Conflicting local, statewide and national reactions have surfaced from students, university administration and politicians after the controversial ‘Silent Sam’ statue was brought down by demonstrators during a protest Monday night on UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus.
According to an email statement from UNC Media Relations, a group of around 250 protesters brought down the confederate statue around 9:20 p.m. No one was injured when the statue came down. UNC- Chapel Hill, partnered with UNC System Leaders, also sent out a statement that reads the university did not direct police officers at the scene to allow protesters to bring down the statue.
“This protest was carried out in a highly organized manner and included a number of people unaffiliated with the University,” the statement reads. “While we respect that protesters have the right to demonstrate, they do not have the right to damage state property.”
The statement also said that the university will be investigating the incident through collaboration with police and the State Bureau of Investigation.
While the university and UNC System leader’s statement says that they “will never condone mob actions,” a statement released from the UNC-Chapel Hill Student Government Executive Branch states that the protesters acted correctly in toppling the statue.
“Last night, a group of students and community organizers did what few were prepared to do: they corrected a moral and historical wrong that needed to be righted if we were ever to move forward as a University,” the Executive Branch statement reads. “Last night, they tore down Silent Sam. They were right to do so.”
NC State Student Body President Jess Errico also released a statement discussing how the removal of the statue was putting power into the hands of students who have felt marginalized by the monument.
“The systematic enslavement and subjugation of people of color is an undeniable transgression that Americans cannot deny, forget, or erase – nor should we,” the statement reads. “To engage in a rhetoric that denounces the removal of Silent Sam due to the suggestion that it destroys the historical record is to engage in a false rhetoric.”
Governor Roy Cooper also released a statement condemning “violent” removal of the Silent Sam.
While the statue’s central controversy revolved around its relation to racial oppression, Rachel Jones, a fourth-year studying journalism and editor-in-chief of The Daily Tar Heel at UNC- Chapel Hill, says that it has been a meeting place for many political issues over the years.
“This isn’t one issue, the statue was really a gathering point for a lot of different social movements,” Jones said. “But this isn’t the only issue that activists at UNC are tackling at the moment. We’ve seen that throughout our time here, Silent Sam has always been part of the conversation, but so is campus rape, so is the NCAA, so is the academic scandal, so is unionization.”
Silent Sam, a statue of a confederate soldier by John A. Wilson, was funded by University Alumni and the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1913 to recognize UNC-Chapel Hill alumni that died in the American Civil War.
The statue has been a center of several debates regarding racism and has been vandalized frequently since the 1960’s. According to The News & Observer, the statue cost the university $390,000 per year to keep due to the high amounts of security stationed at the site.
Myah Ward, a third-year studying journalism and political science and University Desk Editor at UNC-Chapel Hill, reported on the event last night for The Daily Tar Heel and said there was significant tension between protesters and police.
“As the big group started approaching the police kind of stepped forward in front of it, but then they were going to go through anyways,” Ward said. “So there was a lot of tension there in terms of they were wanting the police to back away, they were chanting at the police, ‘cops go home’ was one of the things they were saying.”
According to Savannah Shoemake, a first-year studying archaeology at UNC-Chapel Hill and a demonstrator, students began to gather at the Peace and Justice Plaza at 6:30 p.m. for a rally where individuals spoke about Silent Sam. Protesters then marched to the statue.
Shoemake said that while she does not condone destroying public property, she understands why demonstrators got to the point of taking the statue down themselves.
“I don’t believe that statue needs to be on campus,” Shoemake said. “I’m not a person that is necessarily pro the destruction of property. I wasn’t really involved in taking it down, I don’t really agree with that. I wish it could’ve been done legally and peacefully, but I also recognize the fact that many students for the last five decades have been trying to get it done legally and peacefully so I also understand why it escalated to this.”
Ward said that since the Charlottesville protests, demonstrators on UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus have gained more traction through platforms. According to Ward, the protest yesterday seemed to her that it had been planned, not just a spur of the moment movement.
“Over the course of the year they’ve really organized and just gained a lot of steam on social media and stuff like that,” Ward said. “Yesterday they were really organized, they had really big banners, they clearly had speakers that they had identified that they were going to speak at the protest when the event began.”
The statue is currently being kept at an undisclosed storage facility and its future remains unclear; however, Jones said she thinks the events of the protest will promote social awareness.
“I think that we’re going to see a big uptake in social awareness,” Jones said. “We also don’t know currently what the university or the Board of Governor’s plans are for the statue. We know that they took it away from the scene last night after telling us that that’s something that they weren’t going to do.”
It is currently unclear what university officials will do with the Silent Sam statue. Protest livestream from The Daily Tar Heel Facebook page can be found here.
