Richmond law school is latest to drop slaveholding namesake

REUTERS/Brian Snyder

Sept 26 (Reuters) – The University of Richmond is eradicating an early donor from the official identify of its law school after discovering that he owned slaves, marking the latest in a string of law school identify modifications tied to the conduct of historic figures.

The college’s board of trustees on Friday unanimously voted to change the law school’s official identify from T.C. Williams School of Law to the University of Richmond School of Law. Former namesake Thomas C. Williams, Sr. operated two Virginia-based tobacco firms within the 1800s and owned and managed slaves in each his skilled and private capability, in accordance to newly uncovered authorities paperwork and historic newspaper data.

“We recognize that some may be disappointed or disagree with this decision,” college president Kevin Hallock stated in a Sept. 24 e mail to college students. “We also recognize the role the Williams family has played here and respect the full and complete history of the institution.”

Also on Friday, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a invoice renaming the University of California Hastings College of the Law because the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco. That long-debated change might go into impact as early as Jan. 1, 2023 and eliminates reference to Serranus Hastings—a former California Supreme Court justice who based the law school in 1878.

The law school had endorsed the change in July and state lawmakers signed off in August. Historians say Hastings orchestrated the killings of Native Americans so as to take away them from ranch land he bought in Northern California.

The transition at Richmond Law will doubtless be muted. University officers stated that individuals have already been referring to the school because the University of Richmond School of Law for 20 years. But it was formally the T.C. Williams School of Law since 1920, after Williams’ household made a number of donations that helped set up the law school.

The college’s board of trustees in March adopted ideas below which no constructing, program or entity will be named for any one that owned slaves or participated in slavery

At least 5 law colleges have modified names, renamed buildings, or eliminated different references to historic figures prior to now two years.

Cleveland State University is poised to change the identify of its law school to take away a reference to John Marshall, who was chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1801 to 1835. The school is at present named the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law, however the former justice has come below new scrutiny for his judicial document upholding slavery and his possession of a lot of slaves.

The University of Illinois at Chicago School of Law dropped Marshall from its identify in May 2021, after almost a 12 months of dialogue amongst college students and alumni.

The University of California, Berkeley School of Law in 2020 eliminated the identify of lawyer John Henry Boalt from its important constructing. Boalt was a number one proponent of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

The University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School has stated it’s going to remove the identify of former U.S. Supreme Court chief justice Roger Brooke Taney from a limestone medallion on the outside of one in every of its buildings. Taney wrote the 1857 majority opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which upheld slavery.

Read extra:

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uc hastings is historical past as law school drops controversial namesake

Reporting by Karen Sloan

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