Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, has tried for 14 years to remove the Confederate designation from one of its residence halls and has finally raised enough money to make it so.

In 1933, the United Daughters of the Confederacy donated $50,000 to name a building the Confederate Memorial Hall as a way to honor their forefathers who died fighting in the Civil War. The hall was completed in 1935 with the name inscribed ever since. 

An attempt to strike “Confederate” and only call the building Memorial Hall took place in 2002, but Vanderbilt was sued, according to USA Today:

Vanderbilt previously attempted to rename the building Memorial Hall in 2002, but the Tennessee Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy sued to keep the original name. A Tennessee appeals court ruled in 2005 that Vanderbilt could remove “Confederate” from the inscription only after it had returned the donation at its current value. A donation of $50,000 in 1935 is worth almost $880,000 in 2016, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index inflation calculator.

And that’s just what Vanderbilt plans to do. Through the efforts of anonymous donors, over $1 million was raised to pay back the 83-year-old donation.

On Monday, Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos announced the hall was renamed. As a law professor since 1987, he said it was about time:

“It's a symbol that is, for many people, deeply offensive and painful. And to walk past it or to have to live in that space is really something that I just don't think is acceptable."

The attorney representing the historical group, Dough Jones, said, “All it was was just a simple monument for the boys in Tennessee that died… We think rewriting history’s just terrible. And I think it’s a very sad day for a school with that kind of reputation to be condoning that."

But Zeppos believes Vanderbilt isn’t erasing its complicated history:

“We are not saying this is not part of Vanderbilt's history. I think we teach history by how we talk about these events.

"I don't think that that (name) was really teaching anyone history."

Vanderbilt began officially referring to the building as Memorial Hall starting in 2005, but crews are now on site physically removing the “offending” word once and for all.