Thursday, March 28, 2024

Two More: Jacksonville State and Oklahoma City Community College Remove Racist Symbols (Video)

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Monument commemorating the Land Run of 1889 in Oklahoma

*Two more colleges announced Tuesday (Jan. 27) that they have removed racist symbols from their campuses following pressure from students and others.

Alabama’s Jacksonville State University is renaming Bibb Graves Hall, a building that houses administrative offices and was named for a former governor of Alabama during the 1930s. He also led the local Ku Klux Klan.

Alabama’s Auburn University and Troy University have already deleted Graves’ name from their campus buildings, both in the wake of the nationwide racial reckoning last summer sparked by the police killing of George Floyd. However, the University of Alabama’s College of Education building is still named for Graves.

Don Killingsworth, president of Jacksonville State, told CBS42 that the name change “ushers in a new, more modern era for this important piece of the university’s history.”

Below is a June 2020 news report about Jacksonville State University responding to student and alumni calls to rename the building.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma City Community College announced that it removed a monument commemorating the Land Run of 1889, when American pioneers traveled west to steal land originally occupied by Native Americans. The monument was the source of frequent complaints for its glorification of the Land Run, which some students, faculty and staff members found offensive toward Indigenous people, according to KOCO News.

Danita Rose, executive vice president of the college, whose family is of Cherokee descent, called the decision a “no-brainer,” KOCO News reported. She added: “If our goal is to create a community that is inclusive and welcoming to everyone, a monument that depicts cruelty and oppression can’t be on display here.”

Here’s KOCOs July 2020 report about a white armed militia who stood guard in front of the monument during last summer’s protests against racial inequality.

And a report by The Oklahoman…

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