Renaming UNC buildings sees no progress in three years since committee recommendation
UNC workers remove the remainder of William Saunders' name from Carolina Hall on June 1, 2015. William Saunders was a chief organizer in the North Carolina Ku Klux Klan.
Editor's note: This article uses she/her, he/him and they/them pronouns to refer to Pauli Murray. This is done in accordance with the style used by the Pauli Murray Center.
None of the buildings that were recommended to be renamed by the University’s Commission on History, Race, and a Way Forward have had their names changed, three years after the recommendation.
In April 2021, the commission wrote a letter suggesting that the University change the names of 10 buildings that are named after men who owned slaves, served in the Confederacy and/or used their positions of power to promote racial inequality.
The 15-member commission was created in 2020 by former Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz as a successor of the Chancellor’s Task Force on UNC-Chapel Hill History, created by former Chancellor Carol Folt in 2015. The commission was created to engage with and teach about UNC's history with race and to provide recommendations to the chancellor on how the UNC community "must reckon with the past," according to its website.
The Daily Tar Heel reached out to members of the commission multiple times but was unable to obtain comment.
When asked about the renaming process, UNC Media Relations said that building name removal and renaming is governed by the Board of Trustees.
According to the policy on naming University facilities and units, to rename a building, a naming request must be submitted to the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Naming University Facilities and Units which is then approved by the Board of Trustees.
Media Relations said that the commission is continuing to make recommendations, also saying that that there was no one available to interview about renaming buildings on multiple occasions when The DTH reached out for comment.
The DTH reached out to UNC’s Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer Leah Cox and was unable to obtain comment about the situation. Cox said that she did not have enough information on the topic to make a statement and that she would have to do more investigation herself to provide her opinion.
Claude Clegg, distinguished professor and department chair of African, African American, and Diaspora studies wrote in a statement to The DTH that if buildings are going to be named after people, they should be people that reflect the University and its mission.
“It should be individuals who lived lives and made contributions that reflect the intellectual, ethical, and professional values that the University presently embraces,” Clegg wrote.
The halls
The 10 buildings under scrutiny are Avery, Graham, Grimes, Morrison and Ruffin residence halls as well as Battle, Pettigrew, Vance, Bingham and Hamilton halls. The commission composed biographies of the men these buildings are named for to argue the need for renaming.
Cars sit outside of Morrison Residence Hall circa 1970. Photo courtesy of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Image Collection Collection #P0004, North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Seven of the namesakes — William Waightstill Avery, James Johnston Pettigrew, Zebulon Baird Vance, Robert Hall Bingham, John Washington Graham, Bryan Grimes Jr. and Thomas Ruffin Jr. — served in the Confederacy as politicians or soldiers. Six — Avery, Battle, Pettigrew, Vance, Grimes and Thomas Ruffin Sr. — owned slaves. All — including Joseph Grégoire de Roulhac Hamilton and Cameron Morrison — used their power as military, political, academic and University figures to promote racism.
Under Graham’s command, Confederate troops massacred fugitive slaves during the 1864 Battle of Plymouth, N.C. Bingham taught at a private academy for boys, where he promoted white supremacist ideology. Grimes was involved in directing Ku Klux Klan activities.
Grimes Residence Hall stands mid-construction on Feb. 11, 1922. Photo courtesy of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Image Collection Collection #P0004, North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In 2020, Thomas Ruffin Sr.’s name was removed from Ruffin Residence Hall. The Board of Trustees left Ruffin Jr.'s name, whoadvocated foramnesty of Klansmen who participated in terrorist acts.
The history, sociology, political science and peace, war and defense departments started the process of renaming Hamilton Hall to Pauli Murray Hall in 2020. Pauli Murray was a Black orator, author, attorney, historian, priest and activist who was denied admission to the University’s doctoral program in sociology in 1938 because of his race. However, the process of renaming Hamilton Hall has stalled.
In a statement to The DTH about the renaming of Hamilton Hall earlier this year, Mark Crescenzi, Department Chair and Professor of Political Science, said there are multiple reasons to rename Hamilton Hall after Murray, and that UNC missed out on her knowledge and impact by denying them admission.
“I want everything about our building to signal an inclusive and welcoming environment for all members of our community. The current name fails to send that signal,” he wrote.
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The efforts to rename campus buildings did not start with the commission.
Cemil Aydin, a history professor,wrote in a statement to The DTH that over the past 50 years, universities recognized their role in past dehumanization and oppression, though the process remains incomplete.
Aydin also wrote that scholars have long pointed out that racism, genocide and colonialism were not due to ignorance of uneducated individuals, but were rationalized and promoted by educated individuals and institutions, including prestigious universities.
“While we teach the moral evil caused by racial thinking in the classroom, it is ironic and hypocritical to have the buildings named after those who advocated racist discrimination towards others,” he wrote.
On October 6, 1999, Students Seeking Historical Truth (SSHT) emblazon Saunders Hall with a banner labelled "KKK" to call attention to the university's legacy of white supremacy. Saunders Hall was named for a chief organizer of the North Carolina Ku Klux Klan, William Saunders. Photo courtesy of the John Kenyon Chapman Papers #5441, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In 2015, the University renamed Saunders Hall, initially named for William L. Saunders — a University alumnus, historian and the chief organizer of the local and state Ku Klux Klan. The building became Carolina Hall, rather than naming it the proposed name after Zora Neale Hurston, a Black novelist and anthropologist who briefly attended UNC.
Youssef Carter, assistant professor of religious studies, said that it was unfortunate the University was not able to meet the proposal of students and faculty who wanted the building to honor an important African American Figure. Carter said that there was something important about neutrality that leans toward the status quo, as opposed to transformation or a move toward reconciliation.
“If you merely talk about or try to shed light on histories of discrimination, histories of racialization and dispossession and disenfranchisement, etc., without actually trying to undo some of those harms, then what are we doing?” Carter said.
