U of M renames campus sites for pioneering Blacks
Two places on the University of Memphis’s campus will be renamed for iconic Black students and leaders in Memphis.
U of M’s most-trafficked building, its University Center, will be renamed the Maxine A. Smith University Center, for the Memphis civil rights legend and desegregation champion. The university’s mall will be renamed the Luther C. McClellan Alumni Mall for the university’s first Black graduate.
Additionally, a marker honoring Miriam Decosta Sugarmon, the first Black professor at U of M, will be placed outside of Jones Hall, where she taught.
The new names and marker are some results of the university’s diversity initiative announced in August. The student government association was involved in the process, U of M President M. David Rudd said Wednesday in the university’s quarterly meeting.
Inside the newly named Maxine A. Smith University Center, U of M will create a mural telling the story of Smith’s life.
“We think the mural and the naming provided an opportunity to share in more depth and detail Maxine’s remarkable story,” Rudd said.
Born in 1929, Smith was the executive secretary of the Memphis chapter of the NAACP during major Civil Rights events in Memphis in the 1960s, including the Sanitation Strike and the integration of the city school system, for which she later served on the board.
In 1957, Smith was denied admittance to pursue graduate studies at thenMemphis State University because she was Black. Smith was later appointed to the Tennessee Board of Regents, which, at the time, oversaw the university as well as other higher education institutions in the state.
Mcclellan, the new namesake of the U of M mall, was one of the eight students who integrated then-memphis State University in 1959, two years after Smith was denied entry. Mcclellan, a mathematics major, became the first Black graduate of the university in 1962. He later went on to become an Air Force officer and later a director at the Federal Aviation Administration, according to the university’s magazine.
Decosta Sugarmon, who will be honored with a marker outside of Jones Hall, became the university’s first Black professor in 1966. She taught Spanish and became an adviser to the Black student association and helped organize the faculty forum, Rudd said. Sugarmon also had been denied entrance to the school in the 1950s, and instead completed undergraduate studies at Wellesley College and graduate and doctoral studies at Johns Hopkins University, where she was the first Black student to earn a doctoral degree, Memphis magazine reported.
Decosta Sugarmon married then-attorney and future notable Memphis politician Russell Sugarmon, who became the first Black person to run for city mayor. They later divorced, and she married local civil rights attorney A.W. Willis, Jr., the magazine reported.
David North, U of M board chairman, said the renaming and markers show that the university has been committed to diversity efforts: “...not just support for the rhetoric of improving social injustice, but actually taking action. And these are just yet three more small steps to move this issue forward.”
The board unanimously approved each of the three proposals.
Laura Testino covers education and children’s issues for the Commercial Appeal. Reach her at laura.testino@commercialappeal.com or 901-512-3763. Find her on Twitter: @Ldtestino