CLEVELAND, Ohio – Cleveland City Council Monday unanimously passed a resolution urging Cleveland State University to remove the name of slaveholder U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall from the name of CSU’s Cleveland-Marshall College of Law.
Keeping the name atop a college at Cleveland’s public university amounts to a “black eye,” said Councilman Kevin Conwell, who championed the resolution. He likened keeping the name to flying a Confederate flag.
“We shouldn’t, as African Americans, even have to write legislation to fight this,” Conwell said during a Monday committee hearing.
Council’s resolution comes as law school students are ramping up efforts to push CSU’s Board of Trustees into action. Students Against Marshall, formed in November, is frustrated by what they see as school leaders dragging their feet on a decision to remove the name.
CSU began considering a name change in mid-2020, but has no timeline for when a decision might be made. The student group wants the name removed before spring commencement, so another class of law graduates won’t have diplomas bearing the name of a slaveholder.
Last week, the student group sent a letter to Dean Lee Fisher and a committee he assembled to consider the removal of the name and possible new names, urging them to speed up the process. Among other demands, the group asked the committee to immediately recommend the removal of Marshall’s name to the Board of Trustees, then later proceed with considering possible new names.
“There is consensus that the discussion of renaming, not that of removing, has contributed to this lengthy process which we reject outright,” the letter states.
The students want the board to vote on removing the name at its next meeting on Thursday.
Conwell, on Monday, lauded the students’ efforts, saying they are akin to that of young people during the civil rights movement.
“When you look at the students, they’re always out there fighting for our rights…When [African Americans] couldn’t sit at lunch counters—it was the students that fought for that. When you look at Martin Luther King, when the civil rights movement was going south, he and Ralph Abernathy went and got students to help push the movement,” Conwell said ahead of Monday’s vote. “So, I’m asking council to join with me and support the students.”
