Born and raised in Wilmington, Linda Upperman Smith is the daughter of Dr. Leroy Upperman (1913-1996), a prominent physician in the area.
“My father did an internship at Lincoln Hospital in Durham. There were very few internships and residencies available for African American physicians,” she told WHQR. “They were opening the new Community Hospital, moving it from North 7th Street to 10th Street, and so he took a job [there] and was trained by experienced physicians, both Black and White.”
In the mid-1990s, the family’s financial contributions helped establish UNCW’s Upperman African American Cultural Center. And at any given time over the last few decades, they’ve supported three to four scholarships at a time for minority students, whom Upperman Smith has personally mentored. The family has built up an endowment, worth around $1 million at the end of last year; the endowment can award about 4% of its total value in scholarships, around $40,000, each year.
But recently, the family was told they’d have to change their approach.
“I was told that because of the change in the Board of Governors' DEI guidelines, I could rewrite the award to take the African American part from the scholarship,” she said, adding that she and the family didn’t want to do that.
“I discussed it with my adult sons, and we decided the climate may never change. There's no way that we're going to not follow my father's wishes for the money to go to an African American student, so we're not changing the wording,” she said.
Technically, the scholarship required an interest in or commitment to issues related to African American students. Upperman scholars didn’t have to be a student of color, though they typically were.
Eddie Stuart, the Vice Chancellor for Advancement, has spent 26 years at UNCW. He said the university has 81 scholarships with a ‘diversity element’ in the application, and that the Office of General Counsel found 18 active scholarships out of compliance with university policy.
Stuart is referring to the UNC System’s equality policy — and precedent set forth by federal court decisions on admissions based on race, but “truthfully it was really rooted in an interpretation of the policy, and not something very definitive and very specific.”
In 2024, the UNC System Board of Governors repealed a prior diversity, equity, and inclusion policy and replaced it with the equality policy, which has been a whirlwind for administrators like Stuart.
“There's a lot of gray area that we've struggled with, and for a good while, we thought all of these scholarships were in good shape,” he said.
Nonetheless, officials determined the language had to change. WHQR submitted a public records request for the Upperman scholarship agreement and other agreements that support minority students. Stuart sent an email showing which line had to be removed from donor agreements moving forward.
“Special consideration will be given to students who have demonstrated experience in or commitment to working with [fill-in-the blank] community.”
Stuart adds that the equality policy has three main components: institutional neutrality, the prohibition of certain concepts such as diversity, equity, and inclusion, and compelled speech.
For issues with the Upperman language, Stuart said, “We realized that only through compelled speech can you really evaluate someone's interest in or commitment to it, because you would have to ask them, and you couldn't use race as a proxy, so you're kind of stuck.”
Since UNCW is stuck, Upperman Smith said her family is moving on.
“We will move the endowment to a university where it's pretty likely that an African American student would get it based on the population, and at this point we're looking at Howard University," she said.
Howard is where Dr. Leroy Upperman attended medical school.
“One thing about Black folks: we have always figured out a way to make things work,” Upperman Smith said.
Stuart said the university still wants to build a campus environment that is “very broad” — and that it’s working to recruit students from both rural and urban communities, as well as first-generation college students.
Upperman Smith also added that if UNCW ever strikes out the phrase ‘African American’ from the Upperman African American Center, then she will move that money out of the university, too. Of the money the family put into UNCW, 80% went to student scholarships, and 20% goes into the Center.
Upperman Smith recounted when she first stopped sending additional donations to the university.
“When they dismantled the staffing at all the diversity centers at UNC Wilmington, for example, I just blew my top behind that, but I knew I had no power, [...], but the power that my family does have is the power of the purse,” she said.
Part of the UNC Board of Governors' equality policy addressed how student centers should operate. One change was that activities and events had to be initiated and organized by students rather than dedicated staff.
Upperman Smith said the Center went from four full-time professional staff members to a part-time coordinator, a former Upperman scholar.
She also talked about the plaque she made for the last student recipients of her family’s scholarship.
“I had a student graduate this year, and I said, ‘I'm not buying another plaque,’ so I went and ordered this board with four slots with four little placards on it,” she said.
She said there are three remaining scholars (a sophomore, a junior, and a senior) who will continue to receive funds until they graduate, as the award is typically given each year of the four years.
While Stuart wrote to WHQR that he is still in "active discussions" with the family, she said, "[Stuart] and I have had a long-standing relationship over many years, will continue to communicate; however, he is clear that the family decision stands little if no chance of being reversed."
Upperman Smith’s decades of commitment to UNCW
Upperman Smith was also part of the last graduating class of the prestigious all-Black Williston High School in 1967. She left for post-secondary education but returned to Wilmington in 1997. Prior to that, sadly, her brother, Leroy Upperman, Jr., died in 1991, and so the family was contemplating their legacy.
“So my father wanted to leave something that would reflect the Upperman name as well as do something to give back to the community that had supported him over the years,” she said.
Upperman Smith felt that the Center got off to a slow start, and she was concerned by the lack of diversity even then.
“The numbers of tenured faculty were just horrible. I cannot quote off the top of my head, but there were fewer than 20 tenured faculty and staff at UNCW in the early 2000s, and diversity admissions were really bad as well," she said.
In 1998, Upperman Smith was also briefly named the interim Director of the Office of Minority Affairs, so she followed these numbers rather closely.
The UNC System still tracks demographic enrollment numbers. UNCW is ranked near the bottom for Black students, hovering around 5% of the overall population for over a decade. This past fall, 4% of undergraduates were Black; for graduate students, the percentage was higher — around 12%.
Upperman Smith was also a member of the UNCW Board of Trustees and supported a 20-year fundraising campaign, called 'Stompin' at the Savoy,' that raised over $2 million for scholarships benefiting minority students.
“When I first came back here, just being in the community, ‘Oh, we don't go out to UNCW, we're not welcome,’ you know, it has the thing, ‘UNC White,’ and I would go to programs sponsored by the Upperman Center; there wouldn't be anybody like that. Maybe there were like five or six of us from the community," she said.
She wanted that to change, hence her support for the 'Stompin' at the Savoy' celebration. It lasted into the early 2000s.
Upperman Smith recalls that former UNCW Chancellor Dr. Jim Leutze came to the event one year and said, “I've never seen this many Black people on campus before.”
Stuart said he values the Uppermans’ contribution over the years, including Upperman Smith’s.
“I really can't say enough about Linda and all her hard work, and I know this is a tough thing for her. We often hear from former scholarship recipients how life-changing that was for them, and anytime opportunities like that go away, you always feel bad, but you always hope that there are new opportunities on the horizon for students," he said.
Stuart said that other private donors aren’t necessarily going the way of the Upperman family.
“Our conversations with donors tend, which I really appreciate, to migrate very quickly toward: ‘We want to support students that might not be able to experience UNCW without this scholarship, so if we can't do it the way we originally wanted to do it perfectly, that's okay,’” he said.
Upperman Smith said she fought hard for diversity on UNCW’s campus for so long — and it’s worn her down.
“I'm tired, and I said they're not going to beat me down every time I ran into some kind of roadblock with something; they're not going to beat me down, and on some level I feel that they've won, but that's only at UNC Wilmington, that they've won. [...] I put a lot of time, energy, sweat, and tears into the university, and it's like everything has just crumpled,” she said.
Even though she said it's been difficult, Upperman Smith said she’s at peace with her and her family’s decision.
