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Black college graduates face road full of potholes

Source: Statesman Journal

In his first commencement speech as president to a black college, President Barack Obama talked about the importance of education to graduates of Hampton University, a school that was founded in the wake of the Civil Warjust a short distance from where the first slave ship landed on these shores 249 years earlier. The education he was referring to is something graduates who entered college four years ago will need to rely on to survive in a world that has changed dramatically since their freshman class arrived at Hampton, Va. In August 2006, the nation's unemployment rate was 4.7 percent. Last month, it stood at 9.9 percent. More than 8 million jobs have been lost since the nation plunged into recession in December 2007. "In the midst of civil war, we set aside land grants for schools like Hampton to teach farmers and factory workers the skills of an industrializing nation. Education, then, is what has always allowed us to meet the challenges of a changing world," Obama said in his address to the school's 140th graduating class.

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