A dream cast in stone

Standing-room-only crowd gathers for Stone Center opening and dedication ceremony

Please accept my heartfelt gratitude for making this day and this building and this program possible.”

So said Joseph Jordan as the road to constructing a permanent home for the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History, which he will direct, culminated with an Aug. 21 opening and dedication ceremony.

The facility was two years in the making.

And many more in the dreaming.

It took more than a decade of advocacy and fund raising to give rise to the center, one of the few nationwide to combine cultural programs, research, community service, teaching and learning under one roof. Private gifts covered the entire $9 million-plus price tag for the building.

The idea of building the Stone Center faced some opposition early on, but Jordan noted that the donor wall now adorning its lobby includes names from both sides of the initial debate—proof that the journey to build the center brought people together “to reach out to our community with a sense of social justice in mind,” Jordan said.

“This is what we're here for,” he said. “Nothing else.”

The 44,500 square-foot, three-story building houses a lending library with 10,000 volumes, an art gallery, seminar rooms, a 360-seat theater, a dance studio and a multipurpose room. The library is part of the University Library and is filled entirely with new acquisitions. The collection, emphasizing African-American, African and African diaspora materials, is intended as a resource for the public, visiting scholars and artists as well as members of the University community.

The center also boasts two classrooms, two seminar rooms and an auditorium, which all are available to academic departments campus-wide and host a variety of classes.

“This will be a wonderful destination for students from all parts of the University,” Chancellor James Moeser said.

Offices in the building house the center staff, visiting scholars, the Institute of African-American Research and Upward Bound, a federally funded education program.

Architects from The Freelon Group Inc. of Raleigh and Charlotte incorporated into the building several African design elements, such as the cylindrical auditorium that serves as a three-dimensional reference to the traditional African form of a drum. Construction began in 2002, with Clancy and Theys Construction Co. of Raleigh as general contractors.

The facility represents the payoff of contributions that came from more than 1,500 donors over the past several years (see page 8 for details on major gifts). Individuals and businesses gave to the cause. Students sponsored benefit concerts and led community walks. In 1997-98, students pledged to raise $20,000. Members of the UNC Board of Trustees promised a five-to-one match, or $100,000, from their own pockets if students met that goal. They surpassed it, and the trustees made their match.

The Aug. 21 opening and dedication ceremony for the Stone Center drew a standing-room-only crowd. Above are J.R. Manley (right) from the First Baptist Church of Chapel Hill, who led the opening prayer, and Robert B. Stone-El Jr., Sonja Haynes Stone's son.

The center got a major boost when the late Chancellor Michael Hooker directed $6 million to the project from the estate gift of alumnus David Benjamin Clayton of Alabama.

“You should remember him (Hooker),” Moeser said at the Aug. 21 ceremony.

Open since 1988 in the Frank Porter Graham Student Union, the center was named in 1991 for the late Sonja Haynes Stone, a Carolina professor who directed the Curriculum in African-American Studies. In its early years, the center focused on raising awareness of and appreciation for African-American culture. The center has maintained that role but also evolved into a primary site for developing intellectual capital about Africa and the African diaspora.

Moeser called the center's name a fitting tribute to a “great teacher.”

“She (Stone) was the kind of teacher we hope all of our students will experience at Carolina,” the chancellor said.

Stone's son, Robert B. Stone-El Jr., also spoke at the center's opening. He said “community involvement and the pursuit of knowledge” served as hallmarks of his mother's philosophy, and that legacy would now be carried on.

“The work of the center is to build bridges between people and inspire knowledge seekers,” he said.

Stone-El said his family was proud of the hard work and achievements turned in by the center's supporters. His mother would feel the same way, he said. And, he asked those in the crowd who knew her, “Can't you see her smiling?”

Along with Stone-El, Jordan and Moeser, speakers at the ceremony were: Richard “Stick” Williams, chairman of the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees; Molly Corbett Broad, UNC president; Kevin Foy, mayor of Chapel Hill; Matthew Calabria, UNC-Chapel Hill student body president; and Erin Davis, UNC-Chapel Hill Black Student Movement president.

Scott Ragland

For more information on how you can provide ongoing support for programs at the Stone Center, contact Timothy Minor, director of special campaigns, at 919-962-2012 or 919-843-5809 or tim_minor@unc.edu.

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