Rhode Island’s high school class of 2020 got robbed. No prom, no senior week, no pomp and circumstance. The coronavirus pandemic has taken a lot from us — our health, our sense of security and, tragically, our loved ones — but, through social distancing, our high school seniors lost something the rest of us can cherish in the tough times: memories. It’s not life or death, but it’s still a sacrifice.

Enter our hero, Viola Davis. On June 15, the Academy, Emmy and Tony award-winner will deliver a commencement address to the state’s graduating seniors in “Your Year 2020,” broadcast at 7 p.m. on Rhode Island PBS. Davis grew up poor in Central Falls, attended Rhode Island College for acting, earned her way into Julliard and has since become one of the nation’s greatest actors.

Viola Davis. Photograph by Kevin Winter/Getty.

“I go to Rhode Island all the time,” Davis told us in an extensive interview published in 2018, “and I see that blonde woman waiting for that RIPTA bus, and she’s got her brown-skinned baby with the afro. And that’s how you see the changing face of America. And what is out there for her? What is out there for him? What’s out there for me? I always use my daughter as the example. I tell her stories at night, and a lot of times I make it up. And she always says, ‘Mommy, put me in the story. I want to be in the story.’ So I’m putting her in the story.”

Monday night, she’ll put our more than 9,000 high school graduates in the story, too — ones who may have felt left out of the narrative and isolated over the last three months. June 15 is their night, where Davis will join local and national celebrities, school leaders and local politicians in lauding them for their accomplishments.