Requires return of Fredric March’s identify to UW-Madison campus get loud
There is a renewed push to revive Academy Award-winning actor Fredric March’s identify on the College of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
A student-led group voted in 2018 to take away the UW alum’s identify from a theater in Memorial Union due to his affiliation with a pupil group that shared a reputation with the Ku Klux Klan within the early twentieth century.
UW-Oshkosh adopted alongside for comparable causes, eradicating March’s identify from its theater arts heart in 2020.
Each universities proceed to face by the identify removals whilst a rising variety of students, actors and activists urge for reconsideration. They’ve signed a letter arguing that March’s legacy has been tarnished as a result of “fact-free, mistaken conclusions” based mostly on little, if any, analysis. They contend there may be overwhelming proof of his intensive involvement within the civil rights motion.
“No human being has lived a life freed from failures and errors,” the people wrote in a letter first despatched to UW leaders final fall. “However Fredric March’s lifelong dedication to social justice — a report near being unmatched in his or any period — is exactly the form of instance that ought to each day be introduced to American college college students for generations to come back.”
Among the many 30 preliminary signatories had been Clarence B. Jones, an adviser and speechwriter for Martin Luther King Jr.; Oscar-winner Louis Gossett Jr.; and Bernard LaFayette Jr., a Freedom Rider and co-founder of the Pupil Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
UW-Madison responded on the time with a letter revealed within the New York Occasions.
“There are some issues in our nation’s historical past which might be so poisonous that you may by no means erase the stain, not to mention benefit a named house in our pupil union,” then-Chancellor Rebecca Clean wrote. “Membership in a gaggle with a reputation like that of the Ok.Ok.Ok. is one in all them. This was not an off-the-cuff ‘erasure of historical past,’ or cancel tradition, however half of a bigger effort to analysis, acknowledge and, to the extent potential, rectify the customarily painful historical past and influence of racism and different types of exclusion, a lot of which nonetheless have an effect on our campus immediately.”
Two dozen extra heavy-hitters in historical past, Hollywood and civil rights circles signed on to the letter late final month. They embrace the household of Dana Andrews, who co-starred with March within the Oscar-winning movie “The Greatest Years of Our Lives”; movie critic and historian Leonard Maltin; Gail Lumet Buckley, a historian and daughter of actress Lena Horne; actor and activist Mike Farrell; Man Davis, a blues musician and son of Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis; and Marcia Younger Cantarella, daughter of civil rights chief Whitney Younger.
The nationwide NAACP, in addition to the state and Racine chapters of the civil rights group, have additionally signed on to the letter. Racine is March’s hometown.
Campus examine of KKK
Conversations about eradicating March’s identify from the UW-Madison campus surfaced after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. Clean shaped a examine group to take a look at the historical past of the Ku Klux Klan at UW-Madison and weigh what to do in regards to the Union areas named after March and one other alumnus, Porter Butts.
Each March and Butts had been inducted into an interfraternity society that bore the KKK identify. However the examine group’s report stated the society had no connection to the white supremacist group, nor did it discover any proof that the group engaged in acts of terrorism, violent intimidation or different actions generally related to the nationwide Klan. In reality, the group instantly modified its identify when the nationwide Klan got here to campus in 1922 to keep away from being related to them.
UW-Madison acknowledged March’s actions later in life by noting he “fought the persecution of Hollywood artists, a lot of them Jewish, within the Fifties by the Home Un-American Actions Committee” and that March “took actions later in life to counsel (he) opposed discrimination.”
The examine group’s report made no advice on whether or not to strip March’s and Butts’ names from the campus areas. As an alternative, it prompt any renaming happen after extra substantive analysis to acknowledge UW-Madison’s historical past of prejudice and discrimination. That further work will culminate with a Public Historical past Challenge exhibit opening Sept. 12 on the Chazen Museum of Artwork.
Regardless of the examine group’s lack of a advice, the student-led Union Council voted to take away their names.
George Gonis, a UW-Madison alumnus who lives in Milwaukee and is a contract journalist, noticed the transfer as an overcorrection by campus activists. He revealed a 17,000-word story based mostly on months of analysis that detailed instance after instance of March championing civil rights, together with:
- His recitation of speeches that championed liberty or equality throughout highschool oratory competitions
- His public assist for singer Marian Anderson, who was banned from acting at Washington, D.C.’s Structure Corridor in 1939 as a result of she was Black
- His supply of a keynote handle on the tenth anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Schooling ruling that got here on the request of the NAACP
- His narration of a documentary about Blacks serving in World Struggle II
- His signing of a telegram condemning President John F. Kennedy for not doing extra to guard peaceable protesters from Birmingham police use of fireside hoses and German shepherds.
Recognition in different methods
UW-Madison has lengthy struggled to make campus extra inviting to college students of shade.
A survey final yr discovered that whereas most college students from traditionally underrepresented and marginalized teams had an total optimistic expertise on campus, they “constantly responded much less favorably” when requested about how welcome, protected and revered they felt — a hole that hadn’t improved for the reason that survey was final carried out in 2016.
This was the backdrop towards which the Union Council thought of eradicating March’s identify throughout a monthslong course of that included public boards.
“Overwhelmingly, the neighborhood expressed sturdy objection to any connection to campus teams taking the identify of or in any approach related to the identify “Ku Klux Klan,” regardless of the perform of the group,” a current UW-Madison assertion stated.
Requested if the assertion represents the place of recent Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin, UW-Madison spokesperson John Lucas on Friday stated “the choice was made by Union Council (and) continues to be supported by the college. There are not any plans to revisit it.”
UW-Oshkosh additionally stated Friday it has no plans to rethink the choice, referring to an earlier assertion that famous the motion will create a extra inclusive campus.
In honor of March’s a hundred and twenty fifth birthday this yr, Turner Traditional Films will air a tribute to the actor on Sept. 30.
“March’s birthday supplies us a possibility to set the report straight about March, correcting a false impression that did some unfair harm to his status,” primetime host Ben Mankiewicz stated in a preview video posted by The Hollywood Reporter.
UW-Madison stated it nonetheless acknowledges March’s function in college historical past with an interactive kiosk on the identical ground of the Union because the theater that when bore his identify.
Gonis stated the storytelling show is a woefully insufficient substitute. Of the roughly two dozen sections to learn, there are 4 paragraphs about March. None of them point out his a long time of preventing racism.
Contact Kelly Meyerhofer at [email protected]. Observe her on Twitter at @KellyMeyerhofer.
