UNC-Chapel Hill is removing the names from three campus buildings that honor individuals who are tied to white supremacy and racism. A fourth building will keep its name, but signs will clarify which members of a family it honors.

The campus Board of Trustees voted Wednesday to remove the names of Charles B. Aycock, Julian S. Carr and Josephus Daniels from their respective buildings. The name of Thomas Ruffin Sr. will be stripped from that residence hall, but it will still honor his son, Thomas Ruffin Jr.

These men “occupied high positions of influence and public trust” and used that power against Black people, according to the university’s Commission on History, Race & A Way Forward, which made the recommendation to remove the names.

“Together, they fought to disenfranchise Black men and to establish the regime of Jim Crow, which for more than half a century denied Black North Carolinians equal justice and the fundamental rights of citizenship,” the commission said in its resolution.

“Aycock, Carr, Daniels and the elder Ruffin were not simply men of their times,” the commission’s resolution says. “Instead, they wielded power, wealth, and influence to define the historical moments in which they lived.”

The commission provided evidence to support its recommendation, which was presented to trustees.

An appointed renaming committee used that background information to investigate the request and create a report for UNC-CH Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz. The renaming committee included UNC students, faculty, alumni, trustees and administrators. Guskiewicz reviewed the committee’s report and submitted a formal request to the board for approval.

‘This is the right thing to do’

“The actions of these individuals were egregious even for their time, and their conduct was central to their careers and lives as a whole,” Guskiewicz said at the meeting. “There’s no evidence that their views moderated or changed in their lifetimes, and the accounts of their behavior are supported by documentary evidence.”

He said keeping the names on UNC’s buildings jeopardizes the university’s integrity and impedes its mission of teaching, research and service to all North Carolinians.

“Continuing to honor these men is antithetical toward our work in building a diverse and inclusive community,” Guskiewicz said.

He mentioned UNC’s charter, which references “the happiness of a rising generation” that didn’t include all people when it was written. Guskiewicz said this action is a step forward in expanding the meaning of that charter to bring every member of this rising generation into a more inclusive community.

“The time is now,” Guskiewicz said at the meeting. “This is the right thing to do at this time in our university’s history and the issues facing the nation right now.”

The board voted on each name separately and did not vote on the removal of Thomas Ruffin Jr., for whom the Ruffin Residence Hall was also named. Trustees said there was not enough information about the younger Ruffin to approve the removal.

Each vote was 11-2, with trustees John Preyer and Allie Ray McCullen voting against the removal of the names.

The university will start physically removing the names from the buildings this afternoon, according to Guskiewicz.

The board also voted to approve temporary names for each building.

The Aycock dorm will be renamed Residence Hall 1, the Daniels building will be renamed the Student Stores building and the Carr building will be the Student Affairs building. Ruffin dorm will keep that name, but signage will be changed inside and on the exterior to indicate it is named for Thomas Ruffin Jr.

“We are serious about reckoning with our history as a university,” Board Chairman Richard Stevens said at the meeting. “We have much work to do still as a board and as a community to promote a deeper understanding of our history and to rectify the wrongs of racism.”

The board will follow current renaming policy and vote on new official and more permanent names for the buildings based on recommendations from the chancellor.

Guskiewicz told the News & Observer that UNC will listen to the community and alumni when considering new names. He said they will think about North Carolinians and those whose values align with the values of the university and who have made significant contributions to moving the state and university forward.

He said some have suggested names that would better represent the demographics of the state, which would bring some diversity to the conversation.

Racist history of UNC buildings’ namesakes

The fourbuildings were all named after menwho “used their positions to impose and maintain violent systems of racial subjugation,” UNC history professor and commission co-chairman Jim Leloudis said at a meeting earlier this month.

▪Aycock Residence Hallwas named after former North Carolina Gov. Charles Aycock, a UNC alumnus who led the white supremacy campaign of 1898 that “condoned the use of violence to terrorize black voters and their white allies,” according to the commission’s report. Aycock embraced “White Supremacy and Its Perpetuation” as the guiding principle of his political career and was a “principal architect of the regime of Jim Crow,” the report says.

Other North Carolina universities — including Duke, East Carolina and UNC Greensboro — have alsoremoved the Aycock name from campus buildings.

▪The Carr building is named after former trustee Julian S. Carr who funded the construction for the building, which used to be a dorm. Carr helped finance the Democratic Party’s white supremacy campaign of 1898, which “stripped black men of the right to vote and institutionalized racial segregation,” according to the commission’s report.

He also used violence to suppress Black citizenship, supported the regime of Jim Crow andwas a self-proclaimed “proud” member of the Ku Klux Klan, the report says.

Carr also gave a racist speech at thededication of the Silent Sam Confederate statue that stood on UNC’s campus for about a century until it was torn down by protesters 2018. He gave hundreds of other speeches to promote a censored history of the Civil War and Confederate history in education, according to the report.

Duke University removed Carr’s name from a campus building in 2018.

