Florida State University’s Board of Trustees added its support last week to a years-long effort to remove the name of a segregationist, the late Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice B.K. Roberts, from the main College of Law building.
The board voted Aug. 13 in favor of renaming the main law classroom building, a move that followed similar recommendations by the Faculty Senate and the law school faculty and administrators. The board’s resolution was introduced by Erin Ryan, an FSU law professor.
“This move by the Board of Trustees is the result of long-running efforts to change the name by students, faculty, administrators and alumni,” Ryan told the Florida Record. “But this is an especially powerful moment for all of us to move forward in this direction, given the concerns about racial equality that have unfolded across the nation.”
Roberts openly disobeyed the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in the 1950s by resisting the racial integration of the state’s public law schools, according to the Board of Trustees’ resolution and supporting documentation.
The board referred specifically to a 1955 case, Hawkins v. Board of Control, in which a qualified African-American was denied entrance to the University of Florida law school solely due to his race.
A 2018 advisory panel appointed by FSU President John Thrasher found that Roberts played a substantial role in creating the school’s College of Law, but it also concluded that honoring a segregationist ill serves the university community.
“We share the unanimously avowed hope of the College of Law, the FSU Faculty Senate, and countless students and alumni that the building be renamed to reflect FSU’s core values of justice, equality, compassion and respect, the Board of Trustees’ resolution states.
The board’s action, however, isn’t sufficient to rename the building. Because the FSU facility was named by an act of the state legislature, changing the name requires legislative action.
“We certainly can’t predict what the legislature will do,” Ryan said, “but we hope they will complete the task they began last year, when the Senate passed a bill authorizing FSU to make its own decisions with regard to the name of the building.”
The 2018 advisory panel report pointed to how keeping Roberts’ name on the building flies in the face of the college’s required courses relating to professional behavior and ethics.
“It cannot be said that violating an order in open defiance of the United States Supreme Court exemplifies this core mission of the College of Law,” the panel’s report stated.
Years after Roberts’ actions defying the federal court, the Florida Supreme Court issued an apology for the justice’s decisions in the Virgil Hawkins case – something unprecedented in the court’s history, the panel said.