The Ledonia Wright Cultural Center at ECU opened its doors in Fall 1995. The Center, named for the popular and respected professor who founded and advised the first African American (African-American) student organization at East Carolina, serves as a facility for research and educational programming and as a repository for the University's collection of African and African American art. Works of art by East Carolina students are featured throughout the center. In October 1995 the center became home to an exhibition of more than 150 pieces of art from the Kuba people of Zaire. The collection was a gift to the East Carolina School of Art by James Lankton, physician and art collector, of Winston-Salem, NC.