By: Kai Heslop (’19), Staff Writer
The Sonja Haynes Stone Center is an important space known as the center for Black history and culture on campus. From the 1980s to 2004, there was a Black culture center on campus located in the Union. Over the course of the last two decades, however, changes were made that forever altered the physical space, mission, and possible reach that the Black culture center was and still is able to enjoy.
In early 2002, university students spearheaded new plans for the Union’s Black culture center that would see it moved to its own building. Roy Flood, a graduate of UNC Chapel Hill from the class of ’86, said, “Dissatisfaction across the board about meeting spaces on campus on the part of students led to different student protests. These student protests played a large role in the formation of the Stone Center.” When these changes began to come to fruition, the Black culture center’s mission expanded to encompass a larger meaning.
The Sonja Haynes Stone Center officially opened on August 20th, 2004, at the very beginning of the fall semester. Its creation was an important step in acknowledging the need for a space for Black students to lay claim to on campus, while acknowledging the struggle faced by those that came before them for Black spaces to even exist on college campuses.
Dr. Joseph Jordan, the Director of the Sonja Haynes Stone Center and a professor in the African, African-American and Diaspora Studies department here at UNC Chapel Hill, warmly recalled the grand opening of the Stone Center back in 2004. “It was everyone’s dream to have a place of one’s own, where you could program and create different initiatives in one space,” he said. Having faced few administrative drawbacks, the opening of the Sonja Haynes Stone Center, which was attended by over 700 people, was celebrated and cherished by most people on campus. Touted for its advanced technology and modern design, the Stone Center attracted plenty of attention and was heavily used, especially at the beginning of its existence. Since it was the newest building on campus at the time, everyone wanted to experience it first hand, lending the center a spot on the local, regional, and even somewhat international stage.
Although there were few administrative drawbacks with its creation, the Stone Center faced other challenges. Funding posed the biggest challenge to the Stone Center; this is a problem that it, along with other campus centers, faces to this day. With this, Dr. Jordan mentioned advocates of the center having to essentially convince donors of the worth and value behind the Stone Center’s mission in order to secure funding.
There was a fair amount of people who opposed the center being erected on the grounds of it being seen as divisive and fostering racial separation. Still others thought there were more pressing needs on campus at the time, which the university should be focusing its attention and energy on instead. Despite this pushback, the university saw the importance of the center, and proceeded to erect it. With this, the Stone Center took on the added pressure of fulfilling the expectations of supporters of the center, while allowing work that benefited the community done in the Stone Center to speak for itself in the face of those who were originally in opposition to the center.
Before the creation of the Stone Center, groups had to coordinate with various offices across campus to program, which was a major inconvenience for students and various student organizations. Concentrating organizations in the Stone Center and making the center their home helped to make programming more efficient and accessible. This made realizing the visions and plans that groups had come to life in an easier, smoother fashion. At its inception, organizations tied to the Black community here at UNC Chapel Hill such as Opeyo and EROT were and continue to be prioritized over other outside groups in the Stone Center. This helps these student groups feel more situated and tied to the community through being able to claim this space as their home.
Students today are pleased that a center for Black culture and history exists on this campus. “We’re at a predominantly white institution where every space is white. It’s nice to have a place where one can feel acknowledged and know that that place is our own,” said Brianna Small, a junior at UNC Chapel Hill. It serves as a symbol that affirms the importance of Black students as part of the UNC Chapel Hill campus community.
