Thursday, November 8, 2012
ATLANTA – (Nov. 8, 2012) – Leroy Myers Jr., a senior from Baltimore, won $1,000 earlier this month as a contestant in the Ford Black College Quiz show series.
Myers is the first University of Maryland Eastern Shore student invited to participate in the competition since its inception seven years ago.
Contestants were quizzed on African American history across a spectrum of topics that included the African Diaspora, arts and literature, popular music, sports figures, trailblazers, women in Civil Rights and inventors.
Myers and Aundrá Roberts, the UMES Henson Honors Program assistant, traveled to Atlanta, where the competition was taped for the BET network. It will be broadcast between late January and early March 2013.
A nervous Myers performed well enough on a quiz in a preliminary round to earn a $1,000 award that he says he’ll happily apply to his spring tuition bill.
“I kind of surprised myself that I did as well as I did,” Myers said. “It was a great experience. I’m glad that I went.”
Among the highlights from the weekend competition for Myers was meeting TV and film actor, RonReaco Lee.
Myers spent this past summer in New York as a fellow in the prestigious Schomburg-Mellon Humanities Summer Institute program. His area of academic interest as a history major in UMES’ School of Education, Social Sciences, and The Arts is Native Americans. He also has had an op-ed column on the 2012 election published by the Daily Times in Salisbury.
Among the 11 other HBCUs that sent students to the competition were Coppin State, Hampton, and Spelman, which was the host site for the TV taping.
Roberts said Myers was the ideal scholar-ambassador to be UMES’ first representative at the event, and she is confident his performance will mean the university will get future invitations to participate.
Bill Robinson, director, Office of Public Relations, (410) 621-2355
