Keynote Address: “All Human, All Equal: Our Proclamation, Our Aspiration, Our Destination” Delivered by Marie Younger Blackburn at the 2025 Human Rights Awards Ceremony
At this week’s Barnstable County Human Rights Awards, attendees heard the compelling keynote address by Marie Younger Blackburn, whose remarks were grounded in truth, moral courage, and a renewed call to uphold human dignity.
Speaking to the theme “All Human, All Equal,” Marie invited the community to reflect on the meaning of Human Rights Day and the 20th anniversary of the Barnstable County Human Rights Advisory Commission—a milestone that calls on all of us to pause, recommit, and affirm that every person deserves dignity, safety, opportunity, and respect.
Read her full keynote address:
All Human, All equal: Our proclamation, Our Aspiration, Our Destination
Welcome everyone. Thank you for showing up It is good to be here today among the Community in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Barnstable Human Rights Commission on Human Rights Day. A day when we pause and reflect and recommit to the promise that every single one of us- no matter who we are or what we look like, or where we come from deserves dignity, safety, opportunity and respect.
Our theme this year is All Human, All Equal. An ideal that carries a lot of hope and weight. This time last year, I was preparing to make my New Year’s resolution. Instead of my failed attempt to exercise more or lose weight, I chose to resolve to tell the truth, believing that being honest about the things that I observe in the world around me could bring about change. A change in me.
Human Rights Day was indeed born out of a moment in history when the world was trying to heal. In 1948, after a devastating war, nations came together to declare: “never again.” Never again should one group of people treat another as less than human.
That is when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was written — a promise to protect every person’s dignity.
But as we know, here in America, that promise was not equally extended to everyone. It’s that truth that has awakened my purpose.
We all indeed embody the characteristics of what it means to be human. We deserve dignity, safety, opportunity, and respect. Indeed, it’s also true that although we have made progress, we have yet to realize its promises. And yet, even as those noble words were signed on paper, so many of us were still not free. Black people in America were still segregated by law and by fear. Indigenous peoples were still displaced and dehumanized. Women were still denied equal voice and opportunity.
And while the laws may have changed since then, the legacies of inequality remain — woven into the institutions that shape our daily lives.
It shows up in the data — in the pay gap, in health disparities, in who gets to lead and who is told to “wait their turn.”
Whose pain is believed, whose anger is feared, whose joy is celebrated.
Truth,
We can look at these words in three ways:
1. As a proclamation, we can shout these words from the rafters as a statement of fact: “We are All Human, All Equal.”
2. We can look at these words as Aspiration, a strong desire, longing, or aim, or ambition.
3. We can look at these words as a destination, the purpose for which something is destined. Our purpose. To be truth tellers. We aim to tell our own stories, as well as those of others, who seek recognition of their humanity.
We have to start telling the truth.
When I was ten years old, my father asked my sisters and me to answer the question, “What does it mean to be Black?” He recorded our answers. He wanted to humanize what he knew would be a difficult experience for us, even at an early age. Growing up, he would tell me that I have a right to a quality of life. He would tell me that he had the right to protect our family by any means necessary and that no one could steal my joy. These lessons included where I would live, work, and play.
Little did I realize that my dad was laying the foundation for human rights.
We learned who we are and the contributions, struggles, and triumphs of those who have gone before us. But I also learned early that the world did not always see me that way. I knew that my hair, tone, and presence could be perceived as “too much.” People may question my achievements, minimize my experiences, or misread my feelings.
And I know I am not alone in that. So many Black women carry this dual burden — striving for excellence while navigating bias, walking the line between being authentic and being accepted.
That is why Human Rights Day matters. Because it’s a reminder that the struggle for equality is not abstract. It’s personal. It’s emotional. It is daily.
Truth
As war is raging around the world, civility and common decency is eroding from the highest office in the land, as family cower in fear afraid of being ripped from the only country that they have ever known somehow we hold fast to the words found in the Declaration of Independence
“ We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.
My father was not wrong in his thinking and so he named me strong woman not knowing that one day I would be the carrier of truth. An advocate , a story teller dispelling the myth of what people with Diverse Abilities are capable of, what they need and that they too desire the same things that every human deserves and hopes for. That one day I would be called to humanize my own son. I am one of many like you who would move beyond the proclamation, reach higher than the aspiration and keep marching towards the destination
You are probably here today this early Wednesday morning because you realize that although there is truth to the fact that we are indeed All Human, all equal, you know that the truth is these ideals are challenged every day. For you and for me. We must never grow weary in doing good and more importantly seeing the good in one another. We must never become so desensitized that we don’t recognize and respond to the pain in one another and we must never become silent as we proclaim collectively that we are indeed All Human, all equal
In closing, I challenge you to keep showing up, keep speaking up and keep looking up and Do something until these words are actualized. All Human, all equal.
Marie Younger Blackburn
About Marie Younger Blackburn – Barnstable County Human Rights Advisory Commission Liaison, Mashpee
Ms. Younger Blackburn is a poet, public speaker, social media marketer, business connector, and social activist. She hosts Driven Women: Cape Cod’s Conference for Women, and Conversations that Matter. She is a social justice advocate, particularly of inclusion for people with diverse abilities, such as her nineteen-year-old son, Chase, who has Down Syndrome (#includeme). She has served on numerous community boards of directors and received numerous awards of distinction for her work.
