Excerpt Description: Blanche Brown describes how the University’s founding as an institution for North Carolina’s white male elite continues to determines the role that the University in the lives of its current students.
Excerpt Transcript: “On another hand, I also think that the university is supposed to be attentive to and care for and be for, period, its students. What is the point of a university if it’s not caring for its students? And I think that is being threatened or even–. This is something that I often say, is that UNC-Chapel Hill was designed for white, southern, land-owning men. And so that is the design we’re working from, and that is the intent we’re working from. And even though that seems dramatic to say that, because it was a hundred–over a hundred years ago–I think it is important that we think about that is the model that the university was founded on. And it takes work to undo that. And that is still not undone. And I think that is really important. Because it’ll never be a place where people who don’t fit that description will feel safe or will be able to learn until we really do take that task on in more direct ways.”
Excerpt Description: Blanche Brown describes how the University’s founding as an institution for North Carolina’s white male elite continues to determines the role that the University in the lives of its current students.
Interviewee Name: Blanche Brown
Interviewer: Charlotte Fryar
Excerpt Transcript: “On another hand, I also think that the university is supposed to be attentive to and care for and be for, period, its students. What is the point of a university if it’s not caring for its students? And I think that is being threatened or even–. This is something that I often say, is that UNC-Chapel Hill was designed for white, southern, land-owning men. And so that is the design we’re working from, and that is the intent we’re working from. And even though that seems dramatic to say that, because it was a hundred–over a hundred years ago–I think it is important that we think about that is the model that the university was founded on. And it takes work to undo that. And that is still not undone. And I think that is really important. Because it’ll never be a place where people who don’t fit that description will feel safe or will be able to learn until we really do take that task on in more direct ways.”
Organization: Real Silent Sam Coalition
Excerpt Length: 1:12
Interview Date: 4/15/2015
Interview Location: Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Campus Space: Saunders Hall
Citation: Interview with Blanche Brown by Charlotte Fryar, 15 April 2015, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.