Connect with us

Politics

UNC-Chapel Hill Building to Drop Name of Prominent KKK Head

Published

on

The Old Well on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (AP Photo)

The Old Well on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (AP Photo)

EMERY P. DALESIO, Associated Press

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) — Trustees at the country’s oldest public university decided Thursday to rename a University of North Carolina classroom building so that it no longer carries the name of a 19th century Ku Klux Klan leader.

The decision reverses one made in 1920 to honor William Saunders, a Confederate officer and politician credited with helping to preserve colonial records. But university trustees 95 years ago also praised Saunders for his post-Civil War leadership of the Klan, a violent white supremacist group that aimed to overthrow elected state governments and reverse rights granted to newly emancipated slaves.

“This was the institution honoring someone for being the leader of a terrorist organization. That’s just not going to fly,” said Alston Gardner, one of the trustees who crafted the school’s response to demands by student activists.

Phillip Clay, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and former chancellor who is the trustee board’s only black member, said he would have favored leaving the name and explaining Saunders’ pros and cons. But he agreed a name change was needed after learning earlier campus trustees honored Saunders specifically for his leadership of the Klan, which was even then illegal.

Haywood Cochrane, one of three trustees to vote against renaming, said it’s unwise to evaluate people of other times and places with strictly contemporary eyes.

The university’s history should be used “to let it show us how far we’ve come, but also how far we need to go,” Cochrane said. “This history is ours. We can’t change it. We can’t distance ourselves from it.”

The building now housing the geography department will be renamed Carolina Hall. Trustees also adopted a 16-year moratorium against renaming other places on the campus that was chartered in 1789, making it the country’s oldest public university.

Though it could be reversed by future trustees, the moratorium would seem to freeze in place the name of a dormitory named for former Gov. Charles Aycock, a white supremacist who led the state from 1901-05. Duke University and East Carolina University have dropped Aycock’s name from campus buildings in the past year and UNC Greensboro is considering renaming a 1,600-seat auditorium named for him.

“There are a number of troublesome people in our history. But that’s reality,” Gardner said. In the Saunders case, “we felt it was very different than someone having objectionable racist views.”

The impulse to correct the wrongs of slavery and Jim Crow has led the University of Texas to strip the name of a former law school professor and early Klan organizer from a dorm on the Austin campus. Brown University has faced pressure because it was named for a wealthy Rhode Island family that made its fortune partly by trading slaves. But Utah’s public Dixie State University kept its name despite efforts to disconnect it from the memory of cotton-growing former slaveholders who settled nearby.

Universities change names on buildings all the time, though usually after a donor’s big cash gift, said Jim Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association and former University of Chicago professor who has written about black and Southern history. Columbia University in the 1970s thanked a donor by renaming a dorm previously honoring former student Robert Livingston, who helped draft the Declaration of Independence, Grossman noted.

But challenging America’s racial legacy on universities and the rest of society is increasing as blacks exercise political strength they once lacked and others reconsider the country’s past, he said.

“Maybe what’s happening is an increased sensitivity to the importance of history in context,” Grossman said.

___

Emery Dalesio can be reached at http://twitter.com/emerydalesio

Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of June 4 – 10, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of June 4-10, 2025

Published

on

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Continue Reading

Activism

Remembering George Floyd

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — Minnesota State Attorney General Keith Ellison acknowledges that the Floyd case five years ago involved a situation in which due process was denied, and five years later, the president is currently dismissing “due process. “The Minnesota Atty General also says, “Trump is trying to attack constitutional rule, attacking congressional authority and judicial decision-making.” George Floyd was an African American man killed by police who knocked on his neck and on his back, preventing him from breathing.

Published

on

Mural showing the portrait of George Floyd in Mauerpark in Berlin. To the left of the portrait the lettering "I can't Breathe" was added, on the right side the three hashtags #GeorgeFloyd, #Icantbreathe and #Sayhisname. The mural was completed by Eme Street Art (facebook name) / Eme Free Thinker (signature) on 29 May 2020. (Wikimedia Commons)
Mural showing the portrait of George Floyd in Mauerpark in Berlin. To the left of the portrait the lettering "I can't Breathe" was added, on the right side the three hashtags #GeorgeFloyd, #Icantbreathe and #Sayhisname. The mural was completed by Eme Street Art (facebook name) / Eme Free Thinker (signature) on 29 May 2020. (Wikimedia Commons)

By April Ryan
BlackPressUSA Newswire

“The president’s been very clear he has no intentions of pardoning Derek Chauvin, and it’s not a request that we’re looking at,” confirms a senior staffer at the Trump White House. That White House response results from public hope, including from a close Trump ally, Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. The timing of Greene’s hopes coincides with the Justice Department’s recent decision to end oversight of local police accused of abuse. It also falls on the fifth anniversary of the police-involved death of George Floyd on May 25th. The death sparked national and worldwide outrage and became a transitional moment politically and culturally, although the outcry for laws on police accountability failed.

The death forced then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden to focus on deadly police force and accountability. His efforts while president to pass the George Floyd Justice in policing act failed. The death of George Floyd also put a spotlight on the Black community, forcing then-candidate Biden to choose a Black woman running mate. Kamala Harris ultimately became vice president of the United States alongside Joe Biden. Minnesota State Attorney General Keith Ellison prosecuted the cases against the officers involved in the death of Floyd. He remembers,” Trump was in office when George Floyd was killed, and I would blame Trump for creating a negative environment for police-community relations. Remember, it was him who said when the looting starts, the shooting starts, it was him who got rid of all the consent decrees that were in place by the Obama administration.”

In 2025, Police-involved civilian deaths are up by “about 100 to about 11 hundred,” according to Ellison. Ellison acknowledges that the Floyd case five years ago involved a situation in which due process was denied, and five years later, the president is currently dismissing “due process. “The Minnesota Atty General also says, “Trump is trying to attack constitutional rule, attacking congressional authority and judicial decision-making.” George Floyd was an African-American man killed by police who knocked on his neck and on his back, preventing him from breathing. During those minutes on the ground, Floyd cried out for his late mother several times. Police subdued Floyd for an alleged counterfeit $20 bill.

Continue Reading

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of May 28 – June 30, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of May 28 – June 3, 2025

Published

on

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Continue Reading

Subscribe to receive news and updates from the Oakland Post

* indicates required

CHECK OUT THE LATEST ISSUE OF THE OAKLAND POST

ADVERTISEMENT

WORK FROM HOME

Home-based business with potential monthly income of $10K+ per month. A proven training system and website provided to maximize business effectiveness. Perfect job to earn side and primary income. Contact Lynne for more details: Lynne4npusa@gmail.com 800-334-0540

Facebook

Trending

Copyright ©2021 Post News Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.