Document Description: The first student organization that formed around issues relating to the University’s history with racial injustice was Students Seeking Historical Truth (SSHT). In the early morning hours of Wednesday, October 6th, members of the organization decorated Saunders Hall, Murphey Hall, and Steele Building. They hung a red sheet over the engraved Saunders Hall sign, which read “KKK,” a white sheet over Murphey Hall, which read “Hitler Hall,” and another sheet over Steele Building, which read “David Duke KKK.” Seventy-seven posters were taped around and on Saunders Hall, a number which signified the seventy-seven years since the building’s dedication in honor of William Saunders. On the posters, after listing the offenses perpetrated by members of the Ku Klux Klan including “intimidation, mutilation, lynching, rape,” the posters read in large font: “WHITE SUPREMACIST. Are You Proud to Be a Tar Heel?” Papers were taped to the brick pathways between the three buildings, reading “The Great Cover-Up,” “Fess Up Silent Sam,” and naming other problematic individuals whose names were on university buildings, including “Elisha P. Mitchell,” “Charles B. Aycock,” and “David L. Swain.”
Organization: Students Seeking Historical Truth
Date: 10/6/1999
Document Type: Photograph
Creator: John K. Chapman
Document Collection: John Kenyon Chapman Papers, 1969-2009
Campus Space: Saunders Hall
Citation: Decoration of Saunders Hall by Student Seeking Historical Truth Photograph in the John Kenyon Chapman Papers #5441, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Document Description: The first student organization that formed around issues relating to the University’s history with racial injustice was Students Seeking Historical Truth (SSHT). In the early morning hours of Wednesday, October 6th, members of the organization decorated Saunders Hall, Murphey Hall, and Steele Building. They hung a red sheet over the engraved Saunders Hall sign, which read “KKK,” a white sheet over Murphey Hall, which read “Hitler Hall,” and another sheet over Steele Building, which read “David Duke KKK.” Seventy-seven posters were taped around and on Saunders Hall, a number which signified the seventy-seven years since the building’s dedication in honor of William Saunders. On the posters, after listing the offenses perpetrated by members of the Ku Klux Klan including “intimidation, mutilation, lynching, rape,” the posters read in large font: “WHITE SUPREMACIST. Are You Proud to Be a Tar Heel?” Papers were taped to the brick pathways between the three buildings, reading “The Great Cover-Up,” “Fess Up Silent Sam,” and naming other problematic individuals whose names were on university buildings, including “Elisha P. Mitchell,” “Charles B. Aycock,” and “David L. Swain.”
Organization: Students Seeking Historical Truth
Date: 10/6/1999
Document Type: Photograph
Creator: John K. Chapman
Document Collection: John Kenyon Chapman Papers, 1969-2009
Campus Space: Saunders Hall
Citation: Decoration of Saunders Hall by Student Seeking Historical Truth Photograph in the John Kenyon Chapman Papers #5441, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.