UO breaks ground on Black Cultural Center on campus

EUGENE, Ore. — Nearly three years after organizing a rally for black students at the University of Oregon, Shaniece Curry was back on campus Friday to celebrate the groundbreaking for a new UO Black Cultural Center.

“We are here because black lives matter, because our black lives matter, without equivocation,” said Curry, a 2016 UO graduate. “To be clear, black students on this campus willed us to be here today. This groundbreaking came about through protests and resistance. We must never lose sight of that history.”

The UO is constructing a $2.5 million, 2,700-square-foot building at 15th Avenue and Villard Street, in what had been a vacant lot. The UO Black Cultural Center will provide something that was missing at UO, Curry and other speakers at the Friday event said.

“We have focused on designing a facility that maximizes flexibility to accommodate a wide array of activities,” Kevin Marbury, vice president for student life, said in a statement. “Designed to serve as a home base for academic and social activities for black students, it will also serve as a portal of black culture to all members of the community.”

The event included the sealing of a time capsule, set to be opened in 20 years. The center itself will open in a couple of years.

The Black Cultural Center was one of the demands, which also included changing building names and improving black studies, made by the Black Student Task Force in November 2015. The demands came after Curry organized a protest on Nov. 12, 2015, with the Black Women of Achievement, a campus group, in front of the UO’s Johnson Hall. The hall is the main administration building. Curry is now a program and fiance manger at Momentum Alliance, a nonprofit organization in Portland.

Donors have given nearly $1.7 million for the UO Black Cultural Center so far, according to the UO, including a $1 million gift from Dave and Nancy Petrone. Dave Petrone earned an undergraduate degree in economics from the UO in 1966 and a master’s in business administration in 1968. He made a career out of working for financial companies in the San Francisco Bay area. In all, 134 donors have given money for the center.