TO THE EDITOR:
Over the past several weeks, I have engaged in conversations with people beyond the student activist community about the memorialization of racist men on UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus. In print and in person, I have encountered pleas to understand the conditions that influenced William Saunders, who held a leadership position in the Ku Klux Klan, and after whom buildings on our campus are named.
At the time of his induction, the Klan engaged in lynching in order to terrorize black people in the United States South. Let us be clear: the moral value of murder has not changed here in the past century.
Shifts in our socio-historical context do not excuse his choice to align himself with an organization that valued white male supremacy over the lives of black men and women.
If you claim to value an understanding of North Carolina history, listen with an open mind to people who have been erased from our history textbooks. Better yet: support movements that are making history on our campus today.
Sarah-Kathryn Bryan
Senior
Women’s and gender studies
