Guest Column:
Brady can lose its racist past easily
Published Sept. 19, 2006
As contributors to realmizzouhistory.blogspot.com, we feel that we should address some of the responses from students and administrators with regard to the name of the new student center and its spaces.
We are not arguing that T.A. Brady's ideology was outside of the mainstream.
Segregation was institutionalized and sodomy laws were commonplace, but Brady's actions went above and beyond simple ideology.
It was not a matter of simply following the law. When students actively worked to hold a racially integrated conference at the university, Brady tracked the names of the students, faculty and community members involved and passed the information along to higher administration.
He did not just believe that sodomy was a crime.
In conjunction with other administrators, Brady formed a committee responsible for the expulsion of several gay and lesbian students. These students had committed no offenses for which they could be disciplined. This destroyed the lives and futures of many.
Some students who were kicked out committed suicide.
A highly respected professor, touted as one of the greatest reasons to attend the Missouri School of Journalism, was fired from his tenured position.
He lived out the rest of his life alone and working on a dairy truck in Kansas City.
We are not suggesting that Brady's ideals were out of the mainstream at the time. We are simply wondering why MU would continue to leave a building or its parts named after a man who represented where the university has been, rather than where it is going.
The new student center provides an excellent opportunity for MU to memorialize an individual who challenged the status quo instead of reinforcing it, regardless of the era.
We believe The Maneater's Sept. 15 editorial, "Tear down Brady's racist past," was dead on.
Naming the building after an influential African American is exactly the kind of opportunity MU should be taking in order to set a good precedent for the future.
— Buckalew, Lee and Kennedy are administrators of the "Not My Brady" blog, which is aimed at changing the name of Brady Commons at some point in its renovation.