U.S. Rep. John Lewis urged graduates of Framingham State University in Massachusetts to “get in trouble” and to “build bridges, not walls.”
The Georgia Democrat, a veteran of the 1960s civil rights movement, was the keynote speaker Sunday at the school’s commencement at the DCU Center in Worcester.
He hearkened back to his days growing up in a segregated South, and remembered being told “don’t get in trouble” for questioning the status quo.
He urged graduates to get in “good trouble, necessary trouble” and “make our country a better place.”
Lewis was arrested dozens of times and was physically attacked, but told students to follow the non-violent examples of Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. He has been a member of Congress since 1986.
The university conferred 849 undergraduate degrees.
