COLOMBIA – Members of the recently revived chapter of the NAACP at the University of South Carolina staged a simulated ribbon cut for Willie Lloyd Harriford Jr., whose name they would like to see replace that of Thomas Cooper in the main campus library.
The ceremony, held in front of the library on February 17 for a crowd of about 50 people, initiated the convocation of the chapter for university officials to rename campus buildings in honor of people with racially insensitive records – including the school fitness center named after former American senator Strom Thurmond.
“I am confused about why we have to have this conversation,” said Caley Bright, president of the NAACP USC chapter, questioning why university leaders would like to have non-inclusive figures in their buildings.
“I am confused that we have all these influential African Americans at this school, but no one feels the urgency to rename these buildings,” she added.
The “Aim to Rename” campaign comes less than a week after a special panel charged with examining building name approval criteria to consider homonyms on campus. The committee, formed by President Bob Caslen shortly after he arrived on campus in 2019, meets again on February 18 to discuss a timetable for submitting his recommendations for new names, as well as other educational efforts aimed at addressing past connections of the school with slavery and racial inequality.
The student-led civil rights organization also called on state lawmakers to repeal the South Carolina Heritage Act, which impedes renaming efforts.
Bright called on students and the public to contact state legislators and campus administrators to do the same.
Taylor Platt, the granddaughter of the late Harriford, who was a prominent civil rights figure in SC and the first black administrator at USC, was there to support his family in the movement.
“My grandfather believed in the inclusion of all people,” said Platt. “He felt that this body of teachers, staff and students, paired with the knowledge gained from learning from the past, Gamecocks would be able to stand on their own merits and not be judged by the color of their skin.”
The USC Board of Trustees has been receptive to asking state lawmakers to rename a dormitory whose namesake, J. Marion Sims, was a 19th century physician who conducted medical experiments on slaves.
Other buildings on the USC campus under consideration include the student admissions office and apartments named after slave owners – Francis Lieber and James Henley Thornwell – as well as a dormitory named after the confederate general and KKK Wade Hampton sympathizer.
But board members have been hesitant when it comes to Thurmond, a 20th century politician who started his career as a segregationist.
The move to remove Thurmond’s name from the fitness center caught the attention of current and former USC athletes, notably Dawn Staley, Gamecocks’ popular women’s basketball coach.
But even if the effort is approved by the USC council, legislative approval is still required due to the South Carolina Inheritance Act, which requires a two-thirds vote in the House and Senate to rename historic monuments, streets and buildings.
Lawmakers had to overcome legal requirements to remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of the Statehouse following the racially-motivated 2015 massacre of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.
Clemson University and Winthrop University joined the USC in agreeing to ask the Legislature to change the name of a building on campus in 2020. Trustees from both schools voted to remove the name of Ben Tillman, a former governor and a post-Civil War white senator and supremacist of buildings, but the efforts came to nothing because no bill was presented to the General Assembly.
But Bright said the NAACP was “built to tackle issues like that”.
And if leaders refuse to remove Thurmond’s name from the academy, USC NAACP member Dyrek Hamilton said the chapter would return with more than one social media campaign.
“We feel like we’ve made enough concessions,” he said.
