Carolina Alumni Review - January/February 2010

why the Black Student Movement is still
necessary.

“Sometimes, I’m still the only black stu-
dent in my classes.”
And current black students at Carolina
carry on the tradition of paving the way
for those who follow.

B’anca Glenn, a junior and the current president of BSM, said that black students on campus today are still achieving “firsts.” Last fall, the annual coronation of Mr. and Miss BSM occurred on campus for the first time, at The Carolina Inn. BSM is organizing an HIV/AIDS event with Duke and N.C. State universities for the first time this spring to spread awareness of prevention because studies show that HIV/AIDS is becoming a disease that hits blacks hardest. And in November, BSM held the first expo of the African and Afro-American studies department, founded 41 years ago.

“I want to show that BSM does have a presence and is still relevant and needed,” Glenn said. “A common misconception is that racism is dead. You wouldn’t imagine it to be so prevalent on a liberal campus” like UNC.

BSM helps students feel connected, she
said. “It’s important to me to get BSM out
there and show that we’re a force because
of what it has done for me and all the
people who have come before me, for 42
years,” she said. “It’s important that people
recognize our history and that we are still
here.”
Being one of so few black students in
the 1960s brought with it “virtually a chal-
lenge every day,” McDaniel said. But it also
forced the students to rely on one another.
“We knew what each one of us was going
through,” he said. “We were interconnect-
ed in ways that I suspect students today
aren’t. That got us over some rough spots.”
He echoed Barnes’ belief that persever-
ing through adversity made them all more
successful in their careers and more com-
mitted to helping the next generation.

“Carolina honed me and developed me in ways that I would not have been elsewhere,” he said. “Most of us decided that we were going to give back to others so they would not have to endure some of the things we had to endure to get through here.

“We change lives now because our lives
were changed here.” ;

ALBEE INCLE

Tim McMillan ’ 80, center, began the tour on black history at Carolina on McCorkle Place at the Unsung Founders Memorial, recognizing slaves and free blacks who helped build and maintain the University.

— Nancy E. Oates

55 CAROLINA ALUMNI REVIEW

There’s a lot of history between McCorkle Place and the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery.
And some of it is seldom discussed or visited.

The Black and Blue Tour — held during the Black Alumni Reunion in November and led by Tim McMillan ’ 80, an adjunct assistant professor in the UNC department of African and Afro-American studies — sought to address what’s on the fringes of the campus’s racial history. It started at the Unsung Founders Memorial — a polished stone table held up by 300 approximately foot-high African-American human figures — in view of “Silent Sam,” a monument to the Confederate dead, on McCorkle Place.

“How we remember is as important as what we remember. When we name a building after someone, we need to tell the real story of the person,” said McMillan, who also earned a master’s degree in 1981 and a doctorate in 1988 from UNC, both in anthropology.

Slaves were critical to the running of the
University. They constructed stone walls,
stoked the fires in students’ quarters and
carried packages for students. University
presidents, faculty and trustees owned slaves.
And yet the only place where the word
“slave” appears among the campus markers
is in the headstone in the segregated ceme-
tery that remembers Dilsey Craig with the
Even the Unsung Founders Memorial
includes the inscription “The Class of 2002
honors the University’s unsung founders, the
people of color bond and free, who helped
build the Carolina that we cherish today.”
“It’s a monument to people who have
been forgotten,” McMillan said. “There’s no
mention of the word ‘slave.’ Even in
remembering, we still whitewash it.”
The tour made stops at the Playmakers
Theater and Old East, the space outside the
history department building where the
controversial “Student Body” statues that
some found demeaning in their depiction
of African-Americans were installed, and a
final stop in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery,
where McMillan pointed out the stone wall
that separates the black section of the ceme-
tery from the white section.

One episode that few knew anything
about involved author Zora Neale Hurston.
She was a student in a class taught by Paul
Green ’ 21 in 1939 while she taught at N.C.
College for Negroes in Durham. She came
to Chapel Hill to learn about playwriting,
but Green had to move the class off cam-
pus due to the reaction of some students.

McMillan also pointed out that Steele Building, which now holds the offices of the vice chancellor for student affairs and the General College, was where the first black students were housed.

La Tonya Smith ’00 of Durham found the tour inspiring. “I’m going to tell my friends that they definitely need to come next year to do the tour, and everyone should take this tour as part of learning about UNC and its black influences,” she said. “I’m researching my genealogy. I’m going to take what I learned today and keep researching my own history.” ;