in the
NAME of The Carr Building controversy raises questions about how the complications of Duke’s past square with its present.
O
BY SCOTT HULER
N A SWELTERING AFTERNOON in man who donated money to a fledgling college. He also, September, in front of the Carr Building as recent documents dug up by historians have shown, on East Campus, a young black woman supported the violent movement to suppress black voters and black progress around the turn of the twentieth addressed a gathering of a couple hundred century, publicly supported the dishonest Lost Cause mymembers of the Duke and Durham communities. She stood in front of a building named for Julian Carr. thology, proudly and publicly reflected upon his beating She stood on ground Carr donated to the university. Is changing a name erasing history? She was not there to praise Julian Carr. Or, for that matter, Duke. of a black woman. With Carr’s name prominently cele“As a black African woman,” senior Christine Kinyua brated, Kinyua said she sees Duke as a place seemingly said, “as an immigrant, I don’t see myself in this institution.” Kinyua was talking about the physical environment frozen in “a time stuck with the prevalence of wealth and Duke has built as it has created itself. Founded by white white supremacy, a time that we all acknowledge as wrong men and segregated until the early 1960s, Duke has honand problematic.” To Kinyua, by retaining Carr’s name ored only them with statues, and named buildings almost on a building, Duke said far more than that it appreciated only after them. his financial support in its early days. In front of Carr, Even in that context, Carr was not just another rich she voiced one of the demonstration’s central demands:
22 www.dukemagazine.duke.edu
