Lawrence Giffin, Records Services Archivist

University Archives in Action: Renaming Saunders Hall

Today the Board of Trustees voted 10 to 3 to rename Saunders Hall “Carolina Hall.” For those who’ve been under a rock for the past few years, the charge to change the name of Saunders Hall, which was named by trustees in 1920 after William Saunders (1835–1891), North Carolina Secretary of State and chief organizer of the Ku Klux Klan in the state, has been led by various student groups over the past two decades, most recently the Real Silent Same Coalition along with the Campus Y and other student groups.

Saunders’s involvement in the KKK was not ancillary to the decision to name the new building after him, but as seen in the minutes of the Board of Trustees, was indeed central. (You can read the minute books online.)

Minutes, Oversize Volume SV-40001/12 (p. 234), in the Board of Trustees of the University of North Carolina Records #40001, University Archives, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

University Archives staff worked diligently to rediscover this information and provide it to trustees and to the public at large. It is gratifying to know that the (not always easy or recognized) work of collecting, describing, and preserving these materials played a part in energizing students and swaying the board.

We at Wilson Library work very hard to make primary information about the university available to the public, including online exhibits such as “Slavery and the Making of the University,” one of the first exhibits of its kind. We don’t need a mandate to do all we can to make university history public.

We depend on scholars and students to tell the story of the university. We just don’t have the time to read every sheet of paper that comes into our custody. Our job is to collect enough that our researchers have rich and inclusive documentation to work from and to describe it all in a way that gets that material into the hands of researchers as soon as possible.

If you’re interested in any aspect of university history, you can always come to Wilson Library and talk to a reference archivist to get access to the collections that might satisfy your curiosity.

Dr. Tim McMillan on WUNC

If you missed Tim McMillan’s Black and Blue Tour this semester, which traces African American history at UNC, you can listen to Dr. McMillan speak with WUNC’s Phoebe Judge about the origins of and controversies surrounding some of the monuments … Continue reading →

The Unsung Founders Memorial, McCorkle Place

The Scientific Revolution as Cock Fight

Recently, I came across an old hand-drawn cartoon in the University Papers (#40005) that depicts the struggle between physics and chemistry for scientific supremacy as both a train wreck and a cock fight. There’s nothing I can see to date the cartoon—though it’s probably later than 1830 (the earliest railways in the US) and certainly later than 1804 (the invention of the steam locomotive).

It’s hard to say if there’s any significance to the artist’s inclusion of light rays emanating from the headlamp of the train labeled “Physics.” This drawing appears to have been made prior to Einstein’s 1905 Gedankenexperiment involving light emitted from moving trains, but it certainly could have been made after 1865, when Maxwell discovered that light is an electromagnetic wave and therefore travels at a constant speed. It’s also difficult to interpret an intention behind leaving out the connecting rod on the “Physics” train (see where a second artist, or critic, has penciled in, “You forgot to put your connection rod on this one”), though that might have been mere lack of attention to detail on the part of the artist. Regardless, the game of chicken seems to have solved nothing, and second cartoon depicts the two train operators going head to head.

The same bepenciled critic—who has conscientiously labeled each opponent and the air pump and hastily scribbled a little grass to denote the field of combat—has place in a speech bubble hanging from the lips of “Chemistry” the repudiation, “I’ll be damned if you shall!” Such fierce animosity. Who will win?

Unfortunately, there is no third drawing illustrating the outcome of this heated confrontation. Some say it rages still, and the rumor is you can sometimes catch a glimpse of these two combatants-in-tails struggling with one other on the lofty walkways bridging Murray and Venable.

[OPF-40005/16 in the University of North Carolina Papers #40005, University Archives, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.]

SOHP Interns Present UNC LGBTQ Oral Histories

Are you interested in the history of student activism at UNC Chapel Hill? What about the history of sexual education, sexuality counseling services, or LGBTQ life on UNC’s campus? The Fall 2013 interns of the Southern Oral History Program will … Continue reading →

Are you interested in the history of student activism at UNC Chapel Hill? What about the history of sexual education, sexuality counseling services, or LGBTQ life on UNC’s campus?

The Fall 2013 interns of the Southern Oral History Program will present selections from their current oral history project on two early student-run LGBT-rights organizations at UNC: the Carolina Gay Association (now the Sexuality and Gender Alliance) and the Human Sexuality Information and Counseling Service.

The performance will take place at the Love House tomorrow (Dec 5) at 3pm with a discussion afterward. Refreshments provided.

The Love House is located at 410 East Franklin Street. Hope to see you there!

President Swain Requests Exemption of UNC Seniors from Conscription

On this day in 1863, university president David Lowry Swain wrote to Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate States of America, requesting exemption from conscription for university seniors. There were many exemptions to conscription, most resting on the petitioner’s class—one was automatically exempt for owning twenty or more slaves, and one could buy exemption for $300 (around $5,500 in 2013 dollars)—or social status (certain government employees and workers deemed necessary, such as railroad workers). Below is the response, dated November 3rd, from Colonel Peter Mallet, Commandant of Conscripts for North Carolina.

(University of North Carolina Papers (#40005), University Archives)

Old East: The First Building of the First Public University

Two-hundred-and-twenty years ago today, the Board of Trustees of the yet-to-be-opened University of North Carolina contracted with James Patterson, a contractor from Chatham County, to build the university’s first building, Old East. Below is Patterson’s drawing and description of the … Continue reading →

Patterson’s drawing and description of Old East (front and back) from “Old East Interior and Exterior Plan,” 19 July 1793, in the University of North Carolina Papers #40005, University Archives.