavement of Africans, stolen labor, middle passage abolition, Underground Railroad, resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act. Challenge and controversy, comfort and convenience.
I think about the Civil War. And, when we talk about participation, 85% of Black men who were eligible to fight in the Civil War fought after Lincoln opened up the Union Army to Black troops. Eighty-five percent. I think about the Red Summer of lynchings in the early 1920s, and I think about Ida B. Wells Barnett, her work as an investigative journalist and her Red Record. I think about deportations and family separation and the outrage that has come in the last 10 years under the person who got inaugurated today.
I think about state violence. I think about insurrectionist inaugurations, and today’s gathering right here and right now. Challenge and controversy, comfort and convenience. We celebrate Dr. King’s birthday today because among other things, he was a philosopher, a preacher, a teacher, a theologian, an activist who acted on his beliefs. And I want to share a lesson from his life. I want to invite us to reflect on three things today.
First, what is your life’s blueprint? Two, what will you stand up for? Three, how will we measure up to this critical moment in our nation’s history?
What is the blueprint of your life? Dr. King gave a speech in 1967 at a school called Barrett Junior High School in Philadelphia. Now, if you were tracking the dates, this is a few months before he was killed. This was in October of ’67. He was assassinated on a Memphis Hotel balcony in April 1968, as he was showing solidarity for sanitation workers in that city for economic justice, for dignity.
We forget sometimes on Dr. King’s birthday that he was a radical. Dr. King was not what people try to paint him to be just a dreamer. He was an activist. Dr. King got involved. He was working for economic justice. And the signs, just like the signs here today, the signs that Dr. King, marched behind said,” I Am A Man.” It was about dignity. It was about human dignity. And Dr. King, like all of us, was not without personal and professional challenges.
The last campaign Dr. King proposed was a Poor People’s Campaign. It was in DC and if you read the history closely, his closest friends and advisors didn’t support him because they said, “We’re doing too much, Doc. We don’t have enough resources to do this.” And the last few months of his life, he criss-crossed the country trying to raise money for the Poor People’s Campaign. He gave countless speeches in his life. Dr. King gave 2,500 speeches.
He wasn’t as popular as he had been earlier. People had lost a little bit of interest in Dr. King. Why? Because there was the emergence of more radical voices like Stokely Carmichael. There was an emergence of more radical voices like the Black Panther Party. Young people in Memphis heckled Dr. King. He was kind of going through it. His marriage and his family were at a very fragile, tender place. But Dr. King never gave up hope. That is the thing about King.
And he asked those young people that were at that junior high school, “what is your life’s blueprint?” Now, for some of us who may not have known what a blueprint is; a blueprint is an architectural drawing. It is a design intended to be a guide for something else. It’s a plan that explains how to do something or develop something. I can hear Dr. King asking us to reflect across the decades here in 2025, “what is the blueprint for our lives?” And he offered some hope- generating advice.
He said, three things were important. “First, your blueprint must claim and acknowledge your humanity, your dignity as Black people, as Brown people, as Queer folks, as Asian folks, as women, as trans folks, as immigrants, as differently abled folks, however you define yourself. Dr. King said, “It is not what they call you. It is what you answer to.”
Second, Dr. King said your blueprint has to be defined by excellence. Whatever you do, do it in the most excellent way as if God himself, herself, had called you to that work. Whatever it is that Spirit has called you to, what divine intelligence has called you to that moment, in this place at this time to do it. If you are an educator, teach as if of all the great educators of history called you to do it. If you are a parent or a caregiver, parent as if all the grandmamas, mamas, Big Mamas, Tias, Abuelas, Aunties, Uncles, Mother Dear, had called you to do that work. Be the best parent and caregiver you can be. If you are a healer, heal as if all the doctors, the shamans, the Babalawos, Hippocrates, Imhotep, whoever it is, that is your model for healing, called you to do it.
