To reflect on the year, Chapelboro.com is re-publishing some of the top stories that impacted and defined our community’s experience in 2021. These stories and topics affected Chapel Hill, Carrboro and the rest of our region.
As our community, and our country, continues to grapple with its role in systemic racism, several school buildings saw their namesakes changed in the last year. UNC landed on two solutions for buildings who had their namesakes removed in 2020, while Orange County Schools formally changed the names of two schools in its district.
As part of Orange County Schools’ ongoing 14-step plan to address “persistent racial intolerance, inequities and academic disparities” in the district, a review of building names was conducted to examine their “origin and compliance” with equity goals. In February, Orange County’s Board of Education voted to remove the namesakes of Cameron Park Elementary School and C.W. Stanford Middle School based on their ties to the disenfranchisement of Black residents. Cameron Park, named after 19th century slaveowner Paul Carrington Cameron, was changed unanimously.
The discussion around Charles Whitson Stanford Sr., a long-time school board chairman for the district, was more split. Stanford served on the Board of Education from 1941 to 1967 and his descendants defended his character at several school board meetings, adding that family members received little to no contact from Orange County Schools as it gathered information. Two school board members went on to vote against changing the namesake.
Some who shared feedback through submission forms and during board meetings, however, said the culture of Orange County Schools under that era of Stanford’s leadership reflected systemic racism. Inequitable funding, a lack of urgency to integrate schools and other examples from the 1960s led the school board to vote on February 22 to change the middle school’s name.
Later in the summer, the Orange County Schools Board of Education voted on new names proposed by a School Renaming Committee. The two schools became River Park Elementary School and Orange Middle School in August based on a unanimous vote in June. River Park Elementary School kept its school colors and Tigers mascot, while Orange Middle School overhauled its school colors and updated its logo that kept the Chargers mascot.
A temporary, updated sign for River Park Elementary School in Hillsborough following its name change. (Photo via the Orange County Schools district.)
The new logo for Orange Middle School, which still features the Chargers mascot. (Photo via the Orange County Schools district.)
Meanwhile, in southern Orange County, UNC was going through the process of selecting new names for some of its building. In 2020, the university’s Board of Trustees changed the names of the buildings formerly known as Aycock Residence Hall, the Daniels Building and the Carr Building due to their namesakes’ ties to white supremacy. Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz announced a brief submission process for people to add to the university’s Honorific Name Registry and additional name replacement options in the spring. While he said the goal was to find new namesakes for buildings before the fall semester, it wasn’t until December when two of the buildings had new names.
McClinton Residence Hall, named for UNC’s first Black professor Hortense McClinton, replaced the former Aycock Residence Hall. The Henry Owl Building replaces the Student Affairs Building – formerly Carr Hall. Owl was the first American Indian and first person of color to enroll at UNC, as a history graduate student in 1928.
Patricia Parker, who has been a UNC faculty member since 1998, is the chair of the Commission on History, Race and a Way Forward, which is headed up efforts to change namesakes that reflect oppression. She told Chapelboro she was “quite emotional” seeing new signs installed for McClinton Residence Hall and the Henry Owl Building.
“It’s monumental to be able to acknowledge their contributions and I’m glad to be here to witness it,” Parker said. “To acknowledge the histories that have never been written…that’s what we’re doing today.”
Two buildings with namesakes stripped by the UNC Board of Trustees remain unchanged at the end of 2021. The former Daniels Building continues to be called the Student Stores Building, while Ruffin Residence Hall is cited as being named for Thomas Ruffin Jr. instead of his father, Thomas Ruffin Sr.
UNC also announced the name of a brand new building on campus in October. The facility for UNC’s School of Medicine, being constructed at the site of Berryhill Hall, will be named in honor of Dr. Bill Roper, a long-time dean for the school. Roper, who most recently served as the interim president of the UNC System, also served as the CEO of UNC Health and the dean of UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health. Roper Hall and the rest of the UNC Medical Education Building are expected to complete construction in 2022.
Featured image via Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill.
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