Scribes: Makers and Preservers of History

       Hello to all!! I am Serelle McPherson, coming to you with my weekly blog of my Freshman Seminar course. During the past week, on Tuesday, I was privileged to hear the lecture of Dr. Benjamin, a colleague at Howard University. The topic of the lecture was "The Eloquence of Scribes": Initiation, Expectations, and Mastery- Continuing the Legacy of Howard University.

       A scribe is a person who writes books, takes notes and documents important information, and can be found in all literal cultures. Also called sesh, after the Egyptian ideal woman Seshat, even though most scribes of the time were men. Although scribes have lost their importance due to printing, they can still be found in the personages of journalists, accountants, lawyers, judges, and assistants to physicians. In ancient Egyptian history, there was a hierarchy of scribes that ranged from royal scribes to anonymous scribes, being that there were scribes on every aspect of living- from the fields to the buildings.

       Scribes are an influential part of our lives, especially in our everyday lives, because most of what we know is through the readings. If people hadn't been scribes, our legacies, ancestry and complete past would be almost obsolete except in the form of word of mouth. The eloquence of scribes is even that much more evident in the everyday life of a Howard Student, because every building you walk into on this campus was named after a scribe whose life helped shape the ways of our times.

       An important scribe to take note of would be General Oliver Otis Howard, who, along with 10 others, founded this university, as a seminary for black people. While fighting in the Civil War, General Howard was an advocate for blacks and tried to protect them from mistreatment, but due to lack of power wasn't able to do much. He was also commissioner of the Freedman's Bureau and had charge over integrating the Freedmen into American society. General Howard served as President of the college from 1869-1873.

       Another essential scribe involved in the legacy of HU is none other than Mary McLeod Bethune, of whom the beautiful Bethune Hall Annex is named after. She is best known for her legacy of being a Civil Rights activist, and being an advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Among one of her greatest accomplishments was founding and being President of her own college. It was known as the Literary and Industrial Training School for Negro Girls. Through donations from various big-shots, organizations, and churches, the school grew into a very outstanding learning institute, that became Bethune- Cookman University.
       There were many scribes discussed and made mention of during the lecture such as:

• Mortecai Wyatt Johnson (the A Building)
• Inabel Burns Lindsay
• Moorland and Springarn (donated books found in Carnegie Building)
• Alain Leroy Locke (Locke Hall)
• Lulu Vere Childers (Childers- Division of Fine Arts)
• Frederick Douglass (Douglass Hall)
• Ira Aldridge (Ira Aldridge Theater)
• Louis C. Cramton (Cramton Auditorium)
• Harriet Tubman (Tubman Quads) ---Soujourner Truth, Prudence Crandall, Phillis Wheatley, Frazier, and Baldwin
• Lucy Diggs Slowe (Slowe Hall Dormitory)
• Charles R. Drew (Drew Hall Dormitory)
• George Washinton Carver (Carver Hall Dormitory)
• Earnest Everett Just (Just Hall)

       This lecture was very dynamic to me because, for one, Dr. Benjamin came with so much information but she didn't speed through it too much. Also, because it influences me, as not only a scholar at Howard University, but as a person with so much heritage and legacy to look up to, to be one of the great scribes of the time that I'm living in. The lecture made it clear to all of the students that great things can be done by even the lowliest of people because most of the people mentioned were blacks. In the times that they accomplished all of these great things, we were still fighting for our basic rights and freedoms as human beings. From this lecture I will take with me the lesson:

Great things can be done, because great things have been done...