If you are an activist for liberation, act as if Harriet Tubman got on the phone with you and said, “You need to do this work well.” Act like Caesar Chavez was saying, “You need to do something.” Act like Susan B. Anthony and Yuri Kochiyama and others call you to do it. If you are a leader in your town, lead as if Ella Baker, Septima Clark, Malcolm X, Shirley Chisholm, and others calls you to do it with integrity, honesty, and respect. Be excellent, embody excellence.
And third, your blueprint has to be a design for living, defined by the pursuit of beauty, love and justice. Beauty, love and justice. Stand for the beauty that is in all of us. Push for the best in all of us. I don’t care who you are. There’s never been anybody on the planet exactly like you. Out of the billions of people who have lived and died, there has never been anyone exactly like you. So you have a unique purpose and a role that the universe has set you up to do.
That’s right. You got to stand for Beauty, Love and Justice. Stand for educational opportunities for ALL of our children, not some of our children. ALL of our children.
Stand for transformative solidarity. Not just transactional unity. I mean the day in and day out kind of solidarity, not the fair-weather solidarity. I can be with you today and sign your petition, and I’m going to be down with you forever. That kind of solidarity.
Stand with our immigrant communities. If you are a Black, stand with your immigrant community, if you white stand with our immigrant community. And when I say immigrants, though we generally think about our Latinx and Latina immigrants, but there’s some African immigrants too. There’s some Eritreans, some Ethiopians. In my community in Oakland, we got a big contingent of folks from that part of the world.
Back in the days of the Fugitive Slave Act in the 1800’s when the act got passed, when a so-called enslaved African ran away from the plantations, and went up north, white folks in particular were deputized to be bounty hunters. But there were people who stood between those enslaved folks and those bounty hunters, physically put their bodies in between them. We have to stand with our immigrant communities. I don’t think you hear me. We’ve got to stand with our immigrant community. We’ve got to stand with our immigrant communities because if they come for them tonight, they are coming for you tomorrow. You got to stand for our immigrant community.
We have to stand for efforts to engage more people in the processes of democracy. Stand for the processes of democracy. Register more voters. Because the democracy that we want to see has not been created yet. Barbara Jordan, a congresswoman from Texas said it in the seventies. She said, “What people want is simple. They want an America as good as its promise.” We want an America as good as its promise.
Stand for reparations, for reparations for the atrocities, for the theft of land and labor, land-backed wins, compensatory measures, and other things, investments in our deep end systems.
How will we measure up if we choose to? We will measure up if we choose to act on beauty, love, and justice when we act on hope. Dr. King said power at its best is love. Implementing the demands of justice. And justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. I am hopeful when we use our collective power.
I’m hopeful when I hear people like Stacey Abrams talk. We got a chance to hear Stacey in Oakland last week, and Stacey asked the question. “What do we owe each other? We owe each other the truth about our history. We owe each other imagination to imagine things at their worst and at their best. And we owe each other pooled power. If we put all of our power together, and we all have power, we may not exercise that power, but we all have power. Power is simply the capacity to get things done.
I am hopeful because of the long overdue ceasefire in Gaza. I’m hopeful. It came a little late and there’s lots of work to do, but I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful because of Biden’s, pardon of the honorable Marcus Garvey. I’m hopeful because he commuted the sentence of Leonard Peltier. I’m hopeful. I’m hopeful because of the work that we’re doing in East Oakland with Rise East and the 40 by 40 Council. We are trying to keep Black families in their homes, improvements in our schools, extension of universal basic income and prenatal care. I’m hopeful because of Latifa Simon’s election to Congress to follow behind Barbara Lee. I’m hopeful because I see people responding to the catastrophe in Los Angeles, Mexican firefighters coming up across the board. Canadian seaplanes grabbing up water and doing water drops. I even saw a battalion from as far away as South Africa who came to Los Angeles to help put out those fires. I’m hopeful when I see everyday people doing extraordinary things.
So when people act for beauty, I get hopeful. When people act for justice, I get hopeful. When people act for love, I get hopeful. And today I’m hopeful because of you. I want to encourage us to create that blueprint for dignity, for excellence, for beauty, love and justice. The ultimate measure of a person is not where they stand in moments of comfort and inconvenience. But where they stand in times of challenge and controversy. How will you measure up?
