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ECU considers removing Gov. Aycock's name from dormitory

INTRO – Next week the ECU Board of Trustees meets in regular session. Among the items on their agenda is a proposed renaming of the Aycock dormitory. Charles B. Aycock was governor from 1901-to-1905 but his part in racist activities prior to his inauguration has raised calls for his name to be removed from the men’s residence hall. George Olsen has more.

When I attended East Carolina University in the late 1970s & early 1980s, Aycock Dormitory was one of three men’s dormitories located on College Hill. I lived in Belk… named, I assumed, for whoever started the department store. Jones, I had no idea. Aycock… I’ll give myself some credit and assume I knew he was a former governor, but that was about it. To say I didn’t give Charles B. Aycock much thought for most of my life would be an understatement. It was only when new research started to reveal itself in the late 1990s that I became aware of a darker side to a man I only knew as a turn-of-the-century governor.

    “He certainly helped whip up the frenzy that led to the violence. He spoke approvingly of the seizure of power that occurred in 1898. In respect to the Wilmington Race Riots, Charles Aycock wasn’t present but later said he had taken up his rifle and gone to the Goldsboro train station to help out in Wilmington but by the time he got to the station the word of the great victory had come so he went home. Whether that was true or not, I don’t know but that’s what he claimed.”

Tim Tyson is a historian at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. He was also one of the editors of the book that changed my basically non-existent view of Gov. Charles B. Aycock “Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and its Legacy.” The book looked at a racist campaign led by state Democrats against a fusion party of African-Americans and Republicans that threatened to wrest power in the state. The Wilmington Race Riot of which Aycock claims to have wanted to be a part of is now known as the only violent coup d’etat in the nation’s history as white Democrats deposed a duly elected Fusion government and seized power in the port city. The racist campaign continued with Aycock as governor as African-Americans were disfranchised from the state’s politics. But this dark period in state history was largely ignored for several decades, perhaps proof that victors do indeed write the history books. And when Aycock was honored by having an ECU dormitory as well as other buildings named for him, it’s likely the white racist campaign was not mentioned. His reputation as an education governor was.

    “He is said to have built a public school every day of his administration. If I remember correctly, he built about 600 schools for whites and about 100 for African-Americans. He increased funding and support for public education. That’s the thing he’s most honored for. That’s the reason his name is on all these buildings in colleges and high schools.”

Hence the reason why when Aycock’s name has been mentioned in the past, it’s as “the education governor.” Tyson acknowledges public education prior to Aycock was “not very good,” but speculates his motives for building schools across the state may have been more political than ideological.

    “He, when elected, then became an advocate for public education, perhaps as a way of consolidating the conservative victory and bringing some peace to the state. The white supremacy campaigns of 1898 and 1900 had riven the state from one end to the other with violence and electoral fraud and the most bitter kinds of disputes, physical intimidation and terrorism.”

This new understanding of Aycock has already prompted some reconsideration of the man’s legacy. The state Democratic Party dropped his name from an annual fundraising dinner in 2011 and last summer Duke University removed Aycock’s name from one of its dormitories. Some argue against the renaming, wondering where would it stop … some of the nation’s founding fathers were slaveholders… do we remove Washington from the dollar bill? Tim Tyson has little doubt about Aycock’s legacy… “decidedly mixed” at best and he says if Aycock was just a politician taking opportunistic advantage of the white supremacy movement rather than being a whole-hearted white supremacist he would’ve been “unusual among white men for his generation.” Nevertheless, while understanding the push to remove Aycock’s name from places of prominence, he still has some doubt about whether that should happen.   

    “If you want to know who was instrumental in the white supremacy campaigns you can almost just walk up and down the quad at UNC and see who the buildings are named after. I think it’s unfortunate we don’t… we didn’t name things after people who had the vision to see beyond race and to think of all God’s children as human beings. But I do think it’s something we shouldn’t forget, that that’s who we have been, not who we want to be, but it is who we have been, and I think rubbing out any evidence that we ever were like that is of, at least, no more of mixed value. There’s something lost as well as something gained.”

Tim Tyson is a historian at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. He is also an editor and contributor to the book “Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and its Legacy” as well as the author of “Blood Done Sign My Name.” I’m George Olsen.

George Olsen is a 1977 Havelock High School graduate. He received his B.A. in Broadcast Journalism from the University of South Carolina in 1982 where he got his first taste of non-commercial radio working for their student station WUSC. After graduation he worked about five years in commercial radio before coming to work at Public Radio East where he has remained since outside of a nearly 3-year stint as jazz and operations coordinator at WUAL in Tuscaloosa, Alabama in the early 1990s. On his return to eastern North Carolina he hosted classical music for Public Radio East before moving into the Morning Edition host position and now can be heard on All Things Considered. He also hosts and produces The Sound, five hours of Americana, Roots Rock and Contemporary Folk weekday evenings on PRE Public Radio East News & Ideas, and is a news and feature producer for Public Radio East.