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Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History

A progressive student-led movement in the early 1990s to build a free-standing building for the Black Cultural Center (BCC) created the current Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History, today one of the preeminent centers in the nation for the critical examination of all dimensions of African-American and African diaspora cultures. The BCC movement brought together a diverse coalition of student organizations on behalf of what appeared to be a straightforward idea—a free-standing building for a center that already had a detailed plan developed by the BCC’s planning committee. But the movement ended up asking something far more profound: could Black culture ever be included within the cultural landscape of the University?

Fryar, Charlotte. “Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History.” Personal Photograph. 24 May 2018.

Organization: BCC Movement, Black Student Movement, Campus Y, Black Awareness Council, Student Environmental Action Coalition

Space Use: Academic

Type of Transformation: Creation

Date Created: 2004

Campus Space: Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History

Citation: Interview with Renee Alexander Craft by Charlotte Fryar, 2 March 2017, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007), Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.