In 2018, student activists at the University of Cincinnati were urging administrators to consider removing the name of Charles McMicken, a slaveholder whose fortune established the university, from one of its buildings. In response, the university hosted panels discussing McMicken’s legacy. Curious, Antar A. Tichavakunda, an assistant professor of education, sat in at one of the events. He was struck by the strong opinions of a student activist on the panel, compared to a historian who also spoke.
He was already interesting in conducting a study on race and space on campus. Cincinnati is about 40 percent Black, but the university’s percentage of Black students was in the single digits. And every time Tichavakunda spoke to Black student leaders and activists, they mentioned McMicken.
Many colleges commemorate racist forebears. In the debates over their place on campuses, it’s easy to flatten students’ point of view into one of strong opposition. But Tichavakunda, in a study titled “University Memorials and Symbols of White Supremacy: Black Students’ Counternarratives,” found a wide range of feelings dredged up by McMicken’s name, including resistance, responsibility, and even amusement.
The name didn’t stop students from going into the building. Instead, it empowered them to take agency and ensure that other Black students knew the truth about McMicken that many decades had come to obscure.
McMicken was a wealthy businessman who, upon his death in 1858, left the majority of his wealth to establish the University of Cincinnati, according to Anne Steinert, a visiting assistant professor in the university’s history department. What most students didn’t know is that he gained much of that wealth through trading enslaved African Americans. He fathered children with a woman who he had enslaved but refused to acknowledge them. And in his will, he wrote that he wanted the university to be for “white boys and girls.”
“There’s nothing about Charles McMicken that the world didn’t know in Charles McMicken’s own time,” Steinert said. “Over the time the university has slowly forgotten these things about Charles McMicken which were at the very least open secrets during his lifetime.”
In 2015, a group of Black students called “The Irate 8” formed on campus after an unarmed Black man named Samuel Dubose was killed by a university police officer. In July of 2021, the Justice Department concluded its review of the case without filing criminal charges against the former officer.
The group’s goal was to improve the quality of life for Black students on campus. They wanted administrators to reform the university’s police department, enforce racial awareness in its curriculum, put money toward recruitment initiatives to attract more Black students, and rethink naming on campus.
When Kish Richardson, a senior philosophy and international-affairs major, learned the true history of McMicken from the Irate 8’s founder, he had mixed emotions. He wasn’t discouraged, but he was disappointed that the university hadn’t considered the message that the prevalence of this name sent to Black students.
“I know what I personally have done to get to where I am, so I didn’t feel a sense of imposter syndrome,” Richardson said. “But it was really interesting that there was a culture that allowed for this name to still be there just considering his story and their mission.”
Tichavakunda’s study focused on how 23 Black undergraduate students at the University of Cincinnati interpret and experienced the McMicken name on campus. He conducted 30- to 60-minute interviews with each student, most of whom were active in Black-student organizations on campus.
“I really wanted to make sure that students had the opportunity and flexibility to share all of how they felt,” Tichavakunda said.
When Tichavakunda asked one student whether they were troubled that a building was named after a slaveholder, she said, “I’m not losing sleep over this because we Black and we in here.” Another student said, “We live in a society that is anti-Black, so I’m not going to let this stop me.”
There was an air of resilience and defiance in the responses that he received from students. Tichavakunda says that even the students he interviewed who hadn’t previously known that McMicken owned slaves were “not surprised.”
“They’re not losing sleep over it because they already know the type of society they’re in,” he said.
According to the study, some students mocked the building’s name by calling it “McChicken,” in reference to the McDonald’s sandwich, to avoid giving attention or recognition to the man it was named after. Other students even requested the McMicken name be removed from their diplomas.
In response to student protests, Neville Pinto, the university’s president, created a McMicken Working Group to examine the use of his name in affiliation with the university. In 2019, the group, made up of students, faculty members, and administrators, ultimately recommended the removal of McMicken’s name from the College of Arts and Sciences. Following that guidance, Pinto make a similar recommendation to the board of trustees, which voted to disassociate McMicken’s name from the college, The News Record, the university’s student newspaper, reported. The university also put up a virtual display on campus to promote awareness as to who McMicken was.
While Black student leaders say it’s a step in the right direction, some students are pushing administrators to do more. McMicken’s name is still prevalent throughout the university, from the name of a street on campus to the name of another main building on campus.
“These other usages lie beyond the working group’s charge, and we make no recommendation regarding them. If their evaluation becomes necessary, we believe the principles and framework that inform our recommendation here should guide inquiry,” the working group said in its recommendation. The university did not answer messages seeking an update on further plans related to McMicken’s name.
In November, a few days before a big football game, the campus YMCA set up tables to promote awareness of McMicken’s history and try to get the name of McMicken Hall changed. They handed out T-shirts that said “Property of Charles McMicken” with an outline of McMicken Hall in the center. The back of the shirt said, “Charles McMicken Slave Trader & Founding Donor.”
The shirts were free, but the price of each T-shirt was listening to the full history of McMicken. They gave out over 100 shirts, according to Connor Herbert, the president of the campus YMCA.
Tichavakunda says the students are doing the work that the university is not. “There’s this sense of, ‘We’re all we got,’ therefore, we’re going to share these stories.”
