Teen’s speech for equality would make mom proud
Shirelle McClure raised her daughter, Asia Riley, to speak up. She’ll be on Riley’s mind — and in her speech — when the 18-year-old takes the stage Thursday at the Ohio Theatre.
Riley, a senior at Cristo Rey High School in Columbus, will be given two minutes to express her thoughts about gender equality at the Women’s Fund of Central Ohio Keyholder event, an annual fundraiser. The headliner will be tennis great Billie Jean King, who will be interviewed by Lisa Ling of CNN.
Based on what I heard at a recent rehearsal for the event, Riley will make the most of her two minutes.
She arrived wearing a T-shirt that read “Inspire.” Facing a small panel of successful women and encountering a teleprompter for the first time, Riley took a breath and began: “I am enough. I am more than enough. I have always been, and I always will be.”
She went on to describe the people who have inspired her, starting with her late mother. Only during that part did I hear a catch in her voice.
“She always taught me it was OK to voice my opinion,” Riley had told me earlier. “She never made feel like I needed to stay in a child’s place or be quiet. ... I could tell her anything.”
McClure, a basketball star at Walnut Ridge High School in the late 1980s, went on to become a nurse. She also
struggled with mental illness.
“I don’t want to simplify her existence,” Riley told me. “She did battle mental illness, but she was still a great person. It actually made me want to advocate for and help out people who deal with that.”
McClure died suddenly of a heart ailment a year ago, said Riley, who now lives with her aunt. The past year, she said, has taught that she can cope with anything.
In her speech, Riley credits King, who has long fought for gender equality in sports and life, with forging the way for women to succeed; she vows to do likewise for those who follow her.
I read King that part of Riley’s speech in a phone interview.
“She gets how it works,” King said. “I can’t wait to meet her. She’s probably going to make me cry, though.”
Riley is part of the first graduating class at Cristo Rey, a Roman Catholic college-preparatory school that has had 100 percent of its students accepted to college. She will attend Spelman College in Atlanta with dreams of becoming a broadcaster.
The women coaching her at rehearsal offered a few tips about her speech, then invited her to run through it again. She was even stronger the second time.
I found this line memorable and prophetic: “I matter, and you hear me.”