“You are very diverse. It makes you realize how fortunate we are to have such diversity.”
Keynote speaker Constance Slaughter-Harvey said those words addressing the close to 450 graduates at the 66th graduation ceremony for Coahoma Community College on Saturday.
Slaughter-Harvey is an attorney, columnist and former assistant to the secretary of state and general counsel. She is the first African-American female to receive a law degree from Ole Miss, which she earned in 1970, and the first female African-American to serve as a judge in Mississippi in 1975.
Valedictorian Brittany Collins, a pre-nursing major, Tunica native and Rosa Fort High School graduate, secured a 3.95 GPA. She is planning on pursuing a career in the healthcare industry and introduced Slaughter-Harvey on Saturday.
“She is not only a beautiful and intelligent African-American woman, but she is also a respected and courageous woman that you should read about in our history books,” Collins said. “She is truly an inspiration.”
Salutatorian Ariel Montgomery, a Tutwiler native, is a general business major and finished CCC with a 3.94 GPA. She talked about completing junior college in just one year.
“As I stand here today, as a proud 2017 graduate of West Tallahatchie High School, home of the mighty Choctaws, I am proud to say that I am a 2018 salutatorian,” she said.
“To my fellow classmates, we made it.”
Montgomery said graduation is just the beginning and working hard is the key. She used the famous quote, “I am somebody. I am going somewhere. If it is to be, then it’s up to me,” to inspire classmates toward the end of her speech.
Those who have remained in Coahoma County through the years have taken very different paths.
The golden anniversary class of 1968 was recognized during the graduation ceremony.
One of those graduates was Roy Farmer, who is a 1966 Coahoma Agricultural High School graduate and a retired Clarksdale High School science and math teacher. He earned a degree in biology.
“It means a lot. Fifty years, that’s a lot by itself,” Farmer said.
Farmer said, through the years, the CCC campus has grown a great deal.
When he attended school there, he said the Marion Reid Gymnasium and a place for an agricultural class were on campus, but there was not much more.
“Student wise, it’s grown. Educational wise, it’s grown,” Farmer said.
Farmer earned a biology premed degree from Alcorn State in 1970 and a master’s degree from Ole Miss in 1971.
Alkisha Ross, a 2004 Coahoma County High School graduate, did not have an easy path. She was a semester away from being a CCC graduate but put her education on hold. She finally decided to go back to school.
“It’s just that my children we’re getting older,” Ross said. “I was getting older. I had the time to go back so I took advantage of that. I was working at the local Kroger when they closed down and I said, ‘What better time than now to finish school?’”
Ross was a cashier at Kroger. Her son, Alshun, 17, will be a senior at CCHS and her daughter, Akierra, 10, attends Kirkpatrick Elementary School. She will be going for her degree in early childhood development at Mississippi Valley State University. She hopes to either be a teacher or open a daycare.
“It makes it mean just that much to me. I can’t do anything, but thank God,” Ross said of being able to continue her education.
