When Marvalene Hughes was a youngster, she was excited about being invited to ride on a float in a parade near where she grew up in Alabama.

But when her mother saw the float had been decorated to look like cotton fields, she said, "No, no, not on my watch."

Hughes said her mother was not going to let her daughter's image of herself be defined by someone else.

"Never, ever let anybody define who you are," Hughes said Wednesday during a keynote address at the Black History Luncheon at Modesto Junior College. "You define who you are."

Today, Hughes is president of California State University, Stanislaus.

She said she remembers another time from her youth, driving with her parents, who told her: "Get down on the floor." Before her head went below the seat, she saw a cross burning and people in white sheets.

"My parents said to me, 'You will not grow up hating anyone,'" Hughes said.

To this day, she said, she is not able to hate even the most mean-spirited people.

"I remember my parents telling me, 'Just let it roll over your shoulders and keep walking,'" she said.

Hughes and three other luncheon speakers noted the importance of believing in yourself, remembering where you came from and giving back to others.

Their remarks stuck close to the luncheon theme, "Climbing the Ladder of Success."

MJC President Jim Williams, McDonald's restaurant owner Emerson Johnson and PMZ Real Estate agent Dorothy Wells spoke of battling obstacles, and what has sustained them on their personal journeys.

Williams, who grew up in Virginia, said he had an "inferiority complex," at least through his junior year of college. He said he was "deathly afraid of white people" when he was 13 years old and his family migrated to California.

In the South, he had to drink from "colored only" water fountains, and he attended a two-room school where he learned about Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, but not about African-American leaders.

"For me, it had a very devastating impact," he said.

While attending California State University, Los Angeles, the university started an African-American studies department. Soon after he began taking classes, he realized that black people also contributed to society.

He said it is important to remember the words of the late Carter G. Woodson, considered the father of African-American history: African-Americans should be proud of their heritage, and other Americans should also understand that heritage.

It was in February 1926 that Woodson started Negro History Week, which would later become Black History Month. In the past 37 years, African-American studies have blossomed to offer degrees ranging from baccalaureate to doctorate.

Hughes agreed that it is important to remember where you came from. At the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, she said, she was upset about being required to take Negro history. But, she said, "They were right." Learning about your heritage helps ground you, she said.

She said climbing the ladder of success does not mean you move up all the time. You will get sidetracked, she said.

But she said it is important to give back and to make a difference in someone's life.

"The truth is, I'm not supposed to be here," Hughes said. "I was oppressed. But my parents said to their nine children, 'Nobody can tell you what you can be.' When somebody tells me there's a roadblock there or I can't do something, my motivation increases."

Johnson said it has been his experience that "obstacles build character."

He said he did not encounter racism while growing up among American-Indian relatives in New Mexico. But, after his mother got divorced and took him and his four siblings to Bakersfield by bus, "I woke up."

He began picking cotton and grapes when he was in the third grade.

Like Williams, once he grew up and began taking classes that related to his heritage, he began to better understand himself. College courses built his confidence, and he graduated cum laude, he said.

He said success comes from "wanting to be there."

"You've got to want to do. You've got to want to feel it," he said. "It's not about money. After you find out who you are, it's about are you doing the right things in life."

Wells spoke of having to buy a sandwich from the back door of a shop. Like Williams, she said, she was afraid.

It was a white, retired military major -- her boss at the Department of Veterans Affairs in the 1960s -- who taught her to be brave, she said. She was quiet back then.

"She said, 'If you're going to be successful in this world, let go of all of that baggage.' I became more outgoing and outspoken and haven't been able to shut up since."