UO Black Cultural Center
This 3,200-square-foot cultural center opened on Oct. 12, 2019. It is here today because Black student groups over the decades advocated for a welcoming place to study, gather and build community.In 1968, in the days following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the UO Black Student Union presented to UO leadership a list of demands, including space and facilities for study and tutoring.In 2015, during another period of racial protests in the country and on university campuses, a group of UO Black students organized as the Black Student Task Force. They presented a list of 13 demands to leaders, which echoed some of the earlier students’ demands. Among them was the addition of an on-campus Black Cultural Center.Longtime UO donors Nancy and Dave Petrone provided the lead gift for the center, which prompted donations, both large and small, from around the world.Today, this academic, cultural and social touchstone for Black students, offers academic resources and supports, such as counseling, speakers and other events.
Unthank Hall
This residence hall, which opened in fall 2021 and houses nearly 700 students, is named in honor of DeNorval Unthank Jr. (1929-2000).Unthank was the first Black graduate of the UO’s architecture program.The son of a prominent Portland physician and civil rights leader, Unthank earned his UO architecture degree in 1951. Throughout his long career, he helped design many notable buildings including the Lane County Courthouse, Thurston High School, Kennedy Middle School, and McKenzie Hall--the former law school--and Justice Bean Hall on the UO campus. He also was an associate professor at the university from 1965 to 1980.In 2017, spurred by the Black Student Task Force’s demands to rename UO buildings honoring historic figures with ties to the Ku Klux Klan, the UO changed the name of dormitory Dunn Hall to Unthank Hall. Frederick Dunn was a longtime classic professor who served as the Exalted Cyclops (leader) of the Eugene Klan in the 1920s.With former Dunn Hall slated to be decommissioned, Unthank’s name was transferred to this new dormitory to continue to honor him and his lasting contributions to the field of architecture and our broader community.As UO undergraduates, Unthank and Emmett Williams, who earned three UO degrees including a PhD in 1975, roomed in the Mims House in downtown Eugene because university policy prohibited them from living in campus dorms. Williams was a football player, a skilled pianist, and among the UO’s first Black administrators. He is remembered for his kindness and graciousness serving for years in UO’s Financial Aid Office. (Learn more about the Mims House on the Strides for Social Justice Downtown Route.)
Prince Lucien Campbell Hall
Dr. Edwin Coleman Jr. (1932-2017), a UO professor, musician, and civil rights and community activist, was instrumental in introducing African American literature courses to the UO and to the formation of the university’s Ethnic Studies Department, now known as UO Indigenous, Race and Ethnic Studies.He joined the English faculty in 1971 soon after earning his PhD in theatre and communication from the UO. He taught some of his classes here at Prince Lucien Campbell Hall.Born in rural Arkansas, Coleman grew up with the segregation and discrimination of the Jim Crow South. In his teens he moved with his family to the San Francisco area where he lived in racially segregated housing.He played violin as a child and later, as a young man, he joined the U.S. Air Force Reserves and learned how to play the bass. Over the years, Coleman played in various groups and had the opportunity to back up Ella Fitzgerald and other jazz greats. He also toured with the folk trio Peter Paul and Mary.Coleman taught, mentored and advocated for students at the UO for over 30 years. He also left a legacy in the Eugene community through his work with the Democratic Party of Lane County, the naming of MLK Jr. Blvd. and the dedication of Rosa Parks Plaza in downtown Eugene.After his death in 2017, the Westmoreland Park Community Center was named in Coleman’s honor. (Learn more on the Strides for Social Justice Westmoreland Route.)
