Contact: James Carskadon

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Former Rhode Island Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank J. Williams encouraged Mississippi State’s spring 2018 graduates to embrace the qualities that will make an impact on themselves and the world around them.

The retired judge and noted historian served as the commencement speaker for the university’s three graduation ceremonies held this week [May 3-4] on the Starkville campus.

“We build resilience into ourselves – as no one is born with it,” Williams said. “We build resilience into the people we love, and we build it together as a community. It is an incredibly powerful force, and it’s one that our country and world need a lot more of right now. It is in our relationships with each other that we will find our will to endure, our capacity to love and the power to make lasting changes in the world.”

This spring, approximately 3,200 graduates join the growing ranks of Mississippi State alumni, a group that now totals more than 142,000 living around the world.

In addition to serving as commencement speaker, Williams was honored Friday [May 4] with an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree from MSU. As the longtime president of the Ulysses S. Grant Association, Williams has played a key role in making MSU one of the nation’s leading centers for study of the American Civil War. Last year, Williams and his wife, Virginia, donated their collection of Abraham Lincoln and Civil War memorabilia, valued at nearly $3 million, to the university. Williams also was instrumental in locating the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library at MSU in 2009.

“We wanted [the Williams Collection of Lincolniana] to come here for many reasons, and one of those is to give you access to the rudiments that Lincoln possessed – a fundamental vision, a golden temperament and a shrewd strategy for how to cope with the realities of the moment,” Williams said.

MSU also honored Robert G. Clark Jr. of Ebenezer, former Speaker Pro Tempore of the Mississippi House of Representatives, with an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree on Thursday [May 3]. After earning degrees from Jackson State University and Michigan State University in the 1950s, Clark returned to Mississippi and was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1967, becoming the first African-American elected to the Legislature since Reconstruction.

As a legislator, Clark worked effectively with members of both political parties and gained the respect of his colleagues, garnering several influential committee appointments. In 1992, he was elected Speaker Pro Tempore. He was re-elected to that prestigious leadership position again in 1996 and 2000 before his retirement in 2004, after nearly four decades of service in the Legislature.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.