Provost Thomas DiLorenzo cuts the ribbon at the grand opening of the new Era Bell Thompson Multicultural Center. Photo by Jennifer Friese/The Dakota Student.

Multicultural Student Services bid farewell to its former home at the Era Bell Thompson Multicultural Center before holding a grand opening at its new location on the third floor of the Memorial Union last Wednesday.

Provost Thomas DiLorenzo led the event with opening speeches at the closing ceremony and again at the opening ceremony.

“As we mark the end of this physical location, we bear in mind the thousands of students who were able to find comfort here for nearly 40 years,” DiLorenzo said.

Following a speech by Multicultural Student Services Director Malika Carter, University Police Chief Eric Plummer put a traffic block on University Avenue while members of both the Organization of Latino Americans and the Black Student Association carried a portrait of Era Bell Thompson across the street to the new location inside the Union.

“Centers like this are a home away from home, a place where some of my most important lessons were learned and a place where lifelong friendships were forged,” UND Associate Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion Sandra Mitchell said. “I am indeed honored to be here for the opening of this space.”

DiLorenzo then cut a braided, multicolored ribbon held by Mitchell and Carter before everyone was welcomed into the new location.

“I was very, very happy,” Carter said after the ceremony. “There were more people over here than there were at the other ceremony.”

While Carter has only been here since 2011, she said she really feels a connection. In the future, she said she’d love to see a large group of students from all different identities visiting the place and she hopes the Union’s traffic flow will provide for that.

“I’d like to see the world in this space,” Carter said.

Era Bell Thompson

The center was named after Era Bell Thompson, a former UND student who was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1906 but raised in Driscoll, N.D. She ran track at UND, breaking several state records before she relocated to Sioux City, Iowa, where she received a bachelor’s degree in art from Morningside College.

She later moved to Chicago where she faced prejudice and was denied jobs based on her skin color. It was something she had never experienced growing up in North Dakota.

From 1951 to 1964, she was co-managing editor of Ebony magazine and international editor from 1964 until her retirement. Before her death in 1986, she became the recipient of the Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award. The award is given to present or former North Dakotans for achieving national recognition in their fields.

The house on campus that was until recently home to Multicultural Student Services opened in 1976 and was called the Black Cultural Center. It was renamed the Era Bell Thompson Black Cultural Center in 1979, but the name changed once more to the Era Bell Thompson Multicultural Center in 2004.

The move from 2800 University Avenue to the third floor of the Union is part of a larger move of departments on campus that was announced earlier this year.

“The Multicultural Student Services will be moved to the building that most students touch in a given day or week, so that makes a lot of sense,” UND Johnson said in February.

Linda Skarsten, office manager of Multicultural Student Services, said that in the move from the old to the new location a couple of weeks ago, they discovered letters written by Era Bell Thompson. Ironically, Thompson mentioned in one of the letters that she wouldn’t be able to make it to the grand opening of the original center.

Jamie Hutchinson is a staff writer for The Dakota Student. He can be reached at [email protected].