South Carolina Football: Former Players Pushing to Rename Strom Thurmond Wellness Center
By Jacob Elsey
Former South Carolina football players are leading the charge to rename a popular building on the Columbia campus.
Former Gamecock stars Alshon Jeffery, DJ Swearinger, Jadeveon Clowney, Marcus Lattimore, Mike Davis, and Jonathan Joseph have been active on social media recently as they’ve expressed their desire to rename the popular Storm Thurmond Wellness and Fitness Center on the South Carolina campus. This comes amid the nation’s push for racial equality and the fight against social injustice.
The building, which opened in 2003, provides students and faculty a place to improve their health and well-being while attending the university. Thurmond donated $10,000 toward the center’s construction.
The message shared by these former student-athletes reads:
"“To celebrate well known segregationist Strom Thurmond’s legacy by keeping his name on our Wellness Center sends a contradicting message to our black students @UofSC. We can no longer be held back by those whose ideals represent division. We must continue the fight for equality.”"
Many, including former basketball standouts A’ja Wilson and Alex English, believe the building should bear the name of current women’s head coach and national title winner Dawn Staley.
Strom Thurmond was a former South Carolina state governor and United States senator. He ran for President in 1948 as a segregationist “Dixiecrat.” Thurmond opposed the 1957 Civil Rights Act by delivering the longest filibuster in history by a single senator, which lasted 24 hours and 18 minutes.
He died at the age of 100 in 2003 as the longest-serving US senator and oldest member to ever serve in Congress. There are nearly 20 buildings throughout the state named after Thurmond.
Thurmond, a graduate of Clemson University, ran track and field for the Tigers in the 1920s. He was inducted into the Clemson Athletics Hall of Fame in 1983. Former Tigers Deshaun Watson and DeAndre Hopkins have also been outspoken about the renaming of buildings on the Clemson campus.
School President Bob Caslen and the South Carolina administration recently announced their intent to change names of other buildings on campus, starting with an all-girls dormitory named after J. Marion Sims. Sims was a physician that was known to have performed unethical procedures on African American women.
“We will continue to study and place into the context the histories of the people whose names adorn our buildings,” Caslen said, “and — more broadly — to capture the voices and contributions of forgotten, excluded, or marginalized groups and individuals who positively contributed to the establishment, maintenance and growth of our university.”