▪The Daniels Building, which houses the UNC Student Stores, is named after former News & Observer publisher, former UNC trustee and lifelong white supremacist Josephus Daniels.

Daniels helped shape the strategy for the Democratic Party’s white supremacy campaign of 1898 and 1900 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,” the report says.

With the help of Aycock in 1898, Daniels rolled back reforms that would give Black North Carolinians political and social equality and established the system that would become known as Jim Crow.

“What followed was a vitriolic and violent campaign to restore white rule,” the report says.

N.C. State University and a Raleigh middle school recentlyremoved the Daniels name from buildings. Astatue of Daniels in downtown Raleigh was also removed in June.

▪The dorm Ruffin Hall is named after former N.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice and UNC trustee Thomas Ruffin Sr. and his son Thomas Ruffin Jr, a UNC alumnus.

The elder Ruffin used his legal authority to give slave owners absolute power and normalize the violence in slavery, going against established case law according to the commission.

“Among legal scholars, his ruling in State v. Mann is known as ’the coldest and starkest defense of the physical violence inherent in slavery that ever appeared in an American judicial opinion,’” the commission’s resolution says.

Ruffin personally enslaved 135 men, women and children in North Carolina who were “worked to death” and “whipped mercilessly,” according to the commission’s report. He also invested in and profited from the domestic slave trade.

Trustees vote against changing names

Preyor said denaming these buildings has been a “rush to purge the names of these alumni that were once deemed noteworthy” and now they’re considered “pariahs.”

“Instead of judging these alumni, I think we should do something more meaningful and more significant and we should forgive them,” Preyor.

He said the university should keep the names and also ask the families for forgiveness for the “pain and embarrassment” that this process has caused them.

Preyor also put forth a motion to formally forgive these four alumni, gather a comprehensive list of alumni whose names warrant similar action by the end of the fall and have an official day to celebrate that action. He said the ceremony on campus with the “affected families” of the individuals would honor the building names “in the name of forgiveness” and unite the university community.

That motion was tabled.

Trustee McCullen applauded Preyor’s comments and said the board is “stirring up a hornets nest” by considering these changes.

McCullen and Preyer both voted against the removal of each name and the temporary names.

Guskiewicz said the process has not been rushed and the work to understand the history behind UNC building names began in 2015 and was revamped in February with the creation of the Commission on Race, History and A Way Forward.

Guskiewicz said the racial tensions across the nation over the past few months have expedited the need for these changes. And the commission’s work sets a high bar for future requests for removal, he said.

New policy for more name changes at UNC

Earlier this month, theUNC board adopted a policy for renaming campus buildingsand public spaces. These four buildings were brought up at that meeting.

According to the policy, a potential name change must come through a written request that outlines the specific conduct of the namesake that “jeopardizes UNC’s integrity, mission or values” and the harm caused by honoring that person, The News & Observer previously reported. A committee that includes UNC leaders, students, faculty and alumni will investigate the claims and create a report for the chancellor to review and then submit to the board for approval.

The policy was crafted after the board lifted a 16-year moratorium on renaming places on campus, particularly those honoring people with ties to racism or white supremacy. That decision came after nationwide protests, including at UNC-CH, against police brutality and systemic racism, as well as pressure from onlinepetitions and protests from students and faculty.

The Commission on History, Race & A Way Forward plans to make additional requests in the future.

One building on campus, Hamilton Hall, has already been unofficially renamed by the chairs of the Departments of History, Political Science and Sociology, and the Peace, War, and Defense Curriculum who work in that building. The group said the building’s namesake,Joseph Grégoire de Roulhac Hamilton, helped shape the university for the benefit of white supremacy.

A new banner is hanging on the building naming it “Pauli Murray Hall” to honor Murray, a Black descendant of one of the university’s original trustees, who was denied admission to a UNC doctorate program based on her race. The group asked the commission to consider a permanent change.

Students and faculty have identified about 30 places on the Chapel Hill campus and the commission’s report noted several buildings and dorms named for “slave owners, Confederate officers, Klansmen, and avowed white supremacists.”

That list includes Battle Hall, Pettigrew Hall, Vance Hall, Swain Hall, Phillips Hall, Steele Building, Grimes Residence Hall, Mangum Residence Hall, Manly Residence Hall, Manning Hall, Murphey Hall, Saunders Hall (which has been renamed), Spencer Residence Hall, Bingham Hall and Graham Residence Hall, which were all named in the 1910s and 1920s.

The names of those buildings and spaces could be changed under this new policy.

This story was originally publishedJuly 29, 2020 at 10:13 AM.

Kate Murphy

The News & Observer

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Kate Murphy covers higher education for The News & Observer. Previously, she covered higher education for the Cincinnati Enquirer on the investigative and enterprise team and USA Today Network. Her work has won state awards in Ohio and Kentucky and she was recently named a 2019 Education Writers Association finalist for digital storytelling.Support my work with a digital subscription