Coalition of Black Empowerment hosts Black Jeopardy
A participant raises his hand to answer a question at Black Jeopardy Thursday, Feb. 9 in the Bovee University Center. Participants split into teams in order to answer trivia questions about Black culture.
The Coalition of Black Empowerment (COBE) hosted its Black Jeopardy event Feb 9 as part of Multicultural Academic Student Services (MASS) Black History Month celebration.
From 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., Central Michigan University members of all kinds packed into the Center of Student Inclusion and Diversity to learn about Black history.
“I was really happy with the turnout,” Secretary of COBE Genesia Thompson said. “There are a lot of people here and we had a lot of participation. So I was really happy to see it all come together.”
The attendees were split into five teams with themes such as sports, music, inventions, sitcoms, art and movies all focused on Black people in history. Each team took turns making guesses or stealing chances from the opponents.
Examples of jeopardy questions during the event include:
- Who was the first Black MVP in professional baseball? Jackie Robinson
- What Black man invented one of the first traffic signals? Garrett Morgan
COBE e-board members moderated the event. As time passed, the questions got more difficult and the energy of the participants only grew.
In the end, only one team could win, but laughs were shared throughout the entire event.
Students at the event said learning spaces on campus for Black students are necessary.
“They (learning spaces) are very important, in my opinion,” Thompson said. “It affects ourselves individually as Black students. That comes into our self-confidence. It affects how we communicate. It affects just really our overall comfort on campus. It's really important to feel comfortable on the campus that you go to being that it's supposed to be your school, so you should feel as though you belong.”
The Coalition of Black Empowerment is a student-led organization at CMU whose goal, according to their statement on Engage Central, is to empower and uplift Black students on campus, as well as create safe spaces for Black students to express their frustrations or concerns with the university.
“We typically cover different topics. I know we wanted to talk about toxic masculinity in the Black community,” Thompson said. “Before, we have talked about mental health and how we deal with stress and things like that. We also give ways we can support ourselves and each other.”
To find out more about Black History Month events, visit MASS online.
