N.C. A&T has removed the names of two buildings whose names are connected to white supremacy.

The university’s Board of Trustees voted on Friday, Sept. 25 to remove the names from Morrison Hall and Cherry Hall. Both buildings were named after former North Carolina governors who appear to not have any direct ties to the university.

Morrison Hall, is located across from Dudley Galleries and the A&T Four Statue. Dudley hall is also where on-campus early voting is available to students and the surrounding community.

Morrison is a former governor of North Carolina and was also a leader of the Red Shirts, a group of people that attacked and intimidated African-Americans voters.

Red Shirts patrolled the streets of Wilmington to keep Blacks from the polls. They later took part in a rampage that destroyed Black businesses and killed at least 60 city residents and as many as 300, according to some estimates.

Cherry Hall, an academic building used primarily by the College of Engineering, was named after Robert Cherry. He participated in a committee of governors that arranged to African-American doctors to be educated at the Meharry Medical College in Nashville. The deal blocked southern medical school integration efforts after World War II. 

As N.C. A&T is actively promoting voting rights and voting registration, Trustees expressed in a statement, that Morrison and Cherry Hall are names that do not represent the history of the school and its civic engagement. 

“Names associated with such painful moments in our state’s history ought not be atop buildings on the campus of America’s leading historically black university,”  said the university. 

This is the most recent effort of a N.C. school has taken to rename buildings that are associated with white supremacy.