Powerful Words

By Abigail Sullivan '25, February 29, 2024

MLK Week keynote speakers deliver strong messages.

Cyepress Ifamayami Brathwaite ’22 (left) and Eden Strachan ’21 delivered strong keynote addresses. (Photo by Ryan Carty '25)

Ithaca College welcomed back two distinguished alums, Cyepress Ifamayami Brathwaite ’22 and Eden Strachan ’21, to deliver the keynote speech to as part of the campus-wide Martin Luther King Jr. celebration

Inspired by Coretta Scott King’s quote--“I am convinced that the women of the world, united without any regard for national or racial dimensions, can become a most powerful force for international peace and brotherhood”,--the theme for the celebration was “Amplifying the Voices of Womxn of Color,” and that messaging was driven home by both Brathwaite and Strachan.

Brathwaite is a multimedia artist and interdisciplinary scholar whose work serves to encourage themselves and others to reclaim the power of our bodies and imaginations. Their murals can be seen around Ithaca, including one at the Southside Community Center, a longtime source of services and support for the local Black community.

“Freedom is an embodied movement. We must feel the heaviness of our grief, the activation of our anger, the expanse of our love, and move with them if we want to get free.”

Cyepress Ifamayami Brathwaite ’22

“We cannot think our way to freedom,” they told the audience. “Freedom is an embodied movement. We must feel the heaviness of our grief, the activation of our anger, the expanse of our love, and move with them if we want to get free. Coincidentally, reason renders these emotions unavailable for doing useful work.”

Brathwaite also encouraged activists in the BIPOC liberation struggle to shift their attention away from working within colonialist confines, advising their peers to move their “focal point of credibility from colonialist systems to the locales where those who have been exiled by those systems are actively creating better systems of living. That is where the real work happens.”

Strachan is the founder and executive director of the multimedia brand Black Girls Don’t Get Love, which aims to “turn silence into language and change the way Black girls are perceived in society.”

She took a different approach to the theme, using her talk to honor the legacy of Coretta Scott King while examining the way Black women often see their history lost. Coretta’s role in the Civil Rights movement is often overshadowed by her husband’s legacy.

“Coretta Scott King deserves to be honored and to be remembered as an individual force. She had a major role in preserving Dr. King’s legacy and we have a responsibility to preserve hers and all the other Black women in history whose contributions we benefit from today.”

Eden Strachan ’21

“Coretta Scott King deserves to be celebrated,” Strachan said. “She deserves to be honored. She deserves to be remembered as an individual force. Coretta had a major role in preserving Dr. King’s legacy and we have a responsibility to preserve hers and all the other Black women in history whose contributions we benefit from today.”

Strachan added that King and writer and activist Audre Lorde inspired her to tell her own stories, as well as empower other young women in doing the same through Black Girls Don’t Get Love.

Attendees considered the experience of listening to these accomplished alumni invaluable.

“It’s good to see fellow Black women who are alumni of this school speaking,” said Shania Silver ’27. “Their messages were relatable, personal, and relevant.”