Imagine the outrage if a white student at an HBCU tweeted “Salt in the pepper shaker”. Update to this previous story.
Via The State
Edith Dunlap was so excited when she saw another African-American student in each of her classes last fall at Clemson University that she tweeted the news to friends.
“I’m usually the only piece of pepper in the salt shaker,” said the junior English major from Chester.[…]
Protesters also want Clemson — a national top-20 public college, according to U.S. News and World Report’s rankings — to better acknowledge publicly the school’s history. The state’s second-largest university sits on a former cotton plantation tilled by slaves. The first structures on campus were built by the labor of African-American convicts.
And they want to rename the school’s most iconic building, Tillman Hall, to end the link to former U.S senator and former Gov. Ben Tillman, a renowned segregationist and participant in the massacre of black militia members during Reconstruction.[…]
Any changes would require the blessing of Clemson’s trustees and the approval of two-thirds of state legislators, under a law passed after the Confederate flag was removed from the State House dome in 2000.
“We cannot rewrite history. But we want to recognize and respect that history on campus,” said Clemson trustee chairman David Wilkins, a former S.C. House speaker. “We all should respect those views. But, at same time, I do not believe right now there’s an appetite on the part of the board on renaming buildings.”
Student protest leaders say they will try to leverage growing discontent on campus to get action.