Graduating seniors at Dunbar Senior High School are slated to receive words of wisdom from none other than the Rev. Al Sharpton at their commencement ceremony on Wednesday.
Sharpton is scheduled to deliver the keynote speech at the 10 a.m. ceremony at Howard University’s Crampton Auditorium. It’s his second speech associated with Dunbar in the last two years: In August 2010, Sharpton organized speakers on Dunbar’s football field to commemorate the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech and counter a Tea Party rally held on the National Mall.
Although Dunbar, the oldest public high school for black students in the nation, has graduated several big names — D.C. congressional Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton and Mayor Vincent Gray, to name two — the school has suffered and now graduates just 60 percent of students within four years.
Sharpton graduated from Samuel J. Tilden High School in Brooklyn, N.Y., then dropped out of Brooklyn College in 1975.
