The chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill retired the school's highest award for women after determining it commemorated a woman who supported white supremacist ideas.
The Bell Award, set up 10 years ago during the university's bicentennial celebration, honored
Cornelia Phillips Spencer, who was perhaps best known in North Carolina as the woman who tolled the South Building bell to signal the reopening of the university in 1875 after a political shutdown.
Yonni
Chapman, a community activist and UNC-CH graduate student researching black freedom and the university, started a protest against the award two years ago.
Spencer played a key role in closing the university in 1871, ending a Reconstruction effort to open the university to black students,
Chapman said.
Her tolling of the bell, often seen as a symbol of her love for the university, could also be interpreted as her celebration of "the white supremacist" Democrats' return to power.
"It was a difficult decision,"
Moeser said Thursday. "It was not my first impulse, but upon reflection, with what we now know, I decided it was the right thing to do."
Chapman wanted a review of the university's named buildings, awards and how it tells its history in addition to the scrapping of the Bell Award.
Source:
http://newsobserver.com/news/ncwire...p-8294909c.html