Group seeks to rename UNC-Chapel Hill building for Black man killed on campus

James Cates, 22, was at a dance at the student union on Nov. 21, 1970, when a racist motorcycle gang from Durham starting fighting outside with some Black people attending the dance. Cates was stabbed in the area now known as "The Pit" and died later at a nearby hospital.

"The university has never really acknowledged its role in this event," said Mike Ogle, a journalist who has researched Cates' story for five years. "Not only did it happen on its campus, but campus police were on the scene when it happened [and] Chapel Hill police were also on the scene shortly thereafter. And frankly, they allowed him to bleed to death."

Last fall, on the 50th anniversary of Cates' death, Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz announced a committee had been formed to investigate the death and publicize the story in a an attempt at racial reconciliation.

But Ogle and a group called the James Cates Remembrance Coalition want to go further to keep his name front and center: They want the student stores building on campus named for him.

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For years, the building had been named for Josephus Daniels, a former editor of The News & Observer newspaper in Raleigh and a proponent of white supremacy in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Daniels name was removed last year.

Ogle said the gang members who killed Cates were acquitted.

"Pretty much after that, the story kind of disappeared from the collective memory of Chapel Hill and UNC, outside of the Black community. It was just something that people didn’t want to remember, and it didn’t fit the narrative," he said. "Our aim is to make the James Cates story never goes away again."

The coalition includes UNC-Chapel Hill faculty members and some of Cates' relatives, including state Sen. Valerie Foushee, D-Orange.

Malinda Maynor Lowery, a history professor and director of the Center for the Study of the American South, is a member of the coalition and said Cates' name would be fitting for the the student stores building.

"Student stores is a crossroads. It’s a hub. It’s a place where people come to know one another and really find our shared identity at UNC-Chapel Hill," Lowery said. "For the building to be named for ... James Cates, I think, is a sign of the forged relationships between Black Chapel Hill and UNC-Chapel Hill."

The group sent a letter stating the case for the renaming to Guskiewicz on Tuesday. It was signed by more than 50 individuals and organizations, including the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP, the Orange County Board of Commissioners and Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger.

"This is a really important part of UNC’s history that needs to become more visible because it helps us confront who we truly are," Lowery said. "If we are to move forward, to be that example for the rest of the state and the nation and the world, we need to be willing to acknowledge, elevate and study the parts of our history that we are less proud of."