The Southern University System

Students from the SU Laboratory School participated in a pilgrimage across the campus to the gravesite of former SU presidents Joseph S. Clark and Felton G. Clark for the annual Founders' Day commemorative ceremony.

Southern University celebrates Founder's Day

Kerney Laday Sr, CEO of the Dallas-based The Laday Company and a 1965 graduate of Southern, gave the Founders’ Day address during a campus-wide convocation celebration the University’s Founders’ Day, March 10.

Southern University took a raw young man from Ville Platte and "turned him into who you see standing before you today," Kerney Laday Sr., the head of a business consulting firm, told Southern's Founders' Day audience March 10 in the school's Felton G. Clark Activity Center.

"I thank Southern University for giving me the confidence and the courage to be the man I am today," said Laday, the CEO of the Dallas-based The Laday Company and a 1965 graduate of Southern.

Laday, who is retired from the Xerox Corporation, serves on several boards, including the Texas Utilities Company, Texas Health Resources and TD Industries.

He praised Southern for its work to help students who may not be able to get into other colleges. "An institution like Southern University can take a student that may not be ready and produce an individual like one you see before you," he said.

"When I arrived here in 1955 with no money, no clothes, I didn't know anything," Laday said. "But no one said 'you can't'… The instructors saw the potential in me and encouraged me in a nurturing atmosphere."

Laday said that there have been questions as to whether or not Historically Black Colleges and Universities are still important. His response to that question was "All the studies and statistics that I have found support the need for black colleges."

Earlier, students from the Southern University Laboratory School walked nearly a mile from their classrooms to lay wreaths at the gravesites of Southern, Baton Rouge's first two presidents, Felton G. Clark and James S. Clark. There was a prayer service prior to the pilgrimage in the Smith-Brown Memorial Student Union where several Baton Rouge area ministers prayed for the school and its students.

SU Lab School alumnus Theta M. Williams was keynote speaker for the SU Lab School Founders’ Day commemorative ceremony.

At the Laboratory School ceremony, guest speaker Theta M. Williams told the audience at the gravesite "I stand as one of you who walked the pilgrimage from Southern University Laboratory School to the gravesite many, many years ago."

"This is an exemplary university, and your laboratory school is an exemplary school and this is an exemplary occasion," said Williams, a 1957 graduate of Southern Lab and a 1961 graduate of Southern University.

This year's theme, "Southern University: Sustaining Its Commitment to Recruit, Retain and Graduate," placed emphasis on the campus' recent student retention initiative.

Founder's Day festivities began with a reception Saturday at the Southern University Museum of Art, featuring a six-female artists' exhibit: "Extending our Vision through Artistic Expression."

Also on Saturday, SU System President Emeritus Dr. Dolores R. Spikes and Bishop Joseph Walker, pastor of Mount Zion Church in Nashville, Tennessee, were honored at the Southern University Alumni Federation's Founders' Day Gala in the Royal Cotillion Ballroom of the Smith-Brown Memorial Student Union.

SU System President Emeritus Dolores R. Spikes (second from right) and Bishop Joseph Walker (second from left), pastor of Mount Zion Church in Nashville, Tennessee, were honored at the Southern University Alumni Federation's Founders' Day Gala, March 8 in the Royal Cotillion Ballroom of the Smith-Brown Memorial Student Union. Pictured with the honorees are SUBR Interim Chancellor Margaret S. Ambrose (left) and SU Alumni Federation national president Domoine Rutledge..

The award-winning University Concert choir, Charles Llyod, director, performs a tradition Negro spiritual during the 2008 Founder’s Day celebration in the F.G. Clark Activity Center..