LEWISTON — The world is waiting for talented men and women “to lead us to a better place,” famed civil rights activist John R. Lewis told 462 graduates of Bates College on Sunday.

“I plead with you to use your education as a tool to set people free,” he said in concluding his remarks at the college’s 150th commencement. 

Lewis, the son of an Alabama sharecropper, has been a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia since 1986. He told the Bates graduates about the inspiration he received from Benjamin E. Mays, a son of slaves, a Bates trustee and a mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Lewis told of momentous relationships with both men during a tumultuous period of history, which led to Lewis being called “one of the most courageous persons the civil rights movement ever produced.”

Lewis was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and a leader of the march across the bridge at Selma, Ala., where 600 peaceful protesters were brutally assaulted.

Lewis said he heard Mays speak many times of Bates College, and he recalled that Mays credited Bates with giving him the tools he needed to be emancipated.

“This is the great power of education,” Lewis said. “I want to thank Bates College for what you did and continue to do to free and liberate all humankind.”

He added, “If there hadn’t been a Benjamin Mays, I’m not so sure there ever would have been a Martin Luther King Jr. He was his spiritual father.”

Lewis advised the Bates graduates to “get in the way, get into trouble, but get into trouble in a good way.” As a young man, he heard of Rosa Parks and was inspired “to get in the way.”

He told the Bates graduates that they must “get into trouble, good trouble, necessary trouble, to save this piece of real estate that we call Earth for generations yet unborn.”

He added, “You have a moral obligation, a mission and a mandate when you leave here and go out to seek justice for all. You can do it. You must do it.”

It was a powerful address peppered with dry humor.

Lewis received an extended ovation from graduates and the audience. His remarks were delivered as he received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Bates.

Bates President Clayton Spencer told the Class of 2016 that the things she admires most are “the human qualities you embody: your creativity, your generosity, your drive for justice and your joy in, and caring for, one another.”

On a humorous note, Spencer shared some facts that Frank Eugene Sleeper, “a self-appointed chronicler” of that first class, had gathered about the Bates grads of 150 years ago. He noted eye color, average weight and age (147 pounds and 25 years), and how their hair was parted (seven on the right side and one on the left).

Turning to a more serious account of the Class of 2016, Spencer said the graduates represented 32 states (plus the District of Columbia) and 43 countries. Almost 10 percent were the first from their families to graduate from college; 67 percent studied abroad; 92 were double majors; and three were triple majors.

This graduating class at Bates includes 11 who have won prestigious Fulbright fellowships, which, she said, is “among the highest numbers in the nation.”

Spencer told the graduates, “You have achieved all of this while also giving back.” She said members of the graduating class have performed more than 75,000 hours of community-engaged learning, research and volunteer work in the L-A area.

Shannon L. Griffin of Philadelphia, Class of 2016 senior speaker, told her classmates, “Four years at Bates entails a special process of learning about yourself and the world around you.”

Griffin said, “Together, we harness the power of questions.”

She said, “We have been equipped with a delicate balance of inquiry and advocacy,” and, she emphasized, “It is the questions that we ask that remind us that there is still good that needs to be done in the world.”

Also receiving honorary degrees Sunday were Lisa Genova ’92, neuroscientist and author of “Still Alice,” a bestselling novel about Alzheimer’s disease? Daniel Gilbert, renowned psychologist and author of “Stumbling on Happiness,” whose work resulted in new understandings of human emotions; and Robert Witt ’62, higher education leader who transformed the University of Alabama into one of the country’s best public universities.

The Class of 2016 at Bates includes 46 graduates from Maine. Among them are six from the Twin Cities area.

They are Jacob Tyler Bergeron of Lewiston, B.A. in history and German; Emma Grace Bilodeau of Auburn, B.A. in sociology; Christopher Michael Madden of Lewiston, B.A. in history; Melissa Marie Paione of Auburn, B.A. in psychology; Jedediah Thomas H. Quint of Minot, B.A. in economics; and Stevenson Martin Whitaker of Auburn, B.A. in history.

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