WATCH NOW: PHCC board takes up possible renaming of college, plans to handle the pandemic

From the Martinsville-region COVID-19/coronavirus daily update from state, nation and world: July 21 series

Holly Kozelsky Jul 20, 2020 Updated Jul 21, 2020

As the new school year is set to begin at Patrick Henry Community College, the institution faces two sets of challenges: possibly renaming itself and/or its facilities and following new precautions against the COVID-19 pandemic. ... Plans for both were discussed Monday during a quarterly meeting of PHCC’s board, which was conducted via Zoom.

The Virginia State Board for Community Colleges on Friday had asked each of the commonwealth’s 23 colleges “to review the appropriateness of its college, campus(es), and facilities names” in connection with any representations of “systemic racism that have existed in plain sight for years,” according to its resolution. The board required schools to report their findings by March 2021.

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Patrick Henry (1736-1799), for whom PHCC is named, was the originator of the famous phrase “Give me liberty or give me death” and one of the key figures of the American Revolution. ... As the American government was forming, he stood up for the rights of free men to govern themselves with as little government intervention as possible. To that end he championed the Bill of Rights.

He was a delegate to the first and second Constitutional Congresses and, from 1776 to 1779, the first governor of Virginia. He also was governor in 1784-1786. He lived in what is now Henry County during the years between his terms as governor, near what is now Old Liberty Drive in Axton. Henry and Patrick counties are named for him. ... Henry was against slavery, which he had called a “lamentable evil,” but he owned slaves. He argued for the end of slave importation and has been called the most powerful and influential speaker and lawyer in America.

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