I am disappointed and a little shocked at the response of Duke University Professor Anne Firor Scott to the protest of the Cornelia Phillips Spencer Bell Award at UNC-Chapel Hill (The People's Forum, (Raleigh) News &Observer, March 23).
Students and members of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom protested the fact that the prestigious award for women's contributions to the University, created in 1994, is named in honor of a 19th century racist (The Daily Tar Heel, March 21).
Spencer was an extraordinary woman who is known for her efforts to reopen the University in 1875. On her birthday that year, she rang the University bell to announce the reopening, but she did not ring the bell for freedom.
The story UNC-CH has never told is that Spencer also led the successful campaign to close the University during the Reconstruction because she despised the sympathies of the new administration and faculty for black voting rights and educational opportunities.
With her powerful support, the former slaveholders regained political power in North Carolina in 1875, and the new executive committee of the UNC-CH Board of Trustees included Col. William Saunders, who orchestrated the N.C. Ku Klux Klan's reign of terror during Reconstruction from his home in Chapel Hill.
Rather than applauding our effort to promote debate about how this historical legacy affects the University today, Professor Scott apologized for Spencer's racism, in effect, using her prestige to throw a wet blanket over the emerging dialogue. In contrast, UNC-CH Professor Jane Brown, the recipient of this year's Bell Award, praised the protest as an opportunity to learn more about our history. It is my hope that Professor Scott, UNC-CH professors and the DTH will use our protests of the Bell Award as an opportunity to help us all learn how the burden of the past still weighs upon us.
We cannot truly become the "University of the People" until we dare to dialogue about the impact of racist legacies on the University today.
Yonni Chapman
Graduate Student
