Students at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, are calling for the removal of a 70-ton landmark boulder on campus because it had a racist nickname in the early 20th century.
According to a report by the College Fix, student activists at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, are calling for the removal of a boulder, formally known as the “Chamberlin Rock,” over concerns about a nickname that was once used to describe it in the 1920s. In at least one historical document from that time, the boulder was referred to as a “n*ggerhead rock,” which according to Madison.com, was “a commonly used expression at the time to describe any large dark rock.”
Student activists pointed out this summer that some had used a racial slur when describing the rock in the early 20th century. Although the nickname seemingly hasn’t been used in almost a century, students are still calling for its removal.
“You clearly see what the rock was called and you can’t deny the history. Additionally you can’t deny the way it makes some people feel,” Black Student Union president Nalah McWhorter said in a comment to a local reporter “If you’re not going to move the things that are disrespectful to us because other students love it, put something up that us Black and brown students can celebrate.”
University of Wisconsin, Madison, historian Daniel Einstein claims that he was only able to find one use of the nickname. It appeared back in 1925 in an article for the Wisconsin State Journal.
“I could only find one instance of the offensive term related to the rock–in the 1925 Wisconsin State Journal article,” Einstein said. “There is no reference in this article to Chamberlin. The reporter was using the term (in a manner not uncommon for the time) as a generic reference to a geographic or geological feature.”
In June, students at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, petitioned for the removal of a statue of Abraham Lincoln because it was donated to the campus by a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
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