Freshman Seminar, 3rd Lecture (The Eloquence of the Scribes)

Today the speaker Dr. Tochobia Mayes Benjamin spoke about the different functions of scribes in ancient days and now in modern culture. She talked about the origin of Howard University, General Oliver Otis Howard and his goal of educating people who were not white, specifically those of colored backgrounds. She also noted the origins of some the other buildings. For example, founded by an important scribe, the "A" building is named after Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, who was the first African American President of Howard University. Dr. Benjamin touched on the Harlem Renaissance, a period of significant African American cultural advancements that spanned across New York and Chicago and the entire United States. Dr. Benjamin remarked on the major COAS buildings with a particular fondness as she told the stories of Alain Locke and Frederick Douglass, who also were very important scribes from the past. If we stay on task and stick to our purpose, we will be able to join the ranks as important scribes of this day and time as well. Additionally, this lesson paid close attention to past and present day leaders who had a little bit of scribe going for them. As a scribe is an intellectual person who often documents important information for the day and age in which he or she is alive, I feel that scribes should come from not only jotting down history, but numbers and arithmetic, sciences and people who wrote down information from all kinds of subjects. I also feel that scribes had to master their art form, since an ordinary person cannot accurately and acutely keep track of so much data, and have the courage to reproduce it and add to it as well.