Soledad O'Brien Speech

Soledad O’Brien spoke to what seemed to be thousands of students at Emens Auditorium Monday night. She was a part of Ball State’s leadership series of speakers that Ball State holds at Emens Auditorium. She has also had a long road to where she is today. Soledad O’Brien has a secret that a lot of people don’t know about. Her parents were married illegally during the times of discrimination. “My mother is black and my father was black,” she said about her parents while speaking to students. Soledad O’Brien was very open in the audience at the event Monday and told stories that her parents told her when she was young. “My parents use to tell me stories about how they met at mass,” O’Brien said about how her parents ended up meeting and ended up going on a date. After her parents dated and wanted to get married it was hard because of the times of discrimination so “They drove to Washington D.C to get married and drove back to Maryland,” O’Brien said. Soledad O’Brien then told students about the field and when she was trying to land a job. “A lot of my career was about navigating that box,” O’Brien said about the box that people put you in and what they think you should be. But she gave a lot of advice Monday night and she said “You have to constantly prove yourself to get out of that box.” She really put a lot of heart into her speech because there were a lot of trials and tribulations that have happened in her life that people don’t know about. She then started to talk about Dr. King, how she did a story on him and when she was holding Dr. King’s papers. She was doing a story on Dr. King and she said “I thought I was going to be the one to drop Dr. King’s papers.” After she said that it got a laugh from the audience. She also said “the I have a dream speech was actually adlibbed,” which I didn’t know personally. She brought up a lot of key points for students to think about. She then talked about the roles of each individual saying “with this changing world, how do our roles change?” As she said that you could see people starting to looking around and talking to the people next to them. But then she started to really get into the journalism field saying “I think it is our job to bear witness to what is happening around us.” I thought that quote is very true. Since as a journalist you are told to keep an eye out for what is going on around you. At the end of her speech, she asked if the audience had any questions. One of the questions that I thought was the best was “how do you separate your emotional connection?” one student asked. “You plow through and have a job to do,” O’Brien said in response to the students’ question. I thought that was a perfect way for Soledad O’Brien to the speech Monday night.