To Listen, To Learn, To Speak
from the TV series created by Aaron Sorkin
(A black high school athlete in tennessee refuses to play football under the confederate flag. Six of his teammates have joined him and their futures are all in doubt. Isaac has been coaxed into doing an on-air editorial on his show, Sports Night.)
Isaac (Robert Guillaume): Thank you, Casey. Exaudio, Comperio, Conloquor. That's a Latin phrase that translates: To Listen, To Learn, To Speak. Those words are carved into the stone arches that form the entrance to the undergraduate library at Tennessee Western University. The stones themselves were hauled to the site by an elite delegation from the Army Corps of Engineers. What made this group elite was that its members were drawn from the Delaware 44th Rifle Battalion and the Tennessee 14th: The Tennessee Volunteers. They worked together on one of the first post-war restoration projects. The building of a college. This afternoon, an extraordinary young man named Roland Shepard made what had to have been an excrutiating decision. He said he wasn't playing football under a Confederate flag. Six of his teammates then chose not to let Shepard stand alone. I don't know how many people witnessed this spectacle, but it was a sight to see. Seven men, the oldest of them not yet 21 and all of them knowing full well the potential consequence of their actions. And I choose to join them at this moment. In the history of the South, there's much to celebrate. And that flag is a desecration of all of it. It's a banner of hatred and separation. It's a banner of ignorance and violence and a war that pitted brother against brother, and to ask young black men and women, young Jewish men and women, Asians, Native Americans, to ask Americans to walk beneath its shadow is a humiliation of irreducable proportions. And we all know it. Tennessee Western has produced some outstanding alumni in the last hundred years. People of wisdom and vision. Strength and compassion. One of them is Luther Sachs. Luther Sachs owns Continental Corp, which owns the Continental Sports Channel, which you're watching right now. Luther Sachs is a generous alumni contributor to Tennessee Western with a considerable influence over its Chancellor, Davis Blake, and its Board of Trustees. Luther, you've got a phone call to make. You've got to call Chancellor Blake and tell him to take down that flag or he can stop looking for your checks in the mail. You've got to put these young men back in a classroom, and I mean pronto. These boys are gonna make you proud one day, Luther. I challenge you to do the right thing. Not an unreasonable request to make of a man whose alma mater declares Exaudio, Comperio, Conloquor. To Listen, To Learn, To Speak. In the meantime, God go with you, Roland Shepard and you six Southern Gentlemen of Tennessee. God's not done with any of you yet.
Kudos and much thanks go to Templeton for this monologue, it is very much appreciated.