Georgia college buildings honoring dishonorable could be renamed

With the need for making amends for racial injustices old and new getting a public reckoning, a group responsible for reviewing the origin of names of Georgia’s college buildings are preparing to recommend changes early next year.

A group of historians led by Civil War author Lisa Tendrich Frank is going through a list of names of buildings and colleges around the state to find out more about their namesakes. The researchers are poring over old books, alumni magazines and obituaries to get a sense of the people honored with the buildings’ names.

“A lot of the buildings are named after Georgia politicians or prominent families, those are very easy to get information on,” Frank said at a call-in meeting of the University System of Georgia’s Naming Advisory Group Wednesday. “When they named it after a professor – I’ve been doing a lot of the Georgia Tech ones today – some of the ones named after math professors or chemistry professors, that requires more digging.”

When they are done, the historians will present their findings to the advisory group, which includes Albany State University President Marion Fredrick, Chick-fil-A executive Michael Patrick, retired Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Herbert Phipps, University of Georgia Foundation Vice Chairman Neal Quirk and Sally Wallace, dean of the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University.

Read more: https://georgiarecorder.com/2020/10/01/ga-college-buildings-honoring-dishonorable-could-be-renamed/