TO THE EDITOR:
While I can respect Chris Rogers and his opinion on learning from history, so much of what we know is incomplete information.
It is asinine to think that students of color would want to attend a University that memorializes those who would rather see noose ropes around our necks than caps on our heads.
But Rogers is not alone in his analysis of how renaming would somehow indicate an erasure of Saunders and his legacy from this campus. The infrastructure of UNC was laid by poor or enslaved, unnamed or forgotten blacks during a time when their education was illegal. It’s how racism works, by selectively choosing who is worthy or unworthy to remember.
Zora Neale Hurston took classes here in secret because she had no choice. She couldn’t enroll nor could her name be recorded. It’s clear whose history matters and whose story must be long forgotten for white people to continue their supremacist project.
Having left a legacy of destruction of black lives in his wake, it is impossible to overlook the type of villain Saunders was. Using the word “bad” to describe a man who was the chief organizer of the North Carolina Ku Klux Klan in their mission to harass free blacks is an understatement. Saunders was an exceptional racist who used his several positions of power to enact terror.
Rogers’ fears are misplaced that anyone could stifle his white privilege by denying men like Saunders their due respect by prioritizing a woman of color.
Ishmael Bishop
Senior
