Until earlier this month, the Clarence Thomas Center for Historic Preservation was a rather unknown building tucked away on the eastern edge of the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) campus in Savannah, Georgia. Now the building, which formerly housed a convent for Franciscan nuns, is at the center of a heated debate over its namesake, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Many SCAD students and even faculty were unaware that the building was specifically named after Thomas until an alumna launched a change.org petition to change the name of center. Sage Lucero, who graduated in June 2018, started the petition at the beginning of October following Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony during Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation hearing. Thomas, who became the second African-American to sit on the Supreme Court, was narrowly confirmed in 1991, after being accused of sexual harassment by lawyer and former employee Anita Hill.
“In the four years I attended Savannah College of Art and Design, I wasn’t aware there was in fact a building named after Clarence Thomas until it was brought to my attention due to the recent occurrences in the Supreme Court involving Dr. Ford and Brett Kavanaugh. The case between Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill in 1991 was extremely similar to what is happening to Dr. Ford today,” she wrote in the petition. Lucero proposed changing the name to the Anita Hill Center for Historic Preservation.
While its name is relatively new, the building was originally constructed in 1908 as an orphanage and convent for Franciscan nuns. In 2003, SCAD purchased the former convent, which had been closed since 1969. In January 2010, Thomas, a Savannah native who served as an altar boy in the building, attended the center’s dedication. Today the center houses SCAD’s historic preservation program.
Last week, Lucero wrote on change.org that she was closing the petition, which had reached roughly 2,400 signatures at the time of publication, due to threats she says she received: “I am disappointed to say that I am going to have to cancel my petition. Threats have been made against me and I no longer feel safe moving forward with this. Although the building’s name won’t change, I am satisfied with how many of you support women’s rights to feel safe and speak out...And I plan to keep supporting women’s rights in the best way I can moving forward. I hope you do too.”
Last Wednesday, the parent of two SCAD graduates launched a second petition urging the school's president Paula Wallace to keep the name as it is. “I am proud to know that there is a building on that campus that recognizes one of the most accomplished African Americans of our time. I am proud to live in a country where someone can begin life deep within the clutches of poverty and racial oppression, but through hard work, education, faith and determination become a Senior Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court,” Lamar Bowman wrote. The petition now has over 18,000 signatures.
The debate over the Clarence Thomas Center for Historic Preservation brings into sharp relief a discussion that has occurred on college campuses across the country: should buildings bearing the monikers of individuals with controversial legacies be renamed? At SCAD, it’s a conversation that sits at the intersection of gender, race, and politics.
According to SCAD graduate Rylee Barton, many buildings on the SCAD campus in Savannah are named after are the roads and streets where they are located. “But when they are named after specific people they no longer become just a location, they become a symbol of the person that they are [or] were,” Barton says.
General education professor Mary Chi-Whi Kim first became aware of the building’s name when she moderated a poetry reading there last year. She acknowledges that the name might mean different things for different people, but says the name Clarence Thomas sends a particular message on a campus where the president is a woman, the majority of faculty are women, and two-thirds of students are women.
“For some people, that building might stand for male privilege, for others it might stand for abuse of power, and yet here in Savannah, it could also stand for someone to applaud, for reaching the highest level of justice possible,” she says. “For me it means, ‘not you.’ It means exclusion. History has shown us that men are the ones who are listened to.”
Kim, who stressed that she is sharing her personal opinion and is not speaking as an official SCAD representative, would like to see that name changed but she recognizes that the university must take many things into consideration when naming a building. “It would be forward looking to change the name and think about what we want to call ourselves and how we want to define ourselves,” she says.
SCAD stated in an email to Teen Vogue that “we’re aware of the petition, and have talked with the sponsor.” A college spokesperson added that they spoke with Lucero after she posted the petition, and they have also received comments and feedback encouraging them to keep the name. SCAD declined to provide further information on the donor behind the building or to comment on whether or not they have policies and procedures in place to address requests to rename buildings in the future.
Yale University and other institutions such as University of Michigan have recently adopted policies about how to deal with requests to reconsider names of existing buildings. In 2017 Yale changed the name of Calhoun College, which was named after John C. Calhoun, the seventh U.S. vice president and a white supremacist who once called slavery a “positive good.” They renamed it after Yale alum Grace Murray Hopper, a computer science pioneer. Michigan announced earlier this year it will be changing the name of two buildings after the legacies of their namesakes were called into question.
Amber Wiley, assistant professor of art history at Rutgers University, researches architecture, urbanism, and African American cultural studies. She attended Yale as an undergraduate, where she says she witnessed firsthand the impact that being in Calhoun College had on students of color. “Place names are so important. They carry a lot of weight,” she says. “The kind of emotional and psychological toll that this plays on people who attend these universities, who have to sit in the classrooms in the building, this is not a thing to just take lightly. [They feel] the burden of history.”
Wiley says that in some ways, the discussion about Calhoun at Yale was much more straightforward than the current situation at SCAD because Calhoun’s pro-slavery views were well documented — and Calhoun died in the 1800s.
Many students hadn’t thought much about the wider implications of a building named after Thomas until the Kavanaugh hearings. “For most students, myself included, the name of the building is just that,” says current student Stephanie Murray. “Current and prior events associated with the name of this building [make us] question how much weight a name has.”
She would like to see the building renamed after a prominent black woman. “As a society, especially in the black community, we have to create a conversation about these things. The fact that someone is black and one of the few to break through racial and/or gender barriers shouldn't grant a clean slate. Everyone is responsible for their actions. Their achievements and recognition in society should reflect that,” Murray says.
So far, SCAD hasn't publicly commented on how it will respond to the controversy over the Clarence Thomas Center for Historic Preservation, though the college could take lessons learned on other campuses to heart. And many of those who signed the petitions are in fact not members of the SCAD campus community. "This should first and foremost be a SCAD discussion rather than...dueling petitions that people sign at a national level," says current student Elena Burnett. "It is Savannah's and SCAD's history that has come under review, not national policies regarding race or gender and so it is difficult...when SCAD puts itself at a distance from that history and refuses to accept or refuse it."
Related: How University of Michigan Students Are Fighting Racism on Campus
