WASHINGTON >> Michelle Obama, stung by criticism during her husband’s first campaign that she was too outspoken, arrived at the White House and took on a careful role promoting health and fitness as “Mom in Chief.” In the seven years since, she has slowly shed that early reticence and has been more forceful about issues of race, gender and class.

Last week was no exception. The White House announced that Obama would give three spring commencement addresses, probably her last as first lady, and the choices — Jackson State University, Santa Fe Indian School and the City College of New York — indicate that Obama will continue to speak out.

“She’s become much more open in talking about the obstacles she faced, and she’s now much more comfortable talking about racism and other issues than her husband is,” said Peter Slevin, author of “Michelle Obama: A Life.” “In important ways, Michelle Obama is more political than any of her modern predecessors.”

On April 23, Obama will speak at Jackson State University, a historically black university holding its 139th spring commencement ceremony. University officials are expecting about 30,000 people to attend, the kind of crowd that even her husband now rarely addresses.

“The community has been blowing up my email” looking for tickets, said Dr. Elayne H. Anthony, dean of the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Jackson State. “We are ecstatic.”

For most of her time in the White House, Obama has made a point of addressing at least one historically black college or university each year. She spoke at Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Alabama, in 2015; Dillard University in New Orleans in 2014; Bowie State University in Bowie, Maryland, in 2013; North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro in 2012; Spelman College in Atlanta in 2011; and the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff in 2010.

In her speeches, she has become more personal and often uses words like “we” and “us” when describing the challenges that only African-Americans face. Last year at Tuskegee, Obama told the audience that she was subjected to a barrage of questions as the nation’s first African-American first lady.

“Was I too loud, or too angry, or too emasculating?” she asked to applause. “Or was I too soft, too much of a mom, not enough of a career woman?”

An early magazine cover that satirically depicted her with a huge afro and machine gun “knocked me back a bit,” she said.

“Back in those days, I had a lot of sleepless nights, worrying about what people thought of me, wondering if I might be hurting my husband’s chances of winning his election, fearing how my girls would feel if they found out what some people were saying about their mom,” she said in remarks that led some conservative commentators to say she was “playing the race card” and displaying “bitterness.”

Last month in a speech at a public school in Buenos Aires, Obama spoke with unusual frankness about the challenges and lowered expectations that girls often face.

“As I got older, I found that men would whistle at me or make comments about how I looked as I walked down the street as if my body were their property, as if I were an object to be commented on instead of a full human being with thoughts and feelings of my own,” she said. “I began to realize that the hopes I had for myself were in conflict with the messages I was receiving from people around me — messages that said that, as a girl, my voice was somehow less important. That how my body looked was more important than how my mind worked. That being strong and powerful and outspoken just wasn’t appropriate or attractive for a girl.”

After Jackson State, Obama will deliver the high school commencement address in late May at Santa Fe Indian School, a school for Native American students in New Mexico. She will address graduates of City College on June 3.

City College is one of the country’s most diverse institutions, with a student body that speaks more than 100 languages and represents more than 150 nationalities. In the midst of a political season in which immigrants have been demonized, Obama intends to use her speech at City College to highlight the positive contributions of immigrants, White House officials said.

The role of first lady offers “a unique spotlight, and my goal has been to make sure I don’t waste it,” Obama said last month at a forum in Austin, Texas. “That’s really been the thing. I mean, every day I wake up, it’s like, ‘Good Lord, please make sure that I’m being relevant, that I’m having impact, that I’m making the difference, particularly in the lives of young people.’ “

But as her husband frequently reminds anyone who shouts “four more years” at him, Obama evidently will not be sorry to be waking up someplace other than the White House next year.

President Barack Obama, when asked in January at an event in Omaha, Nebraska, about the prospect of a third term, replied: “I can’t do that because of the Constitution. And I can’t do that because Michelle would kill me.”

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