Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History

[1] The center's goal, according to its first director, Margo Crawford, was to advance black literary and artistic endeavors while trying to understand the cultural diversity on campus.

[2] In the fall of 1991, after the successful lobbying of the UNC board of trustees by a group of students, the center was renamed for Dr. Sonja Haynes Stone, an associate professor of Afro-American studies who had died on August 10, 1991, at the age of 51, after suffering a stroke.

[8] On Tuesday, March 17, 1992, a hundred students assembled at South Building, the center of UNC's administration, to demand an answer from Chancellor Paul Hardin III about three demands: higher-wages for UNC's housekeepers, a free-standing Black Cultural Center, and an endowed professorship in Dr. Sonja Haynes Stone's name.

He, like many other administrators, was concerned that a free-standing Black Cultural Center would lead to segregation and separatism, and he suggested an addition to the union as an alternative.

[17] On the Tuesday following the march on South Building, Chancellor Hardin called for student activists to sit with administrators and craft a proposal, which could be for a free-standing structure, to send to the board of trustees.

[24] Feeling alienated by the fierce rhetoric of "black power," many white students set out to collect petitions in favor of a multicultural center, which would better represent all minorities on campus.

[28] According to McCormick, "any appropriate architectural forms and land sites will be considered in light of the programmatic plan that the working group develops.

[34] As the administrators and faculty filed in the students stood in silence holding signs that read "no more waiting," "no justice, no peace" and "Hardin's Plantation".

[37] Initially the students were suspicious of the Chancellor's language, which stated that he supported a "... free-standing facility to house the center ..."[38] The activists thought that this might mean that the center would share a building with other programs, but a day later, after Provost McCormick personally clarified the ambiguity, the student activist leaders at last agreed to come to the table to help in the planning of the new facility.

[40] In an October 19 meeting of the panel, the students agreed to suspend their threat of "direct action" if Hardin did not support a free-standing center by November 13.