Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History

The Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was established on 1 July 1988. Initially known as the Black Cultural Center, it was renamed in the fall of 1991 for activist and associate professor of Afro-American studies Sonja Haynes Stone, who died on 10 August 1991. Dr. Stone was the director of the Afro-American Studies curriculum from 1974 to 1979 and adviser to the Black Student Movement from 1974 to 1980. The Center was originally housed in the Frank Porter Graham Student Union in what had been a snack bar. The student-led push for a freestanding center that began in 1992 became UNC-Chapel Hill's largest student protest movement since the Vietnam War. On 17 March 1992, students assembled in front of South Building where UNC-Chapel Hill's administrators, including Chancellor Paul Hardin III, had offices. The students had three demands: higher wages for the university's housekeepers, a freestanding black cultural center, and an endowed professorship in Dr. Stone's name. Chancellor Hardin rejected all three demands and cited segregation and separatism as reasons to refuse a freestanding center. He countered with a proposed addition to the Student Union. On 3 September 1992, 400 demonstrators gathered outside the chancellor's house to demand a freestanding center and were removed by police. On 10 September 1992, between 600 and 1500 students peacefully marched into South Building and presented Chancellor Hardin with a letter demanding a freestanding center and calling for him to choose a site by 13 November 1992. The protest was organized by a coalition of black athletes called the Black Awareness Council, which was founded by football players John Bradley, Jimmy Hitchcock, Malcolm Marshall, and Tim Smith. In 1993, the University's Board of Trustees approved a site for a freestanding center in the Coker Woods between the Bell Tower and Coker Hall. Fundraising for the Center took place over the following nine years. Funding came from contributions, pledges, a chancellor's discretionary fund, private donations, and other fund-raising programs. The Center's groundbreaking took place in April 2001 and it opened in August 2004. In Fall 2002, the Sonja Haynes Stone Black Cultural Center changed its name to the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History to align the name of the Center with its dual mission of supporting scholarship and cultural understanding of the African diaspora experience. Administratively located in the University's Academic Affairs Division, the Center is concerned with the interdisciplinary examination of arts, cultures, literatures, and histories of the African diaspora. The Sonja Haynes Stone Black Cultural Center's programs include the Diaspora Festival of Black and Independent Film, the Hekima reading and film discussion groups, the Pamela Nicole Cummings Visiting Artist Fellowship, the Sonja Haynes Stone Memorial Lecture, the African Diaspora Lecture Series, the Undergraduate International Studies Fellowship, and Communiversity Youth Programs.