****UPDATE: The plaque has been recovered.****

Chapel Hill Police are investigating the removal of a memorial placed in the public right on way along Franklin Street by anti-Silent Sam activists last week.

Protesters placed a memorial honoring the “Negro Wench” who was referenced by Julian Carr at the 1913 dedication of the Confederate monument that stood on the UNC campus for more than 100 years known as Silent Sam. Carr said at the time that the statue stood near where he had whipped the woman until her skirt hung in shreds.

Protesters toppled the Silent Sam statue last August. The remaining base of the memorial was removed in mid-January as then-chancellor Carol Folt announced her resignation.

The marker in honor of the Negro Wench was placed next to another marker that has drawn recent protests, the memorial dedicating Franklin Street, running through the heart of Chapel Hill, as part of the Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway.

Local government officials have been looking into who owns the Jefferson Davis marker and what options are available regarding its removal. But that process is complicated by a 2015 law limiting the movement of “objects of remembrance” from public grounds.

Activists said last Tuesday that they believed the same 2015 law prevented the removal of the two markers that were placed that day.

The protesters also placed a marker honoring James Cates in the Pit on the UNC campus Tuesday afternoon. Cates was killed in the Pit in 1970 by a white supremacist motorcycle gang. Media reports at the time say that three members of the gang were charged but ultimately acquitted by an all-white jury.

The marker honoring Cates was removed by university officials by Wednesday morning.

Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue wrote in an email just before noon on Saturday that the marker placed on Franklin Street was removed.

“It was not removed by Town officials and the Chapel Hill Police Department is investigating its removal,” Blue wrote in an email to town manager Maurice Jones.

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