Students compete in Black Knowledge Bowl

Walking to the Black Knowledge Bowl, Robyn Coleman, team captain for the Talented Tenth, was on her cell phone telling her mom there could only be one winner and she didn’t want to lose.

Talented Tenth was just one of 11 teams that participated in the annual Black Knowledge Bowl on Tuesday in the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center. The teams competed for three monetary prizes and a first-place trophy.

The competition came down to the question of how many electoral votes President Barack Obama won on election night. The Talented Tenth’s answer was off by 35 votes. However, the team secured a lead early in the championship round and won by more than 3,000 points.

The competition was split into three preliminary rounds followed by a championship round. The topics included cities, politics, movies, literature and famous people, all relating to black history.

Coleman said she learned about the struggles of others and said there are many things to know about black history because it’s a broad topic.

The Talented Tenth, a group of five sophomores, won the bowl and received $500 along with a trophy. The team’s name came from W.E.B. DuBois, who said the Talented Tenth was the top 10 percent of the black population, representing doctors, lawyers and other black professionals, Coleman said.

“It’s what we wanted to embody,” she said, adding that teammate Alyssia Oshodi thought of the name.

The second-place team was Voices of Hope, which won $300, and Phi Beta Sigma won $200 for third place. Each team was composed of undergraduate students. Some teams represented student groups, and others were groups of friends.

The Talented Tenth decided before the bowl to split the winnings. Team member Johnny Wright said his winnings will help pay for a trip to Kenya, where he will help teach subjects such as algebra to African students.

Coleman said she planned to use her winnings to buy her younger brother dress clothes for his birthday because he will need them now that he is older.

“Studying for the bowl reinforced what I had learned in my classes, and several of the answers were straight from lectures,” said Wright.

Coleman said each member of her team chose three topics and studied individually because the team didn’t have much time to meet.

“We trusted that each person would do the work,” she said.

Graduate assistant at the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center Evelyn Hamilton, along with other students, used resources in the Neal Marshall library, worked with the director to think of questions and even looked at past questions for ideas.

The questions were chosen based on what Hamilton said she thought students would know and could learn from.

“The main goal was for it to be an educational learning experience for the participants and even for the organizers,” said Hamilton, who helped plan the bowl.

After the bowl, Coleman stood with her teammates, hugging the first-place trophy.

“I realized I know more than I thought I did about black history,” she said.