Chapel Hill to Name a Dormitory After a Black Slave

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced that it will rename a campus dormitory after George Moses Horton. Horton was born a slave in 1798. He was taught to read and write by the wife of a faculty member on the UNC campus.

Horton then wrote love poems and sold them to students at a farmers’ market on campus. Horton also worked for university president Joseph Caldwell and is said to have sat in on many classes at the university. He later became the first black man in the South to publish a book of poetry. Horton died in 1883.

The George Moses Horton residence hall will be the fifth building on the Chapel Hill campus named after an African American. Another building named after African-American tree surgeon William J. Hubbard is in the planning stages.

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