“You Just Can’t Put Into Words The Influence That (Stone) Had On Our Campus”

UNC J-School Professor and former colleague of Chuck Stone, Charlie Tuggle says despite all the many things he accomplished in his life, Stone was always a humble, down to earth man.

“Chuck had a great sense of humor,” Tuggle says. “He always had such a big smile, and you felt like he could have just come from tea with Gandhi and yet when he sees you he wants to know, ‘How are you? How’s the family? What’s going on? How’s that student performing in your class?’”

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Professionally, Stone wrote for publications such as the Washington Afro-American, the Chicago Daily Defender, and the New York Age. He taught at UNC, Bryn Mawr College, the University of Delaware, and Harvard.

Tuggle says Stone was not only a civil rights activist, but a human rights activist. He says he would often share—not in a boastful way—that he was on a first-name basis with Malcom X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and even knew Gandhi.

Tuggle says the content Stone taught and the way in which he taught it made him one of the most popular professors on UNC’s campus.

“You just can’t put into words the influence that he had on our campus,” Tuggle says. “Just his class in censorship, that was oversubscribed every semester—students clamoring to get into it. He was so popular among the students and just a genuinely nice guy to work with.”