There were so many thoughts swirling in my head as we waited for the ceremony to begin, it seemed those around me might be able to hear them. There I was sitting in the same auditorium in 2007 that I used to dance to the Mizzou fight song as a Junior Varsity cheerleader in 1980. There I was as a 45-year-old, successful, married mother of two, on the same campus that more often than not left me wondering if I would ever be successful, married or a mother.

The campus has changed, I’ve changed, but as I read over that column to my nephew, A.J., I quickly realized that the advice is largely the same. I advised him then to realize that he matters, and that he should know that his life is meaningful because there would be those who would try to make him feel otherwise.

"Be ready to do battle for yourself," I wrote. That’s certainly true in corporate America, where he is headed. However, I would now add that because he knows his life is meaningful, he must also begin to do battle for others. Those actions will give his life the greatest meaning.

One issue I did not discuss with him in that column four years ago was the meaning of going to college as an 18-year-old black man and now the meaning of graduating from college as a 21-year-old black man. There were about 1,000 students who graduated with him that evening. Those who counted noted about 25 African-American students receiving their degrees.

His father (my brother) tells the story of going to Mizzou as a freshman with some 400 other black students, but graduating four years later with only two dozen or so of that original number. And while we don’t know how many of his class did what I did, transferred and graduated from other colleges, we do know that the statistics for black college graduates are not where we’d all like them to be.

Sixty-two percent of white students who go to college go on to graduate, while 42 percent of black students who set out to get a college degree actually do so. The numbers vary a bit, but The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education notes that in 2005 46 percent of black women graduated from college while 35 percent of black men received degrees.

We could talk at length about the fallout from more sistahs than brothers receiving college degrees and the increased income potential that goes with it. We could debate into the early morning hours the ongoing plight of black men in every area of their lives in this country, and we could stage sit-in after protest after rally about the harm of the current efforts to eliminate Affirmative Action at Missouri’s public colleges and universities. But watching my nephew glide across that stage in his cap and gown made me want to stop if only for a moment and put on my shoutin’ shoes.

Here’s to one young black man with his eyes on the prize. We expect even greater things from you A.J. The world needs men like you now more than ever.