The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill held a ceremony Friday to celebrate changes to a residence hall and a student affairs building. Both infrastructures, named after white supremacists, will be renamed after the school’s first Native American student and first Black faculty member, announced on their website.
“Our University has a history and a campus landscape that has often excluded important voices. And today, we’re taking one step forward to learn and teach something different,” Chancellor Kevin M. Guskiewicz said. “We are on a journey as a campus to be more inclusive and welcoming. We are not done yet.”
The residence hall is named after Charles B. Aycock, a UNC alumnus and North Carolina governor that led a white supremacy campaign that tyrannized Black voters and their white advocates, is set to be renamed after the first Black faculty member, Hortense McClinton. She was hired in 1966 and retired 1984. She worked for UNC School of Social Work. The committee that nominated McClinton said that despite a racist society, she remained a pioneer in desegregating the social working system.
McClinton, a 103-year-old, traveled from Silver Spring, Maryland, for the ceremony, received a standing ovation, and was congratulated and supported by her family members and Delta Sigma Theta sorority members, dressed in their signature crimson and cream colors.
Dean Ramona Denby-Brinson of the School of Social Work announced at the ceremony that McClinton would also have a scholarship named after her, The Hortense McClinton Legacy Scholarship.
“Because of Mrs. McClinton, I’m here,” Denby-Brinson said at the ceremony. “May all of us who walk by the building remember that a social worker blazed a trail for the rest of us, and she has created a more equitable world.”
The student affairs building, named after Julian Carr, a proud KKK member known for funding the 1898 Democratic Party’s white supremacy crusade that pillaged Black men’s rights to vote and institutionalized racism, will be renamed after Henry Owl. Owl was the school’s first American Indian student in 1928.
He was honored and praised for his work for challenging the racist myths of white settlers’ colonialism, fighting for Cherokee Indians’ civil rights, educating at Indian reservation schools, and being a counselor to Indian veterans in World war II.
His daughter Gladys Cardiff was at the ceremony on his behalf and spoke about her father’s family’s gratitude for the honor and how there’s a need to expand the telling of History.
“The significance of today goes far beyond anyone’s name,” Cardiff said. “History is all about who speaks, who gets to speak, and who does not.”
