UNC-Chapel Hill building honoring KKK leader leads students to speak out

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A building on the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill campus is currently named after a former Ku Klux Klan leader — and students are unhappy with this honor.

Saunders Hall is the school’s history department building, and it is named in honor of William L. Saunders, a 1854 graduate of UNC who went on to become a colonel in the Confederate Army during the Civil War.

However, the school’s website, which includes Saunders’s biography, also recognizes him as the “chief organizer of the KKK in North Carolina and Chapel Hill” in 1869.

Saunders then became Secretary of State and later served as a university trustee from 1874 until 1891.

UNC-Chapel Hill students are now speaking out and are calling on trustees to rename Saunders Hall.

“They aren’t just places where we go to study English or social science,” Willie Wright, a doctoral candidate at the school, told the Daily Tar Heel. “They’re spaces that are named after individuals who perpetuated certain types of domination, particularly racial domination.”

A petition has been launched, and a rally was held on the school’s campus last week calling on school officials to take action.

“We will not bow down to racism. We will not bow down to injustice. We will not bow down to exploitation,” students and staff members chanted outside of the building.

In addressing the controversy, Lowry Caudill, a chairman of the Board of Trustees,  said the board encourages the effort from students, but the university’s policy must be upheld.

“The Board of Trustees welcomes input from students on this issue. We encourage them to share their research and thoughts with us,” Caudill reportedly said in an email. “I know Vice-Chair Alston Gardner has had conversations with students on this topic and we look forward to hearing from them. It’s important to note that the University has a policy on renaming campus facilities, which would be our guideline in any such conversation.”

The policy states:

If the benefactor’s or honoree’s reputation changes substantially so that the continued use of that name may compromise the public trust, dishonor the University’s standards, or otherwise be contrary to the best interests of the University, the naming may be revoked. However, caution must be taken when, with the passage of time, the standards and achievements deemed to justify a naming action may change and observers of a later age may deem those who conferred a naming honor at an earlier age to have erred. Namings should not be altered simply because later observers would have made different judgments.

What actions do you think the University should employ? Tell us your thoughts below.

Follow Lilly Workneh on Twitter @Lilly_Works