Erb Memorial Student Union
The EMU, located at the heart of campus, opened in 1950. Over the years, students have come here to rally, protest and speak out on current social and political issues. In the 1960s students gathered here to protest the Vietnam War and speak about civil rights.After protests and negotiations with the UO administration, Black students formed the Black Student Union in 1966 to address racial discrimination on campus. They also advocated for Black Studies and hiring Black faculty. Those needs resurfaced in 2015 on the Black Student Task Force’s list of 13 demands.The Black Student Union was the first student union to be recognized by the Associated Students of the UO (ASUO), followed by the Native American Student Union and many more.In this same time period, Black students at Lane Community College founded the Black Student Union on their campus.From 1968-1970 the Black Panther Party, which included both students and community members, was active on the UO campus. Howard Anderson was Captain and Ray Eaglin was General of Eugene’s Black Panthers.The Black Panthers, part of the Black Power movement, was a “revolutionary organization with an ideology of Black nationalism, socialism and armed self-defense, particularly against police brutality,” according to the National Archive.During the tumultuous late 1960s, Larry Carter (1936-2011), an award-winning UO Sociology professor and local civil rights advocate, helped work through tensions between the city of Eugene and the Black Panthers.The demonstrations, protests and uprisings on campus were part of the broader local civil rights movement, sparked by the founding of the Eugene chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in 1963. CORE members demonstrated against racism, gathered data on incidents of police profiling, and tested job and housing listings for racial discrimination. Among CORE’s members were UO students and faculty and children of Eugene’s early Black families, including Sam Reynolds Jr., Lyllye Reynolds and Willie Mims.The NAACP, a widely recognized organization that has worked for racial equality and social justice for over a century, established a chapter in the Eugene-Springfield area in 1976.
Friendly Hall
Today Friendly Hall houses classrooms and faculty offices. However, when it was completed in 1893, it was the university’s first dormitory. Like other early Black UO students, Bobby Robinson and Charles Williams, the university’s first Black student athletes, initially were forbidden from living in campus dorms.In 1974, Williams told The Register-Guard, “It was a Ku Klux town and they thought there might be trouble from the townspeople. We accepted that.”After their football teammates petitioned for the pair to live on campus, Robinson and Williams moved into Friendly Hall as sophomores in 1927. (Learn more about Robinson and Williams in the Strides for Social Justice UO Athletics Route.)Friendly Hall also was the workplace of Wiley Griffon (1867-1913), the UO’s first Black employee. In the late 1890s Griffon worked as a janitor at Friendly Hall. He arrived in Eugene in 1890 when Oregon’s exclusion laws barred anyone who wasn’t white from living in the state.Griffon had been the driver of the town’s first streetcar service, a mule-powered car that ran from the Southern Pacific Railway station in downtown Eugene to the university. After the streetcar service shut down, he took the job at the UO. (Learn more about Griffon in the Strides for Social Justice South Eugene route.)
UO Academics Route Start
This 2-mile route begins and ends at the University of Oregon’s Lyllye Reynolds-Parker Black Cultural Center, which opened in 2019 and has become a home and hub of activity for Black students on campus.This route honors many of the firsts achieved by dedicated and talented UO Black students, faculty and staff. It also reveals the discrimination, barriers and injustices they faced simply because of their race. Directions to route startThe Lyllye Reynolds-Parker Black Cultural Center is located at 1870 E. 15th Ave, Eugene, OR 97403.
Get Loose
Before you get underway on the route, would you like to take a couple minutes to stretch?Enjoy this fun dance-inspired stretch to get loose before your walk or run.Thanks to Denise Thomas, the founder of Healthy Moves, for providing these sport-specific stretches. Healthy Moves is a nonprofit organization bringing movement, fitness and fun to elementary students in Lane County.
UO Academics Route Complete
A reflection from Yvette Alex-Assensoh, the Vice President for Equity and Inclusion at the University of Oregon: The foundation of many of history’s most successful social justice movements is youth and labor activism. To put it another way, these movements capture national and sometimes even global attention because they demonstrate the burning desire that so many of us share for fair and equitable opportunities to thrive.This is no different throughout the history of Black students and staff at the University of Oregon. From Wiley Griffon’s tenure as UO’s first Black employee to Maxine Maxwell’s fight to integrate the dorms to the UO Black Student Task Force’s efforts to transform the campus today, which included the naming of Unthank Hall and creation of the Lyllye Reynolds-Parker Black Cultural Center, there is an ongoing legacy of UO’s Black community tapping into love, authenticity, courage and empathy to push the institution forward.This progress has not occurred without significant obstacles and roadblocks. For example, many of the demands made by the Black Student Task Force in 2015 mirrored those made by the UO Black Student Union in 1968.With that in mind, how will you utilize love, authenticity, courage and empathy to ensure Black students’ concerns are heard and their needs are being met? Will you create space not just to hear hard truths, but to organize and act upon that information? How do you plan to support Black students in embracing their authentic selves? Will you be courageous enough to challenge not just yourself, but the rest of the campus community to support authentic Black spaces and self expression?Eugene has made significant progress, even in recent years, in regards to racial justice. Nonetheless, there is still a long way to go. How will you build on the work of the long lineage of Black trailblazers in this city?
