The Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was founded 1 July 1988 as the Black Cultural Center.
In the fall of 1991, after the successful lobbying of the UNC board of trustees by a group of students, the center was renamed for Dr. Sonja Haynes Stone, an associate professor of Afro-American studies who had died on August 10, 1991, at the age of 51, after suffering a stroke. Dr. Stone was director of the Afro-American Studies curriculum from 1974 to 1979, and from 1974 to 1980 she was adviser to the Black Student Movement, an organization that would later press for renaming the Black Cultural Center in her honor.
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.
