Board recommends re-naming 4 UNC campus buildings

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — A commission at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has voted in favor of a recommendation to rename four campus buildings that have ties to slaveholders or white supremacists.

The recommendation from the Commission on History, Race & A Way Forward on Friday will go to school’s chancellor, who can then decide to forward it to the Board of Trustees, the Charlotte Observer reported. The board, scheduled to meet Thursday, is expected to discuss a policy to change the names of facilities on campus.

The four buildings at issue are named after men who “used their positions to impose and maintain violent systems of racial subjugation,” said history professor Jim Leloudis, who co-chairs the commission.

The newspaper reported the Daniels Building is named after former newspaper publisher and lifelong white supremacist Josephus Daniels, while Carr Building holds the name of Ku Klux Klan supporter Julian S. Carr. Aycock and Ruffin residence halls are named after former North Carolina Gov. Charles Aycock and Thomas Ruffin Sr. and Thomas Ruffin Jr. Aycock led a white supremacy campaign that suppressed black voters, and the elder Ruffin was the chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court and enslaved more than 100 people.