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NC: “Name Change for East Campus Hall
Friday, September 19, 2014 8:17
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The trend at university’s today is for those being taught, the students, to review the university’s past and especially buildings named for famous North Carolinians and demand them changed if they are not pleased with all the notable contributions of those honored. Perhaps current Duke President Brodhead will decline the honor of having a hall named for him as future student activists will find issues with his beliefs and character. Bernhard Thuersam
From “Duke Magazine,” special issue 2014, volume 100, No. 3:
“Name Change for East Campus Hall
A former governor’s legacy prompted lobbying from student groups.
Aycock Hall isn’t Aycock Hall anymore. In June, the East Campus hall became East Residence Hall – again. That’s the 113-year-old residence hall’s original name. Trinity College named the building for former North Carolina Governor Charles B. Aycock in 1912. More recently, representatives of Duke Student Government and the Black Student Alliance approached the administration, and eventually presented a formal proposal lobbying for a name change based on the legacy of Governor Aycock. There was a review of Aycock’s leadership that found “while Governor Aycock made notable contributions to public education in North Carolina, his legacy is inextricably associated with the disenfranchisement of black voters,” wrote President Richard H. Brodhead in a letter to student leaders announcing the change.
The board of trustees approved the change, which was effective immediately. A display will be placed in the lobby explaining the history of the hall’s name.”
Notes on Governor Aycock:
The base reason why Aycock and North Carolina Democrats pushed for disenfranchisement of the Negro was their belief that the black man was selling his vote, fraudulently voting in elections, and supporting alien carpetbag candidates who helped bring financial ruin to the State. Aycock’s view was to take the vote away from the black man for a period, educate him in the moral and ethical principles and responsibilities of republican government, then return the franchise to him to be used properly.
In his January 1901 inaugural address Aycock said: “If we fail to administer equal and exact justice to the Negro who we deprive of suffrage, we shall in the fullness of time lose power ourselves, for we know that God, who is love, trusts no people with authority for a purpose of enabling them to do injustice to the weak.” In 1903 he said: “But I would not have the white people forget their duty to the Negro. We own an obligation to “the man in black” . . . We owe him gratitude; above all we owe him justice.
At the 1901 Negro State Fair Aycock said: “In glancing through the criminal statistics of the State, I find that while your race constitutes only one-third of the population of North Carolina, you commit one-half of the crimes. Before you can ever take your proper place in the world, you must learn first obedience to law. Inside of your own race you can grow as large and broad and high as God permits, with the aid, sympathy, and the encouragement of your white neighbors.”
Aycock said in April 1901: “ . . . If the Negro is ever educated it will be by the aid of Southern white men. The North cannot do it. Philanthropists in the North think they can educate the Negro without the help of Southern whites, but they are mistaken . . . “
Source: http://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2014/09/nc-name-change-for-east-campus-hall.html
