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Tuesday, 07/12/05 'Confederate' will remain in name of Vanderbilt dorm
'Time to move on,' university
says of losing three-year legal fight
By MICHAEL CASS
Staff Writer
The words Confederate Memorial Hall — words that evoke
images of slavery for some people and fallen heroes for others — will
remain inscribed in stone on a Vanderbilt University building after a
three-year legal battle.
Vanderbilt decided not to appeal a state court ruling
ordering that the Nashville school either keep the in-scription on the
building or pay damages that could have topped $1 million to the United
Daughters of the Confederacy, university spokes-man Michael Schoenfeld
said yesterday.
The UDC's Tennessee division raised $50,000 during the
Great Depression to help pay for the building, which was part of the
former George Peabody College for Teachers at the time, and vigorously
challenged Vanderbilt's plans to remove the name in 2002. Peabody merged
with Vanderbilt in 1979.
Schoenfeld said the university, which had hoped to
create what it considered a more welcoming environment by taking down a
word some find offensive, is dropping the matter and leaving the full name
on the 70-year-old residence hall.
"We believed the best option for Vanderbilt at this time
was to move on," he said. "Taking on this issue was something important
for the university to do, and taking it any further was reaching a point
of diminishing returns."
UDC representatives said they were thrilled by the
decision, which followed a May 3 ruling by the Tennessee Court of
Appeals.
"Slavery was terrible, and the Civil War was terrible in
terms of the blood shed," said Doug Jones, a Nashville-based attorney for
the organization. "But we don't need to forget it."
Vanderbilt said that simply bringing attention to the
issue was a victory, and that the building's new name in all other
official references, Memorial Hall, was taking hold on campus.
The legal fight concerned only the Confederate Memorial
Hall inscription on the building's stone pediment. The Court of Appeals
ruled that the inscription must stay up as long as the building does.
The university plans to create an annual lecture series
or other educational events to keep issues of race, history, memory and
the Civil War on students' minds, Schoenfeld said.
Dr. Eddie Hamilton, a Nashville physician and Vanderbilt
School of Medicine graduate who had offered to give $50,000 to help
Vanderbilt remove the name by paying damages to the UDC, said he was
disappointed but not surprised by the decision. He said the university
never contacted him about his offer, which he had hoped would inspire
other donations.
Hamilton, an African-American, compared Confederate
symbols with Nazi swastikas, which he said would not be allowed to stay on
a building in Tennessee.
"Slavery was evil, and the Confederacy supported
slavery," he said. "For us to be even having a discussion of whether it
should come down is inappropriate. But life goes on. We, as a race of
people, this is not going to affect us in terms of slowing down our
progress."
But Jones and Deanna Bryant, president of the UDC's
Tennessee division, said most of the soldiers honored by Confederate
Memorial Hall were not slave owners. They were simply men "trying to
defend their homes," said Jones, who is a former president of the Battle
of Nashville Preservation Society.
"It's a victory for the entire South," Bryant, who lives
in Franklin, said of the decision to keep the inscription on the building.
"Regardless, the War Between the States happened. Just because somebody
doesn't like something, you can't erase it from the history books." |
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The name Confederate Memorial Hall will
stay on the building's pediment, but will gradually disappear in
other official references.
RICKY ROGERS /
FILE
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The story so
far |
Vanderbilt University announced
in 2002 that it would drop the word "Confederate" from the
name of Confederate Memorial Hall, a dormitory built in 1935
by the former George Peabody College for Teachers. Led by
Chancellor Gordon Gee, university officials said it was
important to remove a symbol that upset some current and
prospective students, professors and staff members.
But the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which had
helped Peabody pay for the building by raising $50,000 in the
early 20th century, fought the decision. The organization's
Tennessee division took Vanderbilt to court, accusing it of a
breach of contract.
Davidson County Chancellor Irvin
Kilcrease Jr. dismissed the lawsuit in September 2003.
Kilcrease ruled that Vanderbilt must be allowed to change the
building's name so it could recruit African-Americans and
members of other minority groups. He also said the contracts
between the UDC and Peabody — which had later merged with
Vanderbilt — were signed at a different time in American
history, when racial segregation was legal.
The UDC
appealed Kilcrease's decision, and the Tennessee Court of
Appeals heard arguments from both sides in January. Four
months later, the court ruled that Vanderbilt was bound by its
earlier agreements with the UDC and must either keep the name
on the building or pay damages for removing it.
Vanderbilt, which has changed the name of the building
to Memorial Hall everywhere but on the stone pediment, decided
not to appeal the court's decision, meaning that the words
Confederate Memorial Hall will stay up as long as the building
does. Vanderbilt spent about $2.5 million renovating the
residence hall in the 1980s, according to the Court of Appeals
ruling.
— MICHAEL CASS
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