Reverend Jonathan Weaver encouraged students to find ways they can make a meaningful impact during his keynote speech. (Emily Kong | Contributing Photographer)

When Reverend Jonathan Weaver arrived at WashU as a first-year in 1968, there were 27 Black students in his class. Just a few months after he moved in, Weaver helped organize a sit-in to protest an incident of police violence toward a Black student that led to meaningful changes on campus that are still in effect today, including the creation of the African and African American Studies Department. 

On Friday, Weaver addressed an audience of students as the keynote speaker for the Association of Black Students’ (ABS) programming — a student organization he once served as the president of — for Black History Month. 

He spoke about his experiences after graduating WashU, including his work as a reverend and the founder of the Pan African Collective, an organization that supports projects including access to healthcare and education in Africa. Throughout his speech, Weaver encouraged students to advocate for issues that matter to them and to collaborate with one another.

“Let your life be a life of purpose, [where] you’re making a change in the lives of others,” Weaver said.

Before he spoke, Weaver was introduced by senior and Vice President of ABS Paul Scott, who spoke about how Weaver was a trailblazer.

“He shows us that we must do what is right even when it is not easy,” Scott said. “All the LLCs that exist on campus … all of our ethnic studies programs –- these are the things that changed here on campus after the efforts of Reverend Weaver.” 

After Weaver took the stage, receiving a standing ovation from the audience, he began by thanking people who shaped his life, including his parents.

“I’m filled with a lot of emotions with this experience tonight,” Weaver said. “I want to give honor today to my mother and my father.”

Both of Weaver’s parents are deceased; his father passed during his sophomore year of college and his mother died seven years ago. He reflected on the values they imparted on him, including the importance of a strong education.

His father attended a segregated high school in North Carolina, and when Weaver visited, he saw a photo of his father delivering a commencement speech where he spoke about the value of a meaningful education. His mother was the first Black teacher at Weaver’s high school, where she taught English to 10th and 11th graders.

“When I came here, these did not exist,” Weaver said, pulling his phone out of his jacket pocket. “There was no internet, so I had to write home to my mother. I stopped writing to my mother after about three or four letters because she would send my letters back with grammatical corrections.”

Weaver mentioned these values again later when he talked about the Black manifesto — a document written by Black students as part of the 1968 Brookings sit-in that laid out a list of demands for better treatment of Black students. 

“The Black Manifesto was shaped a little bit because of Jonathan Weaver and the DNA given to me by [my mother] when it came to English,” Weaver said. 

For Weaver, it was a “pivotal moment” to hear about how a Black graduate student named Elbert Walton had been arrested by campus police for failing to show his campus ID to them.

“I was so disturbed that after hearing about it, I called up my mother, and I said ‘Mama, there is a protest that’s taking place and it may be that the Black students decide to take over the administration building,’” Weaver said. “My mother said, ‘Boy, you stay away from that, I sent you there to get an education.’”

After the phone call, Weaver described the following period as one of soul-searching, and though he understood his mother’s perspective, he felt called to the protest. 

“I made my way to Brookings and was there for those five days,” Weaver said. “That really created for me a need for us as Black people and Black students to have a sense of cooperation, a spirit of collegiality.”  

Weaver went on to talk about other moments in his life that stood out to him, including work he has done with his church. He told a story about trying to get a loan from Bank of America to refurbish his church but subsequently had to jump through a number of hoops to obtain it.

“At that point, I got concerned — is it because we’re a Black church that we’re having this kind of attitude from the bank?”

Weaver wrote a letter to the president of the bank persuading them to give them the loan, and a few days later, heard that the loan had been approved without requiring further action. He then went on to form the Collective Empowerment Group, which helps churches across the country receive equitable banking services.

Since graduating, Weaver also formed the Pan African Collective, an organization where he has led dozens of medical mission trips and launched The Weaver School in Goma, a city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This program serves 1,300 students who are orphans, children of rape survivors, or children of refugees.

Weaver closed by recalling an honors convocation at WashU in 1972, when Reverend Jesse Jackson delivered a speech and specifically addressed Black students in the audience.

“He said, ‘Now, let me just say a word or two for the few Black students that I see,’” Weaver said. “He said, ‘I want to commend you for what you’ve done academically, congratulations to you.’ But he said, ‘I have one question for you, where are the students that were in your seventh grade class?’”

One week after the address, Weaver was talking to a high school friend in his hometown of Rockville, Maryland, when he learned that one of his classmates from seventh grade had committed suicide. The student, named Ronald, had been told by a judge a year before that if he was arrested for drug possession again he would be sentenced to twenty years in prison. 

“Ronald got arrested again, and I presume, even to this day, that Ronald just felt like, ‘Well, life really is over for me. I don’t want to look at the specter of 20 years in prison,’” Weaver said. “And so I’ve lived my life every day making sure that there were fewer and fewer Ronalds.” 

He encouraged students in the audience to do the same — find people and issues where they can affect change in their everyday lives.

“Please understand this world is much larger than Washington University,” Weaver said, “There may be some folks that are in the underclass, or back in your neighborhood, maybe there’s a Ronald there, and you need to take the time to help make a difference in their lives.”