ATLANTA — Emory University is renaming buildings on campus to help reconcile with “a legacy of racism, disenfranchisement, and dispossession.”
A Monday statement from university president Gregory L. Fenves says it’s part of Emory's steps toward progress for racial justice.
Fenves announced Emory is renaming Language Hall at Oxford College in honor of groundbreaking judge Horace Johnson Jr., who was part of the Newton County School District’s first integrated classes as a fourth grader. He was the appointed to the Superior Court for the Alcovy Judicial Circuit in 2002 by Governor Roy Barnes and died suddenly in July of last year.
The university is also renaming the Longstreet-Means residence hall to Eagle Hall. Fenves says Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, who was university president from 1839 to 1848, promoted pro-slavery views, opposing abolition and defending slavery and the South’s secession from the Union.
“It is inappropriate for his name to continue to be memorialized in a place of honor on our campus,” Fenves said.
Fenves says he’s still reviewing research to consider removing other names from honorific places on campus.
The university president says they’re also “exploring” adopting an acknowledgement statement that recognizes Emory’s location on the Muscogee (Creek) Nation homelands, and they’re considering creating physical remembrance rituals on campus to highlight their language and culture.
Fenves says Emory will make plans to create twin memorials on both the Atlanta and Oxford campuses to honor the enslaved people who helped build the university.
These changes are a response to recommendations from two advisory committees Emory reappointed last summer when racial injustice protests swept the nation and renewed calls for the university to “examine its founding narratives” emerged, the statement reads.
Emory reappointed the Committee on Naming Honors as well as the Task Force on Untold Stories and Disenfranchised to take actions for racial justice, Fenves wrote in a 2020 statement.