Who are your campus buildings and rooms named after? 🤔
Have you ever wondered where your campus buildings and rooms names came from?
Well, many have taken their names from inspiring black individuals who have shaped today ✨
Look no further – this article will fill you in with history and everything else you need to know! 🙌
Located on Fredrick Road is the Mary Seacole building, the home of the College of Health and Social Care.
Its high-spec working clinics, along with medical simulation facilities, are very popular with TV production companies for location filming!
“Time is a great restorer, and changes surely the greatest sorrow into a pleasing memory.” – Mary Seacole
Mary Seacole, the daughter of a white Scottish officer in the British army and a Jamaican woman, has often been described as the black Florence Nightingale, another nurse who came to public attention after reports of her selflessness in helping wounded soldiers during the Crimean War (1853-1856) started to circulate.
Mary travelled to London specifically in order to volunteer as a nurse. After being rejected by the War Office, she borrowed money and travelled by herself to the battlefields of Eastern Europe to help those injured.
Inside the Northside of University House are several rooms which have also taken pioneering names...
“We create our future, by well improving present opportunities: however few and small they be.” – Lewis Howard Latimer
Inventor and engineer Lewis was born to parents who had fled slavery. He learnt the art of mechanical drawing while working at a patent firm.
Over the course of his career as a draftsman, Latimer worked closely with Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, in addition to designing his own inventions which include: an improved railroad car bathroom and an early air conditioning unit.
“Today we move forward, with our wisdom, with our strength, with our nation as one.” – Aden Abdullah Daar
Aden Abdullah Osman Daar, also known as Aden Adde, was the first president of Somalia, serving the Somali Republic from 1 July 1960 – 6 July 1967 (when the country first gained its independence).
In 1990, when the country was edging towards anarchy, he along with around 100 other Somali politicians signed a manifesto expressing concern over the destruction of property and land, murders and the flight of refugees, because of the civil war in Somalia. He was arrested along with more than 50 others by Barre's faltering regime.
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” – Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela was the first black president of South Africa, elected after time in prison for his anti-apartheid work (a system in South Africa where people of different races were kept separate, and white people had more rights and advantages). He was also a social rights activist, politician and philanthropist and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.
His birth name was Rolihlahla Mandela. "Rolihlahla" in the Xhosa language literally means "pulling the branch of a tree".
A room in the Southside of University House is named after a particular woman who is still recognised all over the world as a symbol of freedom and equality...
“I was a person with dignity and self-respect, and I should not set my sights lower than anybody else just because I was black.” – Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks was an American activist in the civil rights movement, best known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott. This is when she refused to give her seat up to a white man on a bus in 1955.
The United States Congress honored her as "the first lady of civil rights" and "the mother of the freedom movement".
We hope you found this article useful and learnt some history about who’s behind your campus building and rooms names 😄
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