“Building 
a University of the People: The Movement for a Free-standing Black Cultural Center at UNC-Chapel Hill”
As the SOHP’s University History Field Scholar, Charlotte Fryar has spent the last year exploring one of UNC-Chapel Hill’s most significant movements in student activism for racial justice, which led to the creation and construction of a free-standing building for the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History. The movement for a free-standing black cultural center, with its climax between 1991-93, was part of a larger and longer movement, cultivated by generations of UNC students, who organized to address the ways in which the University’s leadership has fallen short of reconciling with the racialized foundations on which the institution is built. This talk will discuss oral history interviews with alumni who were active in the movement for a free-standing Stone Center and the ways in which interviews with alumni-activists can help to clarify for both current students and administrators what is at stake in addressing University history and how to reconcile with that history in order to act justly for all members of the UNC community–in the past, present, and future.
Charlotte Fryar is a PhD candidate in UNC’s Department of American Studies. She has previously served as Lab Associate for the Digital Innovation Lab and as a researcher for the Chancellor’s Task Force on University History. Her dissertation, a hybrid of digital and textual components, is titled “Building A University of the People.” It investigates the history and continued legacies of racial justice student activism at UNC-Chapel Hill from 1968 to the present as a way to examine institutional racism in and on the landscape of the University’s campus.
This event is free and open to the public, but RSVPs to pathorn@unc.edu will be appreciated. Light refreshments will be served.