Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

2 CO 1 SSI JES ■■HHBnHMHMMMBmHBBHI 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 For more up-to-the minute information about academic departments, adminsitra- tion, athletics, registration, financial aid, as well as the people and activities at Morehouse College, go to www.morehouse.edu Inside MOREHOUSE Director of Public Relations Toni O'Neal Mosley tmosley@morehouse.edu Executive Editor Vickie G. Hampton vhampton@morehouse.edu Editor Add Seymour Jr. aseymour@morehouse.edu Calendar Editor Julie Pinkney Tongue jtongue@morehouse.edu Photographers Philip McCullom Add Seymour Jr. David Collins Graphic Design Glennon Design Web Services Vince Baskerville Hana Chelikowsky Kara Walker Administrative Assistant Minnie L. Jackson 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.