That person is Robert Coles. We know justice must emerge from this community. We know we are called to act courageously, and so we will. And Bob Coles says his Harvard education hadn't prepared him to deal with the wisdom and courage in the parents of Ruby Bridges with their 6th grade education. Ruby told this story on the first day of classes at Connecticut College when we welcomed her to Palmer Auditorium, surrounded not by federal marshals but by students and faculty marshals, to a thunderous applause and to her first honorary degree.
Education is power.
Make it make a difference. The following year, we invited Miep Gies, who sheltered Anne Frank and her family in her own home. A modestly educated woman from a modestly educated family who knew that something was terribly wrong that people were being taken away and that the Frank family was in mortal danger. She had the knowledge as well of the danger her family could be in if the Nazis discovered that she was sheltering Jews. And this Christian woman knew something else - she knew that she had to act courageously.