Wiping out the memory of racists rolls through the US after Charleston

SA has of late seen a post-colonial reaction against structures and monuments erected in honour or memory of figures that history has (in some respects at least) passed by. Notably, Cecil Rhodes and his legacies have been attacked – as at the University of Cape Town. Other campuses around the country have inherited similar place-names and plaques from apartheid leaders – and restive students have turned their ire on these memorials. But the truths of history may be in danger of being simply listed and expunged with no context. Few, if any, such accusations have been levelled at Rhodes Scholarships, or at the kind of empire-obsessed world in which the bad guys operated. The debate continues – not least in the US, as Bloomberg shows. – Peter Wilhelm

by Ali Elkin

(Bloomberg) – As Confederate flags, statues, and monuments are reconsidered nationally in the wake of last month’s mass shooting in Charleston, colleges and universities are also debating how to address campus buildings that commemorate the confederacy and white supremacists.

In some cases, universities have been struggling with these issues for years. Many public colleges in the south have campus buildings named after a former governor elected as part of the white supremacy movement that swept the region at the dawn of the 20th century. Other buildings are named for men who made contributions to schools and were members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

Some schools argue that stripping buildings of these names would be to disregard the schools’ histories. Proponents of renaming say schools can honour their past without glorifying figures who stood for slavery and segregation.

Among the schools that have recently been forced to address racist symbols and names is Saunders Hall, University of North Carolina. After years of protests from students, the university’s board of trustees voted in May to rename a building honouring William Saunders, a KKK leader. (The building was dedicated to Saunders in 1922.) The students also asked that a plaque be put up to contextualise “Silent Sam”, a confederate monument at Duke University

Duke announced in May that it would rename the Charles Aycock residence, calling it East Residence Hall instead. Aycock was a turn-of-the century governor who essentially ran on a campaign of white supremacy. The campaigns resulted in the Jim Crow laws (enforcing local and state segregation in the old South) and turned a blind eye on violence and intimidation toward black people.

Clemson University’s faculty in February asked the authorities to change the name of Tillman Hall, the most prominent building on campus. Benjamin Tillman was a South Carolina governor who helped implement the Jim Crow laws. The university decided against changing the name, and the trustees’ chairman, David Wilkins, released a statement: “Every great institution is built by imperfect craftsmen. Stone by stone they add to the foundation so that over many, many generations, we get a variety of stones. And so it is with Clemson. Some of our historical stones are rough and even unpleasant to look at. But they are ours …”

After a 2012 incident at the University of Mississippi campus – when students protesting President Barack Obama’s re-election chanted racist slurs – a committee to address race relations on campus generated a list of recommended actions. One of those was renaming a university building that memorialises Mississippi Governor James Vardaman. Elected in 1903, Vardaman is remembered for turns of phrase like, “If it is necessary every Negro in the state will be lynched; it will be done to maintain white supremacy.”

However, instead of renaming the building, the school has said it plans to put signs next to monuments and buildings that seem to glorify the Confederacy and people like Vardaman, explaining the context in which they were constructed.

At Yale, more than 700 students and alumni have signed a petition asking the school to change the name of an undergraduate dormitory named after John C. Calhoun. As vice-president to John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jack, he called slavery a “positive good”. Calhoun, the petition stated, “was respected during his time as an extraordinary American statesman. But he was also one of the most prolific defenders of slavery and white supremacy in American history.”

The changes are occurring on a number of other campuses; and the focus of protest appears entirely directed against the Confederacy and its defenders, even long after the American Civil War.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQJc0mnGOCg&list=PLNxwX7r4A554Vufda2eeEVs-PjHfTrkJ8