As the UNC campus community continues to rally for a safer and more inclusive space for its Black students and staff, The Black Student Movement recently sent a list of demands to university leadership calling for immediate action.
One of the demands is the creation of a permanent memorial for James Cates Jr. Recently, there’s been a larger push to recognize Cates with the renaming of the Student Stores Building in his honor.
James Cates Jr., a 22-year-old Chapel Hill resident, was stabbed to death by members of a white supremacist biker gang near UNC’s Student Union in November of 1970. According to the James Cates Memorial Committee, a coalition created by The Black Student Movement, police failed to provide life-saving medical treatment to Cates in a timely manner, ultimately leading to his death.
The Student Stores Building was previously named after white supremacist Josephus Daniels until the Board of Trustees voted to remove the name last July. The James Cates Memorial Committee sent a proposal to Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz to rename the Student Stores Building after Cates on June 15. This Thursday, July 8, the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee for Naming University Facilities and Units met to review potential name changes – which may include the renaming of the Student Stores.
Any considerations brought up by the advisory committee during that meeting, which was predominantly held in closed session, could be heard at the next Board of Trustees meeting July 15.
Dawna Jones, chair of the Carolina Black Caucus and president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP, said whether it is fighting to award Nikole-Jones a tenured position at UNC or condemning buildings named after white supremacists, it all adds up to a large racial reckoning that has been years in the making.
“When we think about racial reckoning, the James Kate’s renaming of students stories is a part of that,” Jones told 97.9 The Hill. “We owe it to the family, to the legacy of James Cates, to honor him in that way and that is not separate from the conversation around systemic racism and black faculty and staff and students, alumni, and community members. I think what we often lose is, in the conversation, is that many times you’ll hear just about black faculty – you don’t often hear about staff, administrators, alumni. But our community members are the people who laid the bricks to build this university and we cannot leave them out of the conversation.”
The same day the renaming proposal was submitted to the university by Black Student Movement leaders, the Orange County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to support the James Cates Building.
Multiple county commissioners said to remain silent on this issue and to not endorse the renaming proposal would be an injustice — including Commissioner Mark Dorison.
“We have taken repeated public stands about racial equity and against white supremacy,” Dorosin said. “James Cates was murdered by white supremacists on the UNC campus. The people that are pushing this change are longtime residents of our community and constituents. I can’t remember the exact quote that Dr. King said about the silence of white liberals, but this is one of those occasions where I don’t think we can afford to be silent. In fact, to be silent is actually to speak very loud.”
Previously, in July of 2020, the UNC Board of Trustees voted to remove the names of Charles Aycock, Josephus Daniels, Julian Carr and Thomas Ruffin Sr. from UNC campus buildings because of their ties to white supremacy in North Carolina.
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