Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger is formally asking UNC Chancellor Carol Folt to begin the process of appealing to remove Silent Sam from the UNC campus.

The Confederate monument has stood on McCorkle Place facing Franklin Street since 1913 and Silent Sam has been at the heart of local protests to remove Confederate monuments in recent years.

The attention on the monument is intensifying once again after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier this month resulted in the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer while she was counter protesting. That rally was sold as being a protest to the Charlottesville City Council decision to remove Confederate monuments in that university town.

Protesters in Durham toppled a Confederate monument in front of the old County Courthouse last week. A large anti-racism protest broke out on Friday afternoon after the KKK were rumored to be planning a rally in downtown Durham. In the end, no organized KKK rally took place.

UNC cannot order that Silent Sam be removed, per state law. The General Assembly would need to sign off on the decision, according to a law passed by the Republican-led legislature in 2015.

Duke University removed a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee over the weekend. The statue was located at Duke Chapel. The private university was able to make that move because the statue was on private property. The statue to Lee had been defaced earlier in the week.

Hemminger wrote to Folt on Thursday of last week asking that “UNC petition the North Carolina Historical Commission to have the statue of Silent Sam removed immediately from its current location on campus and placed in storage.”

Hemminger wrote Folt, in the letter that was released publicly by the town on Friday, that this move was necessary under a provision of state law that authorizes “’appropriate measures’ to preserve a monument.”

Hemminger argues that “the possibility of a breach of peace is high, and with it the likelihood that Silent Sam could suffer substantial damage.” That, the mayor writes, would “call for the University to be able to take the proactive step of removing the statue from harm’s way.”

UNC spokeswoman Joanne Peters confirmed in a Friday afternoon e-mail that the university had received the letter. She added that the university “will continue to work with the town to ensure we are doing everything possible to protect the safety of our campus and community.”

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