Students within the movement disagreed over their demands when it came to the statue. Some wanted to push for removal; in the end, they chose a more pragmatic approach.
“This home grown group started as wanting to compromise,” said Domby, now a faculty member at the College of Charleston.
A member of that group, Will McInerney, said in an interview that he had been convinced by the historical context and he wanted others to be educated, too.
“It felt very clear to me that the monument, as it stood, was a misrepresentation of history,” McInerney said. “It felt important that the university, an institution of great academic accomplishment, and an incubator of knowledge—particularly one of great prestige around Southern American history—should have a historically accurate understanding of it.”
On Feb. 15, 2012, the coalition presented a four-point proposal to then-Chancellor Holden Thorp and the trustees.
“Our intent is not to remove monuments or revise history; rather, we seek to challenge the university to provide a more complete historical narrative,” the group’s proposal said. “Through historical accuracy we hope to invigorate a culture at the university that celebrates difference and cultivates a diverse, egalitarian, and truth-seeking student body.”
What the group wanted was a plaque with context about the founding of Silent Sam. But they also asked for a similar-sized statue to honor a prominent African-American, a memorial review process that would occur every decade and an educational component for all students, including the “Black and Blue” tour of black history at UNC.
The Real Silent Sam Coalition didn’t succeed in getting its plaque. But the group’s efforts led to a major turning point in 2015, when the trustees renamed the academic building previously known as Saunders Hall, which had been dedicated for 19th Century Ku Klux Klan leader William Saunders. At the same time, the trustees passed a 16-year moratorium on renaming other buildings and launched a broad effort to curate UNC’s history with accurate markers.
In the last few grafs of Chapter 3, Stancill and Carter speed-walk readers up to the present-day circumstances that laid the groundwork for the campus uproar. In Chapter 4, readers get a walk-through of the months, days and even minutes leading up to the statue’s toppling.
The winds of change were blowing.
In June 2015, Dylann Roof was charged with the racially motivated killing of nine people in a Charleston, S.C., church. The next month, the Confederate flag was removed from the South Carolina State House grounds at the recommendation of then-Gov. Nikki Haley.
About two weeks later, though, North Carolina’s elected leaders took their own stance on history. Then-Gov. Pat McCrory signed into law legislation that prohibited the alteration of historic monuments and “objects of remembrance.”
Chapter 4: Politicians, Protests and Police
The trajectory for Silent Sam may have been set a year ago in another state.
Last August, a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., resulted in the death of a counter-protester and the related deaths of two state police officers in a helicopter crash. The “Unite the Right” march was meant to oppose the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue from a city park.
Around the country, Confederate statues began to come down, including overnight secret removals at the University of Texas in Austin and at Duke University. In Durham, the statue in front of the old courthouse was toppled by force at the hands of protesters.
Anti–Silent Sam activists had not been dormant in recent years—they had held organized demonstrations in late 2015 at University Day and at a campus “town hall” meeting on race.
The journalists remind us of the historical context, not only pointing to the recent past but emphasizing that this issue has spanned generations of students.
Through generations, the focus on Silent Sam had been maintained by students of color at UNC who kept up the fight. The Black Student Movement had gathered there in 1971 after the murder of a black man killed on campus by a white motorcycle gang; the group led a march during the L.A. riots following the police beating of Rodney King.
But late 2017 was different. There was a new urgency in the air.
Only 10 days after Charlottesville, hundreds of people turned out to a massive demonstration around Silent Sam. They couldn’t get close to the monument, though. Police, wearing helmets, had erected barricades around the statue.
UNC leaders, worried about safety before the protest, had written to Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, asking him to request the state Historical Commission to step in. The Chapel Hill mayor wanted Silent Sam removed, too. Cooper responded that the university was free to take down the statue under a safety hazard provision in the state law.
It didn’t happen. University lawyers disagreed with Cooper’s interpretation of the law. The Republican-dominated UNC Board of Governors members objected to the talks between Cooper and UNC administrators
So continued a year of sit-ins, a UNC food service boycott, petitions, a threatened civil rights lawsuit, public hearing speeches and other attempts by Silent Sam’s opponents. One day last September, students took drums, pots and pans and party horns to Chancellor Carol Folt’s office to get her attention.
Folt admitted it would be better for the university if the statue were moved.
“I do believe that as long as Silent Sam is in its current location, it runs the risk of continuing to drain energy and goodwill that we worked so hard to maintain on our campus, and truly does distract us from reaching the important goals we all share,” she said at a trustee meeting last year, as reported by The News & Observer.
But, she maintained, her hands were tied.
Meanwhile, student government, faculty leaders and various academic departments, one by one, called on Folt, UNC boards and elected leaders to work out some plan to move Silent Sam.
In April, graduate student Maya Little poured red ink and some of her own blood on the statue in broad daylight. She was arrested and charged with criminal vandalism and an honor court violation at UNC. She said she was providing her own context to the statue—with black blood symbolizing the violence of the past.
UNC continued with its plans to erect new signs with historical context and interactive online resources. The university also spent $390,000 on security around the monument last fiscal year, and drew scorn when campus police sent in an undercover officer to infiltrate a sit-in.
Graduation came and went, and Silent Sam still stood.
On Monday, at the beginning of a new academic year, UNC’s Center for the Study of the American South posted a statement saying the university’s inaction was immoral. Malinda Lowery, the director, called for the legal removal of Silent Sam, which she said was “a misogynist insult” to women that “whitewashes the past.”
“‘Silent Sam’ stands in the way of our purpose,” she wrote.
By midnight, Silent Sam had fallen.
Chapter 5: To be Continued
The most important piece of any historical feature is tying the past to the present and future. This is largely what separates many of these stories from encyclopedia entries. Where do the people who are impacted go from here? How will the past continue to influence us today? Chapter 5 reminds readers that this story is far from over.
UNC’s statue saga isn’t over.
As the bronze soldier lies in storage somewhere, counter protests are planned. UNC President Margaret Spellings and UNC Board of Governors Chairman Harry Smith called the protest “unacceptable, dangerous and incomprehensible,” and said “mob rule” won’t be tolerated.
They