Post date: May 19, 2013 11:14:48 AM
First Lady Michelle Obama makes her only high school graduation commencement appearance this year at Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet High School in Nashville,Tennessee where she tells the 2013 graduating seniors that their school represents the "realization" of quality education for all.
NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE, (MAY 18, 2013) (NBC) - U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama made her only high school graduation commencement appearance this year at Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet High School in Nashville, Tennessee on Saturday (May 18).
The first lady has made a series of college graduation commencement speeches this spring but made a point of telling her audience of graduating seniors at the MLK campus that this was her only appearance at a high school commencement this year.She told the 2013 MLK graduating class her presence at MLK was in recognition of the school's "special" commitment to high achievement in academics, community spirit and athletics.
"Every single student in this senior class has graduated, every single one of you is going on to higher education or the military, so this school is truly the realization of the dream of education empowerment for all," she said.
In an often-intimate commencement speech that acknowledged to the parents gathered in the bleachers that the occasion was "bittersweet", Mrs. Obama said she also had more personal reasons for accepting the school's invitation to give this year's commencement speech.
"All the things I've heard about this school, it is so familiar to me, because I actually went to a school just like this one when I was your age," she said.
Among MLK's accomplishments cited by the First Lady were its three graduates who made the semi-finals of the Intel Talent Search and the millions in college scholarships that she said were won by the 2013 graduating class.