(KOKOMO, Ind.) – Indiana University has renamed the last of four Bloomington campus landmarks honoring former university president David Starr Jordan.
The 19th-century president was a leading and enthusiastic advocate of eugenics, writing extensively in support of selective breeding to weed out the “unfit,” and outlining what he viewed as a hierarchy of racial groups.
IU’s trustees stripped Jordan’s name last year from the Jordan River, the biology building, and a parking garage. But Jordan Avenue, where most of IU’s fraternities and sororities are, took longer, because the city of Bloomington has jurisdiction over the portion which extends off campus.
The university has followed the city’s lead and renamed it Eagleson Avenue, after a multigenerational African-American family with Bloomington roots dating to the 1880s. Preston Eagleson, a halfback on IU’s football team in the 1890s, was the university’s first African-American athlete. Frances Eagleson became the first Black woman to earn a degree from IU, in 1919, and another descendant, Elizabeth Eagleson Bridgwaters, served on the Monroe County school board and ran unsuccessfully for mayor.
Trustee Jeremy Morris calls the name change “a phenomenal way to shift forward.”
Jordan led IU from 1884 to 1891 before leaving to become president of Stanford University. Stanford removed Jordan’s name last year from its psychology building, two campus residences, and a road.
