CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (CBS19 NEWS) -- Two buildings on the University of Virginia Grounds will be renamed because of the racist legacy associated with the men whose names are currently on the buildings.

UVA's Committee on Names has recommended changing the Curry School of Education to the UVA School of Education and Ruffner Hall to Ridley Hall.
Ruffner Hall houses classrooms and offices.

J.L.M. Curry and William H. Ruffner were both educators and advocated for public school for all Virginians but they made careers of making sure rigid racial segregation was upheld in education.

UVA Associate Professor of History Sarah Milove says both men stressed that African-Americans were inherently inferior to whites.

"The reason they supported education for black children was essentially to educate black children not to aspire to equality. Black children should only be educated into the level of their intelligence and morals, which they believed was far below that of white students," she said. 

Once the naming process is complete, Ruffner Hall will be renamed Ridley Hall in honor of Walter N. Ridley, the first African-American to receive a doctoral degree from UVA and a graduate of the School of Education.

There was also another issue in that neither Curry nor Ruffner was a graduate of, never taught at, or made any contribution to UVA.