In the summer of 2020, the country was awash in anti-racist sentiment amid the surge of the Black Lives Matter movement. Across the nation, statues commemorating Confederate soldiers and other symbols of racism were challenged and torn down. In North Carolina, the UNC system looked to address the issue of school buildings named after white supremacists. This included NC State, which stripped Daniels Hall of its namesake, Josephus Daniels, a racist who used his prominence in the state to promote bigotry. 

 Unfortunately, the issue was not fully addressed.  

 During the time of Daniels’ removal, students called for the renaming of several other buildings, including Tompkins, Holladay and Poe. These calls have remained unanswered.  

 Daniel Tompkins of Tompkins Hall was an engineer, industrialist and a pronounced racist. He argued against abolition, civil rights and child labor laws. Tompkins was also part-owner of the Charlotte Observer when it aided in a statewide white supremacist campaign in the late 19th century.  

 Clarence Hamilton Poe of Poe Hall was a staunch advocate of segregation and argued that African Americans “made no important contribution to civilization … no great achievement in science, government or religion.”  

Holladay Hall, one of the oldest and most famous buildings on campus, was named after the University’s first president Alexander Holladay. He was also a colonel for the Confederacy in the Civil War.  

The Brick Layers Project researched the namesakes of the University’s most prominent buildings. It was conducted as a part of an initiative set by Chancellor Woodson after the Daniels Hall controversy. The research provided more disquieting results.  

Charles Park of Park Shops was the first vice president of the Raleigh White Supremacist Club. One of his most celebrated achievements of the time was his role in the passage of a state constitutional amendment requiring a poll tax and literacy test which held the “deliberate purpose of depriving the negro of the right to vote.”   

Dan Allen of Dan Allen Drive and Parking Deck was the secretary of the same Raleigh White Supremacy Club, and along Charles Park was a part of the 1900 state election in which “violence by … white supremacy organizations kept blacks away from the polls.” The Morning Post reported that Allen rose at 5 a.m. to “care for the interests of Anglo-Saxon North Carolina.”  

Eugene Brooks of Brooks Hall published a children’s book that said enslaved African Americans could not be free because their “semi-savage state” would threaten the happiness of the white race. 

David Clark Laboratories’ honoree was so boisterously racist and antisemitic on campus that his father, a veteran of the Confederate Army, advised him to be more discrete.   

Polk Hall’s namesake was an owner of slaves, colonel of the Confederate Army and state congressman who argued against emancipation and the constitutional amendments that protected the rights of the formerly enslaved. He called these “the greatest crime of modern times” and for the rest of his career fought against the incorporation of Black Americans in North Carolina agriculture.  

In 2020, Chancellor Randy Woodson said a building honoring a white supremacist like Josephus Daniels was in complete opposition to the values of our school and that its presence served “as a constant reminder of this painful chapter in our state’s history.” It’s difficult to understand how, two years later, buildings honoring men with the same racist resumes continue to plague our campus. Their persistence is a disgrace that gives breath to the hate and heinous attitudes they carried. The titles of the buildings that house our classrooms are supposed to symbolize the achievements, goals and pride of a university. Instead, these halls provide a disappointing stain on the reputation of our school. 

As another year begins, NC State remains marked by its racist past. Alternative names have been readily available for years. This fall, Chancellor Woodson and the board of trustees need to make good on their previous promises and rid the campus of its embarrassing association with white supremacy.  

For more information and detailed accounts on the history of our campus buildings, check out the Brick Layers Project.