U task force recommends removing Coffman's and other names from Twin Cities campuses

Updated: Feb. 21, 4:28 p.m.| Posted: Feb. 20, 5:30 p.m.

African-American students enrolled at the University of Minnesota through the 1920s and 1930s were repeatedly told that they could not live in the dorms. Facing pressure from activists, former University of Minnesota President Lotus Delta Coffman argued that "the races have never lived together nor have they ever sought to live together."

Yet in 1939, the newly constructed student union was named for Coffman, who also presided over the expansion of the university and creation of the General College, which often served students from poorer or otherwise disadvantaged communities.

In a report released this week, a University of Minnesota task force recommended that Coffman Memorial Union and three other buildings be renamed. The buildings bear the names of university leaders who the task force found supported discriminatory policies at the university against black or Jewish students.

University President Eric Kaler said in a statement that he appreciates the task force's work, and that it will help decide what recommendations he makes to the university's Board of Regents next month.

The three other buildings recommended for new names include Coffey Hall, which is named for another former president, Walter Coffey, a dorm named for former Vice President William Middlebrook and a building named for former dean Edward Nicholson.

The "Task Force on Building Names and Institutional History" was convened in October, and included university administrators and academics. It was spurred by an exhibit at the university in 2017 called "A Campus Divided: Progressives, Anti-Communists, and Anti-Semitism at the University of Minnesota."

Riv-Ellen Prell, professor emerita of American studies at the school, worked with Ph.D candidate Sarah Atwood to curate the exhibit. It launched at the same time the country was reacting to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., where one anti-racism protester was killed.

"At the very moment that the country was gripped by white supremacy and its long history and the place of public memory in that, this exhibit opened up at the University of Minnesota that allowed us to look at a history that was unremembered and largely unknown," Prell said.

The exhibit took into account that today's values aren't the same as the values of people 60 or 70 years ago. But Prell said all sorts of disagreements about the values of that time emerged as they researched the period at the university.

"We are not talking about how we think about the world today and what was wrong with leaders who couldn't guess what life would be like in 2019," said Prell, who was also an adviser to the task force. "That report and our exhibit asked a far more profound question, which is: Why wouldn't they listen to the people, the students, the activists, the African-American activists who in their own time were asking the University of Minnesota to stand for the highest, strongest values?"

The task force admitted that it's impossible to hold someone accountable for not sharing contemporary values, but that they need to focus on the question of whether other actions were possible at that time in history.

The four U of M officials being examined served at a time when the university was facing pressure about its policies that segregated black students. According to the 125-page report, each of them in some way supported policies that other institutions and university officials rejected.

"Our recommendations to remove the names from these buildings do not deny that these individuals operated within structures and systems that imposed constraints on what they saw as possible ways of carrying out their official duties," the task force said in the report. "But neither do we believe they were without choice, particularly given the power and discretion they exercised in their administrative roles."

Coffman, for instance, excluded black students from housing and some medical programs, according to the report. The task force also found that Nicholson conducted surveillance on student activists and labeled black and Jewish students as communists.

The task force gathered about 275 comments from the public about renaming the buildings. Slightly more of the comments supported renaming the buildings.

Even if the university decides not to rename the buildings, the task force urged administrators to consider installing permanent exhibits looking at both the positive and negative legacies of each individual.