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INSIDE MOREHOUSE, FEBRUARY 2011
Inside Morehouse is
about the people who
make up the Morehouse
College community.
To tell those stories,
WE NEED YOU
to send us your ideas,
comments and thoughts,
along with your news,
information about your new
books or publications and
your commentary for
sections like My Word.
To send us your information,
contact Inside Morehouse
Editor Add Seymour Jr. at
aseymoubs’ morehouse.edu
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Inside
MOREHOUSE
Director of Public Relations
Toni O'Neal Mosley
tmosley@morehouse.edu
Executive Editor
Vickie G. Hampton
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Editor
Add Seymour Jr.
aseymour@morehouse.edu
Calendar Editor
Julie Pinkney Tongue
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Add Seymour Jr.
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Inside Morehouse is
published monthly during
the academic year by
Morehouse College.
Office of Communications,
Office of Institutional
Advancement. Opinions
expressed in Inside
Morehouse are those of
the authors, not
necessarily of the College.
MY WORD
“Lest We Forget: The Importance of Knowing our Past in the Present"
Remembering the Founders of Morehouse College at Its 144th Anniversary
By Marce/lus C. Barksdale
H istory is the foundation of
all human experiences. We
build on the past as we
move forward into the future.
Samuel DuBois Cook ’48 has
written about the tragedies and
triumphs of black historyl and
how we may learn from our
past. This is true for all peoples,
including the Morehouse fami
ly. Our Morehouse story begins
in Washington, D.C., in 1866,
and it is our 144-year history
that has “brought us thus far on
the way.” To know how it all
began is instructive to us today,
and I have been able to recon
struct what happened in
Augusta, Ga., on Feb. 14, 1867,
that led to the founding of what
eventually became Morehouse
College in 1913.
On a cold winter’s evening in
February 1867, a group of men
affiliated with the Springfield
Baptist Church in Augusta met
in the home of church deacon
Jonas Singleton to finalize the
list of names of those who
would become the first stu
dents at what would be known
as the Augusta Theological
Institute. The deacons were
responding to a letter - deliv
ered by Richard Coulter to
William Jefferson White—
from the Rev. Edmund Turney,
founder and president of the
National Baptist Theological
Institute and University in
Washington, D.C., to organize
a second branch of the
Institute in this Savannah
River city. The Richmond, Va.,
branch of the National
Theological Institute had been
established in 1865.
Among the men at the
February 14th meeting were
the Rev. Henry Watts, pastor at
Springfield Baptist Church;
deacon Jesse Jones, who kept
the minutes of their delibera
tions; and William Jefferson
White, who presided at the
meeting. 2 Mr. White subse
quently “approached a friend,
Capt. Charles H. Prince, who
secured the support of the
American Missionary Association,
a congregationalist organization
in New England, for the fledging
institute.” 3
Other leaders of Springfield
Baptist Church who must be con
sidered founders of the Augusta
Institute are John T. Shuften,
editor of Augusta’s first black
newspaper, The Colored
American; Robert Harper, a
skilled piano tuner and musi
cian at the church; Simeon
Beard, a Union Army officer;
Thomas Beard, who became a
state legislator; and of course,
Coulter, a graduate of the
National Theological Institute. 4
The names of 37 pupils were
sent to the National
Theological Institute and
University, thus beginning our
College’s 144 years of excep
tional sacrifice and service. It
was with the aid of Charles
Prince that the first faculty
members for the Augusta
Institute were hired. They were
Miss J. A. Sherman, Miss Sarah
Burt and Miss Welch.
As we celebrate the 144th
Anniversary of the founding of
Dear Old Morehouse, let us
remember the men and women
who made it possible. ■
Marcellus C. Barksdale, is
chairman of The Sesquicentennial-
The 150th Morehouse Anniver
sary History Project.
1 Samuel DuBois Cook, “The
Tragic Conception of Negro
History” in The Journal of
Negro History, XLV, (1960).
2 Edward A. Jones, A Candle in
the Dark: A History of
Morehouse College (Valley
Forge, PA, The Judson Press,
967), p. 25 and from conver
sations with Dr. Samuel M.
Nabrit, ‘25.
3 Edward J. Cashin, Old
Springfield: Race and
Religion in Augusta, Georgia
(Augusta: The Springfield
Village Park Foundation, Inc.,
1995), p. 53.
4 Cashin.
Well-Read and Well-Spoken Require Us to be Well-Written
64 There is no possible way you can become any of
those three wells if you cannot effectively deliver a
message through the exercise of proper writing.} }
By Add Seymour Jr.
I am a fan of President Robert
M. Franklin’s idea that
Morehouse men should be
well-balanced, well-traveled,
well-dressed, well-read and well-
spoken. And I truly applaud
those students who strive to
become those men.
But I worry about the focus
placed on being well-read and
well-spoken (and in the end, well
balanced) if a good number of
our students are not working to
improve their writing. I’ve heard
many faculty members who have
cringed at the sight of written
pieces by some students—and
some of their faculty and staff
colleagues—that show either a
lack of understanding or com
plete disregard for the basic rules
of writing.
In my mind, there is no pos
sible way you can become any
of those three wells if you can
not effectively deliver a message
through the exercise of proper
writing.
Part of the problem is the
time we live in. We have become
too accepting of a more casual
approach to life. For instance, we
are more willing to accept jeans
as dress wear. And we have
become a text-messaging, voice
mailing, twittering lot of people
instead of wordsmiths writing a
simple note.
There is a time and place for
everything. Just as jeans—along
with them never needing to be
worn below one’s waistline—are
NOT dress wear, a disdain for
the awareness of proper writing
is not something we can use as
an excuse to not exercise it
more often.
As much as we strive to cre
ate a climate that embraces a
good-looking, strong, hard
working black man, that climate
should strive to develop a black
man who is much more willing
to also wield a pen that is as
sharp as his suit.
He must be a man who
understands that effectively
delivering his well-honed mes
sage into a strong written piece
involves more than just display
ing his collection of large,
impressive words or his knack
for whittling those words down
to something that fits onto an
iPhone screen.
We have to become a campus
that truly emphasizes the idea
that, basically, without good
writing, that well-honed message
becomes a beautiful car without
wheels: worthless.
I must admit that after falling
in love as a child with the way
E.B. White described Wilbur’s
travails in “Charlotte’s Web” the
only thing I’ve ever desired to be
was a writer. I’ve been blessed to
be able to carve out a pretty nice
career as a journalist.
But I’ve always looked at
basic writing as not a vocation
or a talent, but a necessary tool
for effective communication
for all of us. At one of the
nation’s premiere institutions, I
really hope others here begin to
more strongly embrace that
idea also. ■
Add Seymour Jr. is a former
newspaper journalist who is the
College’s communications writer
and editor o/Inside Morehouse.