Update (August 9, 2021): The University of Wisconsin has removed a boulder that had been nicknamed "N****rhead Rock" from the campus after students of color demanded its removal.

Chamberlin Rock was stripped from campus grounds early Friday morning. The $50,000 cost of removing the 70-ton rock was covered by donations, ABC6 reported.

Since the summer of 2020, two of the university’s Black student organizations, the Wisconsin Black Student Union and Link, have been working tirelessly to remove the racist symbol from their campus.

In January, University of Wisconsin Chancellor Rebecca Blank heard the calls from students and approved the rock’s removal. However, since the boulder was located within 15 feet of a Native American burial site, the university had to wait for the Wisconsin Historical Society to agree to it, which it later did.

In 1925, Chamberlin Rock was referred to as "N****rhead" in a story published in the Wisconsin State Journal and the term was used widely to describe any massive dark rock in the 1920s, The Associated Press reported.

The Wisconsin State Journal reports that although the school's historians haven't been able to trace the use of the term to any other source, they note that the Ku Klux Klan — which arrived in Wisconsin in the 1920s — had a presence at the university around that period.

Juliana Bennet, a senior at the university spoke with The Associated Press and said now that the rock has been removed from the campus, she believes the university will be more inclusive.

"This moment is about the students, past and present, that relentlessly advocated for the removal of this racist monument," Bennet said.

"Now is a moment for all of us BIPOC students to breathe a sigh of relief, to be proud of our endurance, and to begin healing," she continued.

The university’s spokeswoman Meredith McGlone said the boulder will be relocated to university-owned land near Lake Kegonsa.

Original (November 24, 2020): Black student groups at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have forced the school to remove a boulder from campus because of a name it was given in the 1920s, according to Madison.com.

The two organizations, the Wisconsin Black Student Union and LINK, have fought to have Chamberlin Rock taken off of campus due to the way it was referred to in the Wisconsin State Journal and other news outlets at the time of its discovery.

The rock, which Madison.com reported as one of the biggest glacial erratics ever found in Wisconsin, was formally named Chamberlin Rock in 1926 after Thomas Crowder Chamberlin, a geologist and president of the university. However, a Wisconsin State Journal article dated October 9, 1925, presented the finding under the headline, “Dig up huge N****rhead," and repeatedly called it "n****rhead rock," because at the time, geologists referred to large, darker rocks as such.

Probably people should read the story. It was called the “niggerhead” rock for years, including in a 1920’s. Very offensive. Not. Just a rock. pic.twitter.com/CTWzARHo1X

— Clarity (@TClarityLane) November 19, 2020

Members of the Wisconsin Black Student Union and LINK complained this summer about what the rock was called and said it was a reflection of the struggles Black students face at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“This rock and the history that it holds is a representation of oppression, of discrimination and of hurt. And so in the removal of it, it’s a show that that type of behavior and that type of history is not going to be tolerated,” Nzinga Acosta, treasurer of the Wisconsin Black Student Union, told The Badger Herald in September.

“The only hindrance right now is figuring out what to do with the plaque that is on the rock because it commemorates the history of Chamberlin. As soon as there is a concrete plan on where that plaque will end up, they’re 100% on board with removing the rock, from what they’ve told us,” Acosta said.

According to The Badger Herald, the rock may have been brought to Wisconsin on glaciers from as far up as Canada. Last week, the Campus Planning Committee voted unanimously to recommend that University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank remove the rock from Observatory Hill.

The school said it is prepared to move the rock somewhere else and Blank told the school newspaper that once they had figured out what to do with the plaque on the rock, they would move it.

Wisconsin Black Student Union president Nalah McWhorter said the rock's removal was a "huge accomplishment" for the group.

“We won’t have that constant reminder, that symbol that we don’t belong here,” McWhorter told Madison.com.

According to the newspaper, university researchers looked and could not find many uses of the term "n****rhead" in reference to the Chamberlin Rock and noted that the term fell out of widespread use in the 1950s. It was used throughout the 1800s to describe a variety of things that were thought to resemble a Black person's head, according to Madison.com.

The newspaper said a number of different plans are being mulled for the rock, including burying it, breaking it up or moving it to another location.

The school said the removal may cost anywhere between $30,000 and $75,000.

The rock removal is part of a larger effort by the school to reckon with its past racism. The Ku Klux Klan had an active presence on the campus at various points in its history, according to Madison.com.

“You clearly see what the rock was called and you can’t deny the history. Additionally, you can’t deny the way it makes some people feel. If you’re not going to move the things that are disrespectful to us because other students love it, put something up that us Black and brown students can celebrate,” McWhorter said in August.

Wisconsin-Black-Student-Union

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