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Duke University student government proposes renaming the controversial Carr Building

Carrboro town sign

The Town of Carrboro was incorporated 106 years ago, though it was then called Venable. It's now named after North Carolina industrialist and white supremacist Julian Carr.

Duke University’s student government unanimously passed legislation in support of renaming their Carr Building on Wednesday.

According to the Duke Chronicle, the resolution followed protests in support of renaming the building and Duke’s history department filing a request to remove Carr’s name. The Chronicle reported the resolution is meant to increase pressure on Duke’s administration to rename the Carr building.

The namesake of the building, Julian Carr, was a white supremacist and member of the KKK who made the infamous speech at the unveiling of the Silent Sam monument.

At UNC, Carr Building has not been renamed, despite pressure from students and faculty to do so. After the renaming of Carolina Hall in 2015, the Board of Trustees put a 16-year freeze on UNC’s naming policy. UNC cannot rename Carr building for another 13 years.

In 2016, a request to change the name of Carrboro, which also has links to Carr's namesake, was made by former Carrboro mayor James Porto, who argued the name does not represent the town’s values. A petition to rename the town “Unicornboro” surfaced in August 2017. Though unable to absorb the cost of renaming the town, this year, Carrboro announced a plan to create a “truth plaque” to explore the town’s history using community input. The town hopes to install the plaque sometime next year.

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