The 2019 graduating class of Morehouse College received a huge surprise yesterday morning.

Graduation keynote speaker Robert F. Smith, philanthropist and investor, shared an inspirational message to the Morehouse men of 2019, as he proudly announced that he and his family were going to eliminate all of their student loan debt.

“My family is going to create a grant to eliminate your student loans,” Smith said to the graduating seniors.

“You great Morehouse men are bound only by the limits of your own conviction and creativity.”

Details + video below…

Robert F. Smith, a graduate of Cornell University and Columbia Business School, received an honorary degree from Morehouse on Sunday along with Angela Bassett and Edmund Gordon.

Smith founded Vista Equity Partners in 2000 and has since built that firm into a billion-dollar enterprise, investing in technology and software around the world. The firm manages commitments of more than $46 billion and oversees a portfolio of more than 50 software companies globally.

Smith chose the perfect moment to give back to Morehouse College students in a huge way when he announced during his speech that he was eliminating the student loan debt of the entire class of 2019.

A school official said the gift from the commencement’s keynote speaker is worth about $40 million.

“When Dr. King said that the ‘arc of the moral universe bends toward justice,’ he wasn’t saying it bends on its own accord. It bends because we choose to put our shoulders into it together and push,” Smith said during the speech.

Smith is the largest private donor to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington and was the first and only African American business leader to sign “The Giving Pledge,” an initiative created by Bill and Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett, in which wealthy individuals pledge to give more than one-half of their wealth to causes such as poverty alleviation, disaster relief and global health and education.