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What’s in a Name?
PANEL RE-EXAMINES RACIST CAMPUS NAMESAKES LIKE HENRY GRADY
By Ross Williams news@flagpole.com
W ith the need to make amends for
racial injustices old and new getting
a public reckoning, a group responsible for
reviewing the origin of names of Georgia’s
college buildings is preparing to recommend
changes early next year.
A group of historians led by Civil War
author Lisa Tendrich Frank is going through
a list of names of buildings and colleges
around the state to find out more about
their eponyms. The researchers are poring
over old books, alumni magazines and obit
uaries to get a sense of the people honored
with the buildings’ names.
“A lot of the buildings are named after
Georgia politicians or prominent families.
Those are very easy to get information
on,” Frank said at a call-in meeting of the
University System of Georgia’s Naming
Advisory Group. “When they named it after
a professor—I’ve been doing a lot of the
Georgia Tech ones today—some of the ones
named after math professors or chemistry
professors, that requires more digging.”
When they are done, the historians
will present their findings to the advi
sory group, which includes Albany State
University President Marion Fredrick,
Chick-fil-A executive Michael Patrick,
retired Georgia Court of Appeals Judge
Herbert Phipps, University of Georgia
Foundation Vice Chairman Neal Quirk and
Sally Wallace, dean of the Andrew Young
School of Policy Studies at Georgia State
University. The advisory group plans to look
at the information provided by the histo
rians and make recommendations about
whether name changes are warranted. The
advisory group started with a list of 3,000
buildings across the state and is quickly
whittling the list down.
The advisory group began its work in
July as hundreds of thousands of people
took to the streets in protests over the
violent deaths of Black citizens. Americans
are increasingly questioning the morality
of displaying monuments to Confederate
officers or to politicians who supported seg
regation and other racist policies.
Focusing on UGA’s Grady College
The University of Georgia’s Grady
College of Journalism and Mass
Communication is drawing a groundswell
of pressure to change its name so that it
no longer honors a segregationist. A peti
tion started by a Grady alum to rename
the school after Charlayne Hunter-Gault,
the first Black woman to attend UGA,
has received more than 9,000 signatures.
Hunter-Gault is a Grady graduate and an
award-winning journalist.
The school’s current namesake, Henry
Grady, was also a celebrated journalist. He
is credited with coining the phrase “New
South” and helping to move Georgia’s
post-Reconstruction economy away from
agrarianism and toward industrialism,
bringing about major economic growth.
Other institutions have also been named
after Grady, including Henry Grady High
School and Grady Hospital, both in Atlanta,
where a statue of the man stands on
Marietta Street. But Grady also professed
white supremacist beliefs, declaring in 1888
that “the supremacy of the white race of the
South must be maintained forever, and the
domination of the negro race resisted at all
points and at all hazards, because the white
race is the superior race.”
Kimberly Davis of Athens is one of the
petition’s signers. She earned her masters
degree from Grady College in 2008, but it
was not until she had already graduated
that she learned about Grady’s racist beliefs.
“I was not surprised, but I was shocked
that I had not heard these things before,”
she said. “I also was really cognizant of the
fact that there are a lot of buildings on the
University of Georgia’s campus, not just
buildings, but names, that would make it a
place that is not welcoming, particularly to
Black people like me. And I couldn’t imag
ine walking onto that campus every day and
seeing all of the names that represent slave
holders, white supremacy, et cetera.”
One group of alumni created a list of 18
buildings they say were named after slave
owners or segregationists. Changing those
names would make the university a lot
more welcoming, Davis said. The university
is planning a celebration of the 60th anni
versary of its integration next February.
That would be a great occasion to rename
the Grady School the Charlayne Hunter-
Gault School, Davis said.
“I think it would mean a lot, not just to
the students, but also to the workers on
campus who are there every day, year after
year, and also to this community. I live in
Athens. I’m a fourth-generation, native
Athenian. My parents met at the University
of Georgia. If it wasn’t for Charlayne
Hunter-Gault integrating, I wouldn’t be
here.”
Last February the university renamed
its College of Education after Mary Frances
Early, another UGA Black pioneer. “Names
are important; spaces are important,”
Davis said. “And when you integrate those
spaces, people feel a greater connection to
those spaces, and I think the University of
Georgia would greatly benefit from that for
generations to come.”
