Dr. Donna Y. Ford, a distinguished professor of education at The Ohio State University, lived near a road called “Plantation.” When she went about her errands, she would actively avoid the street. It didn’t matter if it was the most direct route or how bad traffic was. But when she worked at Vanderbilt University, she didn’t have a choice. She had to pass Confederate Memorial Hall, until the university decided to change the name in 2016.
“Far too many people don’t understand the psychological dilemma that these building names put on students who just want to go to class and learn and get their degrees,” she said. “There’s trauma there.”
After Black Lives Matter protests spread across the country, universities faced an ongoing flood of petitions to change campus building names that honor historic figures tied to slave ownership and racist policies. And many institutions have recently agreed.
James Madison University, for example, announced on July 7 that it would rename three campus buildings named for Confederate leaders: Jackson, Ashby and Maury halls. The buildings have been given temporary names until permanent ones are chosen next year with input from the campus community.
Sophomore Ryan Ritter, the Student Government Association senator, submitted the Bill of Opinion that led to the name changes. He’d never seen signatures come in so fast.
“In the wake of this national movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, everybody calling to correct the racial inequities that this country has experienced for the entirety of its history, we felt it was more than appropriate …” Ritter said, calling the change “long overdue,” with alumni pushing for new names since 1992. “We wanted to continue that work.”
Other universities are also replacing contentious building names after years of debate, notably the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which lifted a 16-year moratorium on renaming campus buildings, which would have otherwise expired in 2031.
