By: Kelton Brooks

Margaret Munday stood out in the graduating class of 1960 at Western Kentucky University for two reasons: her passion for music and being the first Black student to attend and graduate from the college.

Western Kentucky University has honored Munday by voting to rename a residence hall–Northeast Hall–after her: Munday Hall.

“It’s an honor that is well-deserved – and for our institution – well past time,” WKU President Timothy Caboni told the school’s Board of Regents during its third quarterly meeting on Friday.

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Munday graduated from WKU in 1960 and taught musical education in Logan County, Caboni said. The school’s decision to rename the residence hall after Munday came as a way to clean a stained past. Names and symbols across the university, and the country, are named after those who owned slaves, and this is a way to rewrite their legacy.

There were also discussions of renaming WKU’s Potter College of Arts and Letters and the Ogden College of Science and Engineering, both named after people who owned slaves. 

“As part of our conversation during the past year, it became clear to me that something was missing from our campus. That even though we’ve been around for a long time, there was not a single structure named for an African American at WKU,” Caboni told the board Friday.