“Over the years, folks have used plenty of interesting words to describe me. One said I exhibited a little bit of ‘uppityism,'” the first lady said. “Cable news charmingly referred to me as ‘Obama’s baby mamma.’

“All of the chatter, the name-calling, the doubting, all of it was just noise,” she said. “It did not define me, it didn’t change who I was, and most importantly, it couldn’t hold me back.”

Conjuring up the incidents in Ferguson and Baltimore, Obama told graduates, “Here’s the thing, the road ahead is not going to be easy. It never is, especially for folks like you and me.

“There will be times, when you feel like folks look right past you or they see just a fraction of who you really are,” she said.