On this day, November 17, 1937
1,000 White Students and Faculty at the University of North Carolina Host Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan

On November 17, 1937, over 1,000 white students and faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill gathered to attend a speech openly advocating for white supremacy by the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Dr. Hiram Evans. The UNC Political Science Department and the Carolina Political Union hosted the event, entitled “America and the Klan.” Amidst the rise of Nazism in Europe, Dr. Evans told students, “What America needs most now to restore the good old days when nations loved each other is a universal dose of the Ku Klux Klan.”

Dr. Evans said that “the Klan will continue to insist on white supremacy, for experience has shown that nations that have mixed breeds with the Black race have found themselves headed for destruction.” Dr. Evans also urged that “America had admitted too many foreigners” who were “responsible for most of our country’s social and economic ills,” and that “America must be dominated by Americans, not by Negroes or aliens.” He warned students of the rise of Black leadership in the South, urging white students and faculty to join the Klan to combat Black political power.

As Dr. Evans spewed racism and intolerance, the more than 1,000 white students and faculty showed support and enjoyment of racial insults and threats throughout the event.

Locals viewed Dr. Evans’ visit as an attempt to launch a new public KKK chapter. In covering Dr. Evans’ 1937 speech, the Daily Tar Heel, Carolina’s student newspaper, noted that since the chapter first launched privately in 1921, “The KKK has grown to the strongest secret organization in existence.”

Carolina’s ties to the Klan persisted well into the 21st century. In the 1920s, UNC named Saunders Hall, a campus building, after William Saunders, the leader of the North Carolina Ku Klux Klan.

Despite decades of student activism seeking to change this name, Saunders Hall remained the name on the building until 2015.

Source: EJI
----

Three UNC Trustees Voted Against Renaming Building That Commemorates KKK Leader

By Ben Mathis-Lilley / Slate
May 28, 2015 - 4:23 PM

The University of North Carolina’s trustees voted Thursday to rename the campus’ Saunders Hall. The building was originally dedicated to the memory of a man named William L. Saunders for a number of reasons, one of which in particular is no longer considered a good reason to name a building after someone. Per the school’s press release:

In 1920, University trustees named Saunders Hall to recognize William L. Saunders, an alumnus and trustee from 1874 to 1891. They cited his service as North Carolina’s Secretary of State from 1879 to 1891, his record as a compiler and editor of the Colonial records that became the foundation of the current State Archives of North Carolina, and his leadership of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

The issue was brought to public attention by student activists, and the building will now be called Carolina Hall, which, while not the most creative choice, has the advantage of not commemorating “the chief organizer of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina and Chapel Hill.”

The decision, though, was not without controversy. Trustees also voted for a 16-year freeze on renaming any other buildings on campus in order to give the administration time to “develop a program for contextualized education on campus history.” The long freeze—and the trustees’ decision not to take activists’ suggestion to rename Saunders Hall after Zora Neale Hurston—has upset some students.

What’s more, three trustees voted against renaming Saunders Hall at all. Those three trustees:

Peter Grauer, the chairman of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s financial-media megacompany Bloomberg LP
Haywood Cochrane, the chairman of a company called DARA Biosciences that appears to specialize in oncological pharmacology
Dwight Stone, who runs his family’s homebuilding company
Cochrane discussed his vote at a press conference, per the Raleigh News & Observer:

“Many of us were more conflicted toward the end of this process than where we were when we began,” Cochrane said, adding that he voted “no” because of a sense of history and the different constituents the board serves.

The UNC trustees did vote unanimously to place a marker near Saunders/Carolina Hall explaining its history and to create an educational program (of a format yet to be determined) that addresses race-related aspects of the school’s history.

Source: https://slate.com/.../university-of-north-carolina-kkk...