The struggle for recognition

Stacie Hill and Lorna Haughton paced anxiously outside in the lobby, waiting for the doors to open. A handful of other students had already come and left. They had waited since 8 a.m.

At about 10 a.m., the doors swung open, inviting the two women and a crowd of reporters and locals in to sit.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill board of trustees, after deliberating for nearly two hours in a closed session, was ready to vote before the public.

The women looked on. The trustees lent their vote to a project that had been inchoate for nearly two decades: They voted 8-2 in favor of building a free-standing black cultural center.

July 23, 1993, should have been a day to relish for UNC--CH students like Haughton and Hill who had fought for years for a free-standing center.

Instead, they said that the trustees' decision was another slight from the administration.

Many advocates had wanted the new center built on the Wilson site, one of the last usable pieces of land on UNC's main campus. The site, at the center of campus, is adjacent to Wilson Library and only a short walk from the student union. Thousands of students pass through this area daily.

To the BCC advocates, the idea of a center on the main campus was a powerful symbol.

"The Wilson site is more central and accessible to walk-in traffic," he said. "The Coker site is off the beaten path."

Current plans indicate that a new science complex will likely be erected on the Wilson site.

"I would guess that it will be some facility for the sciences, whether a science library or classroom," said Gordon Rutherford, UNC-CH director of planning and design.

If the science library is built, the BCC may not be visible from the main campus, Copeland said.

Many students take the trustees' decision as proof that they are not factored into campus politics, that the administration listens to students only when backed into the corner.

"It was a big slap in the face," Haughton said. "It told me that they didn't take us seriously."

"Students weren't considered at all," Hill said. "There was not one student group on campus that wanted it on Coker. These student groups were not heard."

Responding to these charges of complacency, administrators contend that students have received exorbitant attention.

"It's not true that it wasn't getting attention; it was getting tons of attention," said Richard McCormick, UNC-CH provost. "The issue occupied us the whole year."

The controversy sprang from fears that a free-standing center would engender separatism. Some opponents even charged that it would reverse the racial climate back to the days before Martin Luther King, Jr.

Early in the debate, UNC-CH Chancellor Paul Hardin expressed concerns that a separate center could be "perceived as symbolizing separateness," he said in an October statement to a group appointed to study the BCC issue.

Some people supported the idea of a multicultural center, which would house a black cultural center in addition to centers representing other cultures.

This idea floundered because it lacked substantial support. "There was no remotely comparable proposal for a multicultural center," McCormick said. "It was a political gesture against a BCC."

Supporters of a new center say that a BCC is needed because black culture needs to be validated on campus.

``It's for the dignity of black people on this campus and across the nation," said junior Carolynn McDonald. "We're undoing 200 years of oppression at this University."

Blacks deserve their own center because they are the biggest minority at the university, McCormick said. "It is a special, richly developed category."

Almost everyone agrees that racism lingers at UNC--CH. Protestors pointed out that the university's oldest buildings were raised from slave labor. Most of the buildings on campus were named for white men.

"Across the country there is a problem," Cole said. "There's no question that racial and ethnic strife is with us in the United States as it is at UNC."

UNC--CH hopes that a new center will help allay this problem and promote cultural understanding. Movement leaders have maintained throughout that it will not be a "black hangout." "The building will not even have a lounge," McCormick said.

However, some fear that building the center at the Coker Woods site may contribute to separatism.

Coker Woods is located on South Campus, which is already a predominantly African-American area, Copeland said.

"Just as America has excluded the black man from history and from mainstream society, so has UNC," Hitchcock said. "I think the university loses out on an opportunity to set an example for the rest of the nation."

Some doubt whether the Coker site can even be used.

"There is nothing concrete to show us that it has been seriously looked at as a site," said Harry Amana, chair of the BCC advisory board, a committee involved in planning. "We would hate to go through this whole process and find out we can't build there."

Rutherford says that although no official studies have been conducted, he cannot imagine any physical problems that might block construction.

"I will assure you that you can build there," he said.

Some are still concerned. "I don't believe the BCC will be built on the Coker site," Hill said. "It's a big hole in the ground."

Today the BCC is tucked into temporary quarters in the basement of the student union. Enclosed on three sides by glass walls, it is no larger than a waiting room at a doctor's office.

It even resembles one. Besides a makeshift reception area and a meeting table, the center houses clusters of stuffed chairs, potted plants and magazine racks.

The plans for the new center call for a $7 million facility housing such amenities as a black art gallery and a music studio. It will contain classroom and administrative space, possibly for a stepped-up department of African-American studies.

It will also house a library named for Michael Jordan, who attended UNC--CH in the early '80s.

Upstairs and down the hall from the BCC is the office of the Black Student Movement, the student group that spearheaded the protest movement.

A green, black and red flag of Africa is painted on the wall. A hand-drawn poster depicting Uncle Sam in KKK garb reads: "I thought you knew that Uncle Sam stuff was just a day job."

"We look for places where we feel black people aren't getting the same treatment," said junior Cheryl Aldave, the group's minister of information.

Along with a committee of students and faculty called the BCC advisory board, the BSM has fought for a free standing center since the idea was first discussed almost two decades ago.

The idea was first proposed by Sonja Haynes Stone, an outspoken former director of UNC--CH's Afro-American studies program. She helped to integrate the university's faculty in the 1970's.

The idea floated around until 1984, when a planning committee submitted a proposal for a 23,000-foot space, which included space for a library, dance studio, art gallery and music room.

In 1987, Margo Crawford, director of the center, was hired and the center opened in its current temporary space in the student union.

