The Lyllye Reynolds-Parker Black Cultural Center (BCC) was conceived in response to 2015 student protests and demands made by the Black Student Task Force for a dedicated Black space on the University of Oregon campus in Eugene. Black public speech had already produced a Black space on campus. The protests were public: the expression, in solidarity, of grievances, anxieties, struggles, and pain. The protests occurred in and transformed otherwise normative spaces on campus. Our task, as architectural designers, was simple yet difficult. We worked to ensure that the building’s formal logics and historical references (its discourse) sustained the