Ely Vance
Byrd Stadium, easily the University of Maryland’s largest public gathering space and capable of holding more than 51,000 people, is named after an anti-black bigot who held virulently racist “separate but equal” platitudes his entire life.
And that’s not the problem. If Harry Clifton “Curley” Byrd merely held those massively misguided views privately, if he was just a guy who had some deeply flawed and regrettable thoughts about black people and other minority groups, if he was, say, only ever a football and baseball coach, then perhaps this issue would not warrant the level of attention it is getting.
No, the problem is that Byrd was in a position of power to enforce those beliefs: As university president from 1936-1954, he made sure his campuses remained segregated and refused to let a single black student take a single class at the all-white College Park until 1951. Even as Theodore McKeldin, the state’s governor at the time, criticized Byrd for wasteful spending of state resources, Byrd doubled down and ran against McKeldin in the 1954 gubernatorial election on the same separate but equal platform (he lost, as he did all his bids for elected political office).
Byrd actively kept black students out of this university. That much is undeniable. It is fact. In some ways, he built his entire educational and political career on the separate but equal doctrine, a policy that kept blacks apart from their white peers and justified itself on grounds of white supremacy.
All of which brings us back to Byrd Stadium. Plenty of people will tell you that, even in light of Byrd’s racist past, we should not rename the stadium because it would be “erasing history.” That a changed name would equate to a purposeful ignorance of the university’s past, whereas we should be striving for a complete understanding of this university’s story.
First, renaming Byrd Stadium would not be erasing history — it would be finally coming to terms with it. This university, its faculty and its students have too long looked away from the realities of Byrd’s racism. We have too long pretended that the name Byrd Stadium does not communicate an unavoidable bigotry, and is unwelcoming to people of color, especially members of the university community who are black.
Names have power. Names communicate what people and institutions want to highlight about themselves: strength, courage, intelligence, etc. And it is an unfortunate but unavoidable fact that Byrd’s name, especially in the context of this university, communicates a bigotry that has no place on a college campus, no place in 2015 at all.
This does not mean “Curley” Byrd will be removed from the history books; this does not mean he will be removed from university records. It does not mean we have to overlook every impact he had on the university, some of which were undoubtedly positive.
Yet even if it did, why privilege the memory of a long-dead racist over the present marginalization of a huge swath of our community? Why excuse the institutional bigotry implemented by a hateful man who had the power to keep anyone out whom he saw fit? Why continue to ignore the fact that the majority of the football team that takes the field at Byrd Stadium on Saturdays would never have been allowed to attend a single practice or a single day of classes at this university if Byrd ultimately had his way?
Reckon with history. Change the name.