A Product of His Time
Other Grady grads feel differently. Henry
Grady’s words and beliefs are indefensible,
said Brian Robinson, former deputy chief
of staff to Gov. Nathan Deal and owner of
an Atlanta communications firm, but they
should not necessarily be grounds for a
name change.
“The legacy of slavery and segregation
and human rights abuses are part of our
history, but we shouldn’t fall into the trap
that that is the only prism through which
we should view our history,” he said. “In the
1880s, you would be hard-pressed if you
could get in a time machine and go back
and speak with the leaders of the state or
regular white citizens of the state. It would
be hard to find people who didn’t hold racist
views. They were part of the culture.”
Robinson has told members of the advi
sory group that consideration should be
given to why the building was named after
the person.
“We should judge the people we have
honored on the standard of, ‘Why do we
honor them?”’ he said. “Do we honor them
because they were segregationists, because
they were staunch defenders of slavery?
Because they were outspokenly racist? Is
that their claim to fame? That they were the
most extreme in defense of Jim Crow and
white supremacy? I think if that is why we
honored them, then those are the people
whose historical honors should be taken
away, and I think we’re already beginning
that process.”
Robinson said he would love to see
something on campus named after Hunter-
Gault, as well as other Georgia leaders like
Martin Luther King Jr., Andrew Young and
John Lewis, but the board should take a
nuanced approach. [The former Academic
Building on North Campus has been
renamed for Hunter-Gault and Hamilton
Holmes.]
“I believe the move toward reconciliation
is less about subtraction than it is about
addition,” he said. “What I would say to stu
dents is, you deserve to have, in your daily
walk around campus, places, things that
honor the great Georgians who look like
you. That needs to be part of our tableau.
So let’s find a way as we move forward to
address the imbalance by consciously look
ing at Black Georgians and people of other
ethnicities.”
Other Recent Controversies
The call for change comes as UGA is
facing increased criticism from Black and
Hispanic students over discrimination
complaints.
The Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity at
UGA voluntarily suspended operations in
September after screenshots of misogynis-
tic, racist and homophobic chat messages
were posted online. UGA junior Arianna
Mbunwe, the target of those messages, later
posted to Twitter an email from the school’s
Equal Opportunity Office responding to her
complaint by asking her to answer for her
own tweets criticizing all-white sororities
and UGA President Jere Morehead.
Such incidents are not rare, according
to UGA Black Student Union Chairman
Joshua Patton. “While our country is
stricken with blatant racial injustice, police
brutality, economic disparity and other
forms of oppression, we would like to think
that our university would be a place where
all students can be accepted, but we have
continuously been shown that this will not
be the case anytime soon,” Patton wrote in
a statement following the incident.
Former Bulldogs football player Otis
Reese, who transferred to Ole Miss in
January, said in a statement last month
that his year and a half at UGA “took
a devastating mental toll” because of
racial abuse. Reese described aggressive
confrontations with police officers, and
racial slurs and other abuse from white
student-athletes.
“I didn’t want to be part of a campus
where my classmates held that kind of
hate in their hearts,” Reese wrote. “None
of these things were ever addressed by the
coaches at UGA. There was literally nobody
to speak to about these types of things
without having fear of losing your position
on the team.”
University spokesman Greg Trevor said
UGA has long been committed to fostering
diversity and inclusion and has announced
programs in recent months to further those
goals. These include a Presidential Task
Force on Race, Ethnicity and Community
launched by Morehead in August with
the goal of improving campus culture.
Morehead also charged a separate com
mittee to develop a comprehensive plan to
build on its most recent diversity plan. The
university also offers year-round workshops
and grants to help underrepresented groups
start and succeed in college, as well as
tutoring and mentoring through the USG’s
African American Male Initiative. Over the
summer, UGA created 528 endowed, need-
based scholarships through its Georgia
Commitment Scholarship program.
“This strong foundation, coupled with
a commitment to building on past suc
cesses has earned UGA the INSIGHT Into
Diversity Higher Education Excellence in
Diversity Award,” Trevor said. “The HEED
Award is the only national recognition hon
oring colleges and universities that exhibit
outstanding efforts and success in the area
of diversity and inclusion, and 2020 marks
the seventh consecutive year UGA has
received it.” ©
This article originally appeared in the Georgia
Recorder, georgiarecorder.com.
The Grady College is housed in the Journalism Building on South Campus.
OCTOBER 7, 2020 | FLAGPOLE.COM
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