My Brick Once Stolen: How My Own Ancestry Leads Back to UNC By Chris Williams
Not because it’s on the opposite side of campus from where the majority of Carolina’s Black students have always lived. Not because of its unique architecture from almost every other dorm on campus.
Unless you live there, you may rarely think about McIver hall. But I think about it every day. Photos of Williams outside of the UNC McIver dorm
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Photos of the McIver Family
MAGAZINE
2022 Black History Month Issue Edition
I reflect on the significance of McIver every day because it is one of the most obvious historical signs that I am thriving in a space I was never meant to occupy. I remember feeling slightly curious when I found out one of my friends, another Black man at UNC, was living in McIver during my first semester here. Naturally, I had to go diving into the same (free) type of genealogy research Ancestry’s 3 million Lorem ipsum paying customers have already undertaken. My maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Helena Gibson McIver. She was born 70 years before me, and her great-grandmother was Rosa McIver. Rosa was enslaved on Evander McIver’s plantation in Sanford, N.C. in the mid-1800s. Unfortunately, McIver Hall isn’t named after my great-great-great-grandmother, a Black woman enslaved almost 200 years ago. Instead, McIver Residence Hall takes its name from Charles Duncan McIver. He is the man who founded and served as the first president of the University of
