UNC panel votes to remove names from four campus buildings tied to white supremacy
A UNC-Chapel Hill panel focusing on issues of race and history voted Friday to recommend changing the names of four prominent campus buildings because of ties to white supremacy.
The Daniels Building, Carr Building, Ruffin Residence Hall and Aycock Residence Hall are all named after men who “used their positions to impose and maintain violent systems of racial subjugation,” UNC history professor Jim Leloudis said. He is co-chair of the university’s Commission on History, Race & A Way Forward.
Now, this request will go to Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz, who can forward the request on to the UNC-CH Board of Trustees.
Trustees meet on Thursday
The full board meets on Thursday and will likely discuss a new policy and process for renaming buildings on campus.
In June, the UNC board lifted a 16-year moratorium on the renaming of buildings and historical places on campus, particularly those tied to a racist history.
The decision came after nationwide protests, including at UNC-CH, against police brutality and systemic racism that also criticized Confederate monuments.
Trustee Teresa Artis Neal said then it is time to allow the freedom to move forward and discuss potential changes.
“Things have changed enough, the temperature of the country has changed enough,” she said.
History of campus buildings
Students and faculty have protested the names of about 30 places on the Chapel Hill campus they say are “dedicated to enslavers and white supremacists,” including the proposed buildings and Kenan Memorial Stadium.
Aycock Residence Hall was named after former North Carolina Gov. Charles Aycock, a UNC alumnus who spearheaded a white supremacy campaign that targeted and suppressed black voters, The News & Observer previously reported. Several universities — including Duke, East Carolina and UNC-Greensboro — have removed the Aycock name from campus buildings.
The Daniels Building, which houses the UNC Student Stores, is named after former News & Observer publisher and lifelong white supremacist Josephus Daniels.
Daniels helped shape the strategy for the Democratic Party’s white supremacy campaign of 1898 and used The News & Observer as a “propaganda arm of the party and used political cartoons and sensationalist reporting to demonize Black voters and politicians as a threat to whites,” according to the commission’s presentation. He also promoted Jim Crow segregation.
The Daniels name was recently removed from an N.C. State University building and a Raleigh middle school, and a statue of Daniels was removed from downtown Raleigh last month.
The Carr building is named after Julian S. Carr, who supported the Ku Klux Klan and gave a racist speech at the dedication of the former Silent Sam Confederate statue on the UNC campus, The News & Observer previously reported.
Leloudis said Carr used his wealth and influence to establish the regime of Jim Crow, which denied Black North Carolinians equal justice and the fundamental rights of citizenship for more than 50 years. Carr also financed the Democratic Party’s white supremacy campaign of 1898, according to Leloudis.
Ruffin Hall is named in honor of Thomas Ruffin Sr. and Thomas Ruffin Jr. The elder Ruffin served on the N.C. Supreme Court, including as chief justice, and used his authority to “normalize the violence inherent in slavery,” according to the presentation. He also enslaved 135 men, women and children in North Carolina and profited from the domestic slave trade.
The commission noted there are other buildings on campus that warrant action. They plan to make additional recommendations in the future.
This story was originally published July 10, 2020 at 5:43 PM.
