Workmen removed the metallic letters spelling out the name of a racist from the University of California, Berkeley law school Thursday (Jan. 30).
UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall, which houses the prestigious law school, is no more. Henceforth, it will be known as The Law Building, one of several structures that make up the UC Berkeley School of Law.
The law school's alumni have been attached to some of the country's famous cases, who have fought for justice in the courts in this country, was ironically named after a man, John Henry Boalt, who was a principal crusader for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
Boalt's "principal public legacy is … one of racism and bigotry … John Boalt’s positive contributions to the university do not appear to outweigh this legacy of harm,” concluded a 2018 report by a law school committee tasked by Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky.
In a 1877 speech Boalt addressing, “The Chinese Question,” he said the white race and the "Mongolian race" were incompatible with each other.
Boalt’s speech came at a time when large numbers of Chinese had begun immigrating to the US seeking their dreams of striking it rich because of the California Gold Rush. Then the Chinese workers began working on large labor projects, including the Transcontinental Railroad and the levees of the Sacramento and San Joaquin River Delta. Between 1850 and 1880, US Census figures show the number of Chinese grew from about 4,000 to 105,465.
Boalt's racist views became known when in 2017, law lecturer Charles Reichmann found Boalt’s racist writings at the campus’s Bancroft Library while researching the Asian experience in California, according to UC Berkeley.
As Reichmann's discovery became known, a movement began to pick up steam among students and faculty to remove the Boalt name in association with the school.
Last October, the Building Name Review Committee, backeda recommendation from Chemerinsky to remove the name Boalt from the law school.
“It’s incredibly important to confront racist symbols, like John Boalt’s name on a building, because these symbols act to reinforce the history of white supremacy in our institutions,” said Berkeley professor Paul Fine, co-chair of the Building Name Review Committee. “And, they can make students who learn about this history then feel excluded, like there is an endorsement of that racism by the institution itself.”
Students of color account for 49% of the 2022 J.D. class, according to Berkeley Law’s website.
One of the school's graduates, Dale Minami, praised the efforts of the students and faculty to change the school's name.
Minami helped overturn Korematsu v. US clearing the charges against Fred Korematsu who defied the US government during the WWII internment of Japanese Americans. He was instrumental in gaining the support of Asian American alumni of Berkeley Law.
"One thing exciting to me is the activism of the younger generation," said Minami. "To see this new generation step up and express outrage and act on it -- truly inspiring."
Chemerinsky, the law school dean, said in an announcement to the UC community that the law school will be taking steps in the near future to “ensure that the racism underlying the Chinese Exclusion Act be remembered.”
"John Boalt said racist things, especially about those of Chinese ancestry, and also about African-Americans and Native Americans,” Chemerinsky said in his announcement. “We must remember the racism he expressed as it is part of the history of our country and region and was said by someone whose name we have been associated with for a century.”
"John Boalt said racist things, especially about those of Chinese ancestry, and also about African-Americans and Native Americans,” Chemerinsky said in his announcement. “We must remember the racism he expressed as it is part of the history of our country and region and was said by someone whose name we have been associated with for a century.”
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