A group of university students is demanding that a memorial building named after a major donor is renamed over vague, alleged links to slavery.
Activists at the University of Bristol want the Wills Memorial Building (pictured) – a major city landmark – to be stripped of its connection to Henry Overton Wills III.
Wills, a 19th-century businessman and tobacco magnate, gave a large bequest (around $12million in today’s money) which funded the beginnings of a university in the English city.
The memorial building, a commanding Gothic tower, was established in his name by his sons after he died and Bristol had started to become a place of academic excellence.
However, current students claim that his name should be removed from the building because his wealth came from “slave-profited money” – a claim which is disputed.
Opponents say Wills’s family company, W.D. & H.O. Wills, imported tobacco grown by slaves in the American south, and is therefore morally culpable.
The company later merged with other British firms to become Imperial Tobacco – which fiercely disputes any links to the slave trade.
A petition demanding the renaming has so far gathered around 450 signatures.
The document says:
As students of Bristol, we ask the university to uphold its commitment to diversity and inclusivity and revise the name of the building that is, somewhat, a centerpiece in the uni.
The Wills family may have invested heavily in the institution, but this does not justify the means of slavery. As an establishment that wishes its community to be effective in ‘challenging accepted norms’*, let us break free from Bristol’s homogeneous toleration of slave profiteers and name the building after somebody the entire university population can be proud of.
Bristol students are simultaneously campaigning to have a music venue in the city – Colston Hall – renamed because of its links with a slave trader.
Edward Colston, who was active around the year 1700, was definitely a slave trader – though the venue says it is named after its address, on Colston Street, rather than him. Nonetheless, their campaign has yet to meet with any success.
In the United States, Yale recently renamed its Calhoun College after students objected to its connection to a senator who approved of slavery.
