UNC-Chapel Hill building to drop
name of prominent KKK leader
BY EMERY P. DALESIO
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHAPEL HILL -
Trustees at the country's
oldest public university
decided Thursday, May 28,
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 revers
es 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 institu
tion honoring someone for
being the leader of a terror
ist 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 leader
ship 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 histo
ry should be used to let it
show us how far we've
come, but also how far we
need to go," Cochrane said.
The building now hous
ing the geography depart
ment will be renamed
Carolina HalJ. Trustees also
adopted a 16-year morato
rium against renaming
other places on the campus
that was chartered in 1789,
making it the country's old
est 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 suprema
cist who led the state from
1901-05.
Duke University and
East Carolina University
have dropped Aycock's
name from campus build
ings in the past year and
UNC Greensboro is con
sidering 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 objection
able racist views."
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