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Saturday, February 21, 2015

Southern Universities Still Wrestling With Racist Pasts

Tillman Hall is the building that goes on the Clemson University posters, at least the ones that don’t feature the football stadium or an orange paw print. The red brick building with a clock tower is the grandest and best- known structure on campus. It’s also named for a vehement racist. The building's namesake, Benjamin Tillman, was a South Carolina governor and U.S. senator in the late 19th century, best known for his fiery rhetoric and for helping to craft the Jim Crow laws. He also helped found Clemson.

Clemson, along with other Southern universities, and even some in the North, is now wrestling with that troubled legacy. The Clemson Faculty Senate last week passed a resolution asking the administration asking to change the name. Jane Lindle, an education professor with an office in the building who is on the Faculty Senate, said that its name presents two sets of problems for her. On a practical level, it’s “an obstacle” to attracting talented faculty. The history behind the name is a deterrent, and its quotidian familiarity creates an ethical problem: “It raises the issue of why aren’t we educating folks better about some of the negative symbolism that they take for granted,” she said.

For students who know the history, the name can send a hurtful message. A black Clemson student named Edith Dunlap told the Greenville News that to see the building on her campus is a “slap in the face.”

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

All you need to know about a college is do you get a quality well rounded education at a good price. All the other stuff is superfluous BS that neurotic and immature people let bother them.

Steve said...

The first American slave owner was black.

Johnson, 1830.

Shut up and go back to your homework.

Anonymous said...

You keep listening at these idiots like Ben. No Blackman in America ever Enslaved anyone They never brought anyone hear in chains , beat, raped and kill them. No one has don't that except the worst slavemasters that ever existed America an Britain.