USC students are giving their own name to a campus building named for a slave owner

Tired of waiting on officials to act, a group of University of South Carolina students has decided to rename a building named for a slave owner.

The group of students, led by the newly formed USC chapter of the NAACP, will now be calling the Thomas Cooper Library the Willie L. Harriford Library. “Dean Harriford,” who died in 2018, was USC’s first Black administrator, a U.S. Army veteran and the founder of the Theta Nu chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.

“On behalf of the Harriford family, we thank you all for working hard to keep his legacy alive,” said Taylor Platt, one of Harriford’s grandaughters, during a Wednesday press conference outside the library. “My grandfather believed in inclusion for all people, no matter their background or their race.”

Cooper, who served as the second president of USC, was a slave owner and white supremacist, according to an online history of USC. The library was named for him in 1976. The name cannot be changed without two-thirds approval from the S.C. legislature, according to the Heritage Act.

Harriford was joined by men wearing Alpha Phi Alpha apparel.

“It’s not a cry for help, nor a request for sympathy, but instead a demand for change,” said Dyrek Hamilton, the vice president of Alpha Phi Alpha at USC and a member of the university’s NAACP chapter. “It is apparent we cannot change our history, but we can change who and what we decide to represent.”