Stone Walls: “In the midst of an ongoing U.S. Department of Justice cold case investigation into the circumstances surrounding the 1970 murder of James L. Cates Jr., UNC has now announced plans to permanently memorialize James Cates on its landscape.
On Friday, Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz released a statement about the James Cates Memorial, which will be installed by the Pit later this year. The UNC Board of Trustees approved the plan late last month, evidently in closed session. Mr. Cates was killed in an act of racial violence outside the Student Union while attending a dance in the Union. He was 22 at the time of his death.
In response to the news of the memorial, the family of James Cates — represented by his sister Mary Lee Campbell and cousins Nate Davis and Valerie Foushee — has provided to Stone Walls the following statement:
We were pleased to hear that the university is planning to recognize our beloved brother and cousin James Lewis Cates Jr. with a memorial. Similar to our sentiments about the cold case investigation that the U.S. Department of Justice opened this year, we are grateful for this development while also acknowledging our heartbreak that it has taken more than fifty years to get here.
As we contemplate the promise a memorial brings that James Cates’s life will not be forgotten, we think of his mother, Eula, and his grandmother, Mrs. Annie Cates (a long-time UNC employee), who transitioned before this acknowledgment and proposed recognition.
Thank you to the many UNC students and community members who pushed to make this happen. We look forward to the day when the proposed memorial is installed and dedicated.
Mary Lee Campbell
Nate Davis
Valerie Foushee
Outside of the local Black community, this tragic murder had largely been forgotten until recent years. Now 52 years later, in a six-month span the United States Department of Justice has launched a cold case investigation and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has announced it will install a permanent memorial in the center of campus.”