The Stone Center, which opened in 2004, represents the culmination of many years of student activism and community dialogue. The Center is an important site for the critical examination of African and African-American diaspora cultures. It includes seminar and classrooms, a library, art gallery and museum, and more.
Dr. Sonja Haynes Stone, one of the first professors in the Afro-American Studies Curriculum and an advocate for black students, was a proponent for a freestanding black cultural center. Her unexpected death in 1991 gave new impetus to a student movement for a center to replace a small office in the Student Union