Mrs. Obama traced the history of African American education in New Orleans from its earliest days, when formerly enslaved people were so hungry to learn that schools faced the problem of too many students, not too few. She described how that hunger survived across generations — through an arson attack on the school library in 1877, through financial crises, through segregation, and through the devastating floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina. She then connected this historical hunger for education to the present day, pointing to students like the Nigerian valedictorian and salutatorians at Dillard who earned 4.0 GPAs, and to young women like Malala who risked their lives simply to attend school. Mrs. Obama held up her own mother as an example — a woman who was not a teacher or principal but who volunteered at her children's school every day, holding teachers accountable, because she believed education was 'very much her business.'