Upendo Lounge (chase Hall Location)

"Upendo" is Swahili for "love." The lounge was officially opened on February 16, 1973 in Chase Hall on the UNC campus.  Prior to the opening of Upendo, the Black Student Movement (BSM) used a small office space on the second floor of the Frank Porter Graham Student Union.

Originally located on the first floor of Chase Hall, Upendo Lounge was used as a social space for Black UNC students on campus, but was consistently under threat from administrators and from other student groups. The majority of African American students lived on South Campus, so Chase Hall, which was the dining hall for South Campus, was a convenient, centralized location for social activities. The BSM meetings were held there, as well as events and practice sessions for the BSM subgroups.

UNC student Henry Foust highlighted descibed Upendo as "very much a hub and everything happened there. Dances, parties, meetings, concerts sometimes, practices. Anything that went on in the Black community, pretty much the first place you tried to get was Upendo.”

In the summer of 1976, the University’s Space Committee approved the relocation of the cafeteria in Chase Hall from the second floor to the first, displacing Upendo Lounge. The BSM acquiesced to the relocation of Upendo Lounge to the second floor, but in 1983 the building once again underwent renovations, with the second floor rededicated as the Chase Union, under administrative control of the Carolina Student Union, which once again displaced Upendo.

Chase Hall was demolished in 2003. Upendo Lounge was temporarily moved to the Frank Porter Graham Student Union, but is now located in the Student and Academic Services Building North.

Chase Hall, 1970s (via UNC)

Excerpt from the February 1, 1973 Black Ink (via UNC)

Meeting of the Black Student Movement in Upendo Lounge (from the April 1, 1973, Black Ink)

For additional information (and where much of this information came from): uncofthepeople.com/essays/upendo-lounge