Planning languished until 1991, when Stone died suddenly from a stroke. Then the center was baptized with a new name, the Sonja Haynes Stone Black Cultural Center, and the drive for a free-standing center was jump-started.

The popular professor's death ignited the campus. In September, about 300 protestors marched to Hardin's home, in a neighborhood about a mile off campus. Students decided they were tired of waiting for a center they say had been promised to them years ago.

The chancellor wasn't home.

Then student athletes, including football players Tim Smith and John Bradley, joined the act. They formed the Black Awareness Council, a group founded with a promise of direct action.

On September 10, 600 students led by the BAC marched to the South Building, the historic administration building that sits at the head of the main campus quad. The offices of the chancellor and others are inside.

The students handed Hardin a November 13 deadline to support a free-standing center. They promised direct action if he did not comply.

The next week, protestors held a rally in the Dean Smith Center, which featured an angry speech by director Spike Lee. Lee had flown in from New York after reading about the protests in The New York Times.

"Black students catch hell at predominantly white universities," Lee told reporters. "The issue is empowerment."

About a month later, Hardin and the administration changed their position on the center after a Hardin-appointed committee submitted a feasible plan. Hardin then gave his full support to a free-standing center.

"I support the concept of a black cultural center," Hardin wrote in a statement to an advisory board. "And I do not subscribe to the view that those who seek a free-standing center are separatists."

By February, the campus was once again embroiled in controversy. One committee, the BCC advisory board, supported building the center on the Wilson site. The other committee, a working group appointed by the chancellor, remained undecided.

In April, tired of waiting, students commenced a sit-in in the halls of the South building. The students insisted on the Wilson site, and demanded that the board of trustees call an emergency meeting to vote on the issue.

The sit-in lasted for 14 days, during which the number of protestors fluctuated between five and 100.

The protest was designed so that Hardin had to walk past the students every morning and night to get to his office.

"It was sociable," Hill said. "People sat around and talked and did homework."

Later that month, the protests culminated with a visit from Jesse Jackson. Jackson met with Hardin over breakfast at his house. About 25 students marched there, holding hands and singing along the way.

"We marched to his house because he hadn't talked to students since October," McDonald said.

Jackson spoke from the front porch, where he lent his full support to protestors.

"New ideas do not come without pressure," he said to the crowd. "We must, in fact, apply disciplined pressure for change."

Hardin, sick with laryngitis, looked on from behind.

The protestors deemed the meeting a failure, since Hardin refused to commit to a site. Students regrouped later that afternoon outside the black cultural center, and decided that they had no choice but to march right into Hardin's office.

"It was a peaceful, non-violent means of communicating frustration," Copeland said.

About 100 students gathered in four lines, held hands, and marched about a quarter-mile from the student union to the South Building.

Hardin, who was home sick, drove to his office to meet the students. McCormick and Schroeder also arrived at the chancellor's suite in time for the students.

The students marched down the green and followed the sidewalk to the steps of South Building. They chanted: "What do we want? BCC! When do we want it? NOW!"

They opened the doors and marched into the lobby and down the hallway to Hardin's suite. About 300 chanting and singing students inundated the lobby. Students filtered up a staircase and gathered outside when there was no more room in the building.

"It was like being inside the belly of a whale," McDonald said.

Meanwhile, the students at the front of the line packed into Hardin's office. "Seventy-five to 100 students simply marched in chanting, sat down and said they weren't going to leave until the chancellor talked," Cole said.

Michele Thomas, then president of the Black Student Movement, told Hardin that they wanted to talk, and wouldn't leave until he granted them an audience.

The chancellor, looking stern, whispered in a sickly voice that he would talk some other time. "Chancellor Hardin was on the verge of tears," McCormick said.

"It was so emotional, you could feel it," McDonald said. "It was thick."

Senior Trish Merchant held a bible and read verses aloud while she was inside the office.

The students remained in the office for about 10 minutes before administrators called the police.

Seventeen students were arrested and freighted in a police van to the Hillsborough Police Department. Charges were eventually dropped.

Administrators say this incident hurt the students' cause rather than furthered it.

"I frankly saw it as counterproductive to the very hard work that they had given to the matter at that point," Schroeder said. "To come and occupy the chancellor's office after the university had given its support sent a confused message."

Students maintain that marches were their only source of power. "The only way we can move into the power of a dictator is to yell and scream to get attention," said Hitchcock, a member of the BAC.

After the march on the chancellor's office, progress did not accelerate as protestors had hoped. Students wanted the trustees to meet and vote before the campus emptied for summer vacation.

The trustees held their meeting at the end of July, when the majority of students were not on campus.

"Blame is on the chancellor's office for doing this over the summer when students weren't here," Amana said.

The next great step to a new BCC is fund-raising.

"Right now it's a waiting game," McCormick said. The University wants to go ahead with fund-raising, but it's not yet clear about the students."

UNC--CH needs to raise about $7 million to build the center projected by the plans passed last summer. This fall UNC--CH embarks on a two-year bicentennial campaign, which will last from October 1993 until June 1995.

Supporters of the BCC hope to be included in this campaign.

In addition to fund-raising, the plans have to pass before a board of governors that oversees the UNC system. Then it must pass through the state House and Senate in Raleigh.

Administrators are confident that no terminal glitches will surface along the way.

"It's gonna happen; it's gonna be built," McCormick said.

Greg Chaput is a Trinity sophomore and assistant University editor of The Chronicle.

Doug Lynn is a Trinity junior.