Grambling State News

Grambling, La. – May 9, 2025 – Follow God’s word and listen to your heart to create your own journey in life.

That was the message delivered to 420 new graduates by actress, author, and entrepreneur Tabitha Brown as she delivered the keynote address at Grambling State University’s Spring 2025 Commencement Ceremony Friday inside the Fredrick C. Hobdy Assembly Center.

GSU President Martin Lemelle, Jr. began the occasion by calling the commencement program a sacred celebration.

“This is an occasion not just marked by achievement, but anointed by purpose,” Lemelle said. “Today is a moment that is wrapped in something deeper than just celebration. It is wrapped in divine orchestration. A kind of harmony, a rhythm older than time itself.”

Lemelle also issued a charge to the new graduates.

“Today I ask you to go forth and love audaciously, lead unapologetically and never, ever stop fighting for your dreams, for your community, and for Dear Old Grambling,” Lemelle said.

That message was a harbinger of Brown’s speech to the graduates.

Brown, a native of Eden, North Carolina, talked of having dreams since she was a child that somehow end up coming true, even if in unexpected ways.

She spoke of her own journey — starting off her college career at the Miami International University of Art and Design before realizing she was born to act and perform and then trying to enroll at Columbia College in Chicago to major in performing arts before finding out due to outstanding loans for fashion school, she could not be approved for more financial aid.

Following her dream, Brown journeyed to California to try and get into acting before moving back to North Carolina, marrying her husband Chance and giving birth to a daughter.

But after a year, Brown said she awoke to God thunderously speaking to her, telling her that her current life was not the life he had planned for her. Later that day she received what she believes was a sign from God in the form of radio personality Busta Brown announcing on air he was looking for a cohost for a new show he was starting.

She said she returned to her forgotten dream and continued her journey in life on a path that returned her to Los Angeles in 2004.

While she and her family ended up in Los Angeles, she could only find work at Macy’s until eight months later, she learned that her mother had been diagnosed with ALS, so she returned to North Carolina off and on for three years to care for mom until she passed.

After returning to Los Angeles Brown finally found acting success, doing movies, infomercials and then giving birth to a son.

But then Brown fell chronically ill, suffering for 19 months before pleading to God, telling him, “If you can heal me, you can have me.”

Brown said she wasn’t healed in the moment, but I felt something, felt different, and that she had another dream in which God told her to start doing videos.

Shortly later Brown’s high school aged daughter told her she needed to watch a documentary her daughter had watched in school titled ‘What the Health” that encouraged a vegan lifestyle/

Deciding to try a vegan diet, Brown soon returned to good health.

That vegan lifestyle led her to becoming an ambassador doing videos for Whole Foods Market.

In 2020, listening to her daughter’s advice to try doing a Tik Tok video, Brown found herself “going viral,” and gaining millions of followers.

“That tells you that sometimes people who have no idea about your dream or your life or no experience in it can still lead you,” Brown said. “My daughter was 17, 18 years old, but had I not listened to her, I wouldn’t be standing here before you.

“God can use anybody to bless you, to guide you, to inform you. So, I’m encouraging you — your journey might not look like mine, but my journey is my journey, and your journey is your journey. Today is probably the last day that any of you will do the same thing at the same time. You all graduate today. But going forward, don’t ever compare your life to anyone else’s.

“My husband will tell you, he didn’t believe me when I would tell him (about her dreams). I told him I had this feeling, I heard this voice, I saw this dream, I know what’s going to happen. And he’d just say OK. But now he’s like, ‘Hey, are you doing a video today? What do you need me to do? Sometimes you’ve got to make a believer out of people. And don’t get discouraged if they don’t believe in the moment. God gave it to you and not them.”

Brown told the graduates that God has a plan for each of them.

“And whatever that thing is inside — that inner voice that burns deep — that is for you,” Brown said. “And don’t be discouraged if other people don’t see it, or they don’t believe it, or they don’t understand it. It’s not for them. It’s for you.”

As she concluded her speech, Brown asked the graduates to stand.

“Whatever the journey you go on, whatever the dream is that you have, in order for it to come to pass, you’re going to have to get off your butt to go get it,” Brown said to a vigorous round of cheers and applause. “So know that people are cheering for you. They love you, and honey, everything that’s in you is in you for a reason.

“God deposits dreams if you go after them fiercely and believe it until you have them.”

Two of the graduates — Jaylie White and Whitney McFarland — followed their dreams to Grambling and graduated with perfect 4.0 grade point averages.

McFarland spoke of her nontraditional journey to a degree in Elementary and Special Education.

“If you had told me years ago that I would be standing here as one of our valedictorians, I might have smiled politely but deep down doubted,” McFarland said. “At three years shy of 40, a mom of three teens, juggling so many things to succeed, this journey was not easy.

“But here I stand, proof that with purpose and persistence, anything is possible.”

White said that after realizing during her freshman year that she could succeed in her quest to obtain degrees in psychology and sociology, she began to realize her what ifs and why nots.

“Why not be the first in your family to graduate? Why not be the first in your family to pursue the career you desire? Why not be the first person you know to make a difference somewhere in this world? Not only should you ask why not, you should ask what if,” White said. “The question of why not may be the first step that leaders, creators and achievers might be asked before they take the first step toward creating and achieving, however, it is not the end.

“You must take that necessary leap of faith into action, even if you do not know where you will land. And yes, they may have been times where we have leaped but did not land where we wanted to be. But still, we ought to have peace knowing that we tried. Instead of being afraid of the what ifs, we responded to the call of why not? Each step included missteps and mistakes and mishaps that shape us as people who are resilient and courageous.”

Graduate Morgan Patton, who served his senior year as GSU’s Student Government Association President, was presented with the President’s Leadership Award.

“We survived the pandemic aftermath, navigating a changing world and challenging norms, and we still rose above.” Patton said. “We learned in the classroom, but we also learned in life. How to show up for each other. How to advocate for ourselves. And how to make history in our own ways.”

Also during the commencement exercises, Alana Ward Robinson, was presented with a Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, 36 Golden Graduates celebrating the 50th anniversary of their college graduations walked the stage, and ROTC graduates Jeffrey Perry and Alvin Williams were commissioned into the U.S. Army.

View the full event on our YouTube page.