Jalen Snipes & Rasheena Smith / GNP contributors
It has been hit and miss for ECU when it comes to taking a controversial name off a building and replacing it with a more agreeable one.
It hit in 2016 when Aycock Residence Hall became Legacy hall. The dorm’s former namesake was Charles B. Aycock, governor of North Carolina from 1901 to 1950 and an ardent segregationist.
But ECU missed, at least so far, in 2021 when its Board of Trustees paused an administration effort to rename five buildings whose long-dead namesakes also held white supremacist views. A committee is now taking a university-wide look at diversity, equity and inclusion issues, and that may include building names. The committee’s charge is not crystal clear on that.
In both instances, though, there was noticeable and at times heated push back against the name changes.
Other universities have had smoother sailing in their initiatives to take the names of now-controversial historical figures off campus buildings. The Greenville News Project conducted a four-month investigation to see if these cases offered lessons to learn for ECU. It contacted 25 universities and colleges, including each of ECU’s 11 peer institutions.
It found that some the schools sailed into the rough waters of pushback while others found calm seas. Most of ECU’s peer institutions are in the Midwest and do not have the South’s racial histories. They have no buildings named after segregationists.
Students led the change
North Carolina A&T University, a historically black college, had a building renamed after white supremacist Cameron Morrison. He was one of the leaders of the infamous 1898 Wilmington insurrection that saw whites kill an estimated 60 African Americans in the coastal North Carolina city and prompted over 2,000 to flee. The uprising overthrew the city’s multiracial government.
Once A&T students became aware of Morrison’s history, they wanted change. “Students were upset and on campus they made it known by protesting,” said Kameron Langley, an A&T student-athlete and business major.
Still, when it came time to take down Morrison’s name, “there were no conflicts,” said A&T Associate Vice Chancellor Ralisha Mercer. The school’s Board of Trustees “voted unanimously to make the change,” she said.
Mercer said that everything starts with the students and that universities should put them first, especially in circumstances like this one. “Students are surrounded by these buildings daily; they live in them. It's important that the university community is reflective of the students, faculty and staff it supports,” she said.
At Meredith College in Raleigh, the process of renaming of the now-former Joyner Hall went smoothly too.
He hall was named for James Yadkin Joyner, a long-time trustee of the college and a white supremacist. In April his name was struck off and the building became Lux Hall.
The reason why things went so smoothly is because the school sent out QR codes for students to advocate and send their responses to the Board of Trustees, said Melyssa Allen, the college’s news director.
“The vast majority of the responses received were in support of the decision to rename Joyner Hall,” Allen said. “Our students understand that the building name change is just one part of Meredith’s Collegewide Anti-Racism Initiative, which was launched in 2020.”
Alumni pushback
Queen’s University in Charlotte chose to rename Burwell Hall because its namesake, Robert Burwell, was a slave owner. The move angered some alumni, among them older whites, said the university’s communication director, Keith Pierce.
“Some alumni called and expressed their anger in letters or emails,” Pierce said. They felt was no need to change the name because it’s history and one shouldn’t change history.
The university reached out to those alumni, and some of the conversations got heated, Pierce said, adding that “none warranted any reconsideration of the decision” to strike Burwell’s name.
On campus the response was different. Students and faculty were “receptive” and “supportive” of the name change, Pierce said.
Split sides
The University of South Carolina-Sumter sailed into split opinions among students on the issue of renaming its Longstreet Theater.
The theater was named after Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, an educator, minister and lawyer and educator, and in 1857 he became president of South Carolina College, the predecessor of today’s USC system. And he was a successionist and slave owner.
Some USC-Sumpter students argued that campus buildings shouldn’t be named after people who, like Longstreet, who held racist views, said Ngaru Ngom, the USC-Sumpter student government vice president.
At the same time as the Longstreet renaming, the university renamed its 650 Lincoln building for Celia Dial Saxon, one of the first women and African Americans to attend the State Normal School in the mid-1800s.
Some students were against that, Ngom said. For Ngom, a person of color herself, the new Saxon building “shows progress and tells me that the school gives consideration to the students who were unhappy with the previous name.”
Lessons for ECU
Split opinions among alumni, students and other members of the ECU community have been common when it comes to the 2016 and more recent building renaming issues.
One thing that didn’t come up during those two cases, at least not publicly, was the idea of naming an ECU building after an prominent African American.
The obvious candidate is Laura Marie Leary, who in 1962 because ECU’s first and only fulltime African American student.
Ron Mitchelson, ECU’s former interim chancellor, agreed that there should be a plaque on the pavement where Leary first stepped on campus. “It is very symbolic to follow in the footsteps of the first African American student, you know, that's really nice,” he said.
About a plaque to Leary, he said, “I think all of this is possible. You have to just continue to inquire and stress its importance to the governing boards.”
There’s a need for a greater acknowledgement of African Americans at ECU and across the nation, said Lathan Turner, the university’s associate director of Student Transitions.
“I do believe that more African Americans should be honored on campuses across the country because of the innumerable contributions they have made to the building and reshaping of culture in America,” he said.
Snipes and Smith produced this story for the spring 2020 class, In-depth Reporting Capstone.
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