The issues which face us all are not just how to survive. Obviously, we are doing that somehow, but really how to thrive. Really, thrive with some passion, some compassion, some humor and some style. This poem is called, and still I rise. Now, every person in this auditorium has gone to sleep one night or another, gone to bed one night or another with fear of pain, a loss or terror, unhappiness, grief, insecurity, and yet each of us has awakened, a risen, seen another human being and said, morning, how are you? Fine, thanks, can you? No, no, wherever that abides, where this van, the knee cavern, the bend of the elbow or between the teeth, wherever that is, lives, there we will find our nobleman. Not nobility, I think that's a pompous word, but the nobleness of the human spirit that we ride. You may ride me down in history with your bitter twisted line. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still like dust, all right. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? Just because I walk as if I have oil wells pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns with the certainty of tides, just like hopes springing high. Still like that. Did you want to see me broken, bowed head and lowered eyes, shoulders falling down like tear drops, weakened by my soul's whole cry. Does my sassiness upset you? Don't take it so hard, just because I laugh as if I have gold mines digging in my own back yard. You can shoot me with your words, you can cut me with your life, you can kill me with your hatefulness, but just like life, all right. Does my sassiness offend you? Does it come as a surprise that I dance? As if I have diamonds at the meeting of my thine. Out of the huts of history shame I ride, up from a past rooted in pain, I ride. A black ocean leaping and wide, welling and swelling and bearing in the time, leaving behind nights of terror and fear I ride into a daybreak miraculously clear. I ride, bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the hope and the dream of the