At Howard, the English classroom offers us models of persons who entered the theater of their minds and from that place produced meaning so profound that it forced language to transform a world of catastrophe by changing its terms. The man for whom Frederick Douglass Hall is named grew up in a world where access to an English classroom was denied him. He fashioned a language to convey that idea. The rest is history. Ernest Just, for whom a building is named on this campus down in the famous valley where scientists are born and raised, grew up in a world where illnesses caused by cellular irregularities were incurable.
All cancer therapy begins there.
He noticed that this great achievement was not a matter of formal study in the schools of this nation. That study began here. It constitutes the greatness of this place. The rest is history. One of our Mothers, Mary McCleod Bethune, reminded us that we are the custodians of a great civilization.