Groups Celebrate Anniversary of Silent Sam Toppling at UNC

Singing and chanting started a rally Tuesday night celebrating the one-year anniversary of the Confederate monument on the UNC campus known as Silent Sam being toppled by protesters.

A coalition of groups organized Tuesday’s event, including a land acknowledgment from a member of the Carolina Indian Circle and remarks from Barbara Sostaita with UndocuCarolina – a group aimed at making UNC a safe place for undocumented students and workers.

“What I learned last fall, when activists brought down Silent Sam, is that we make us safer,” she told the cheering crowd.

Sostaita said Tuesday’s event was both bizarre and poetic in timing, for her in particular.

“Because [Wednesday] I officially become a US citizen.”

The rally moved across Franklin Street to McCorkle Place, where the Confederate monument stood on the campus for more than 100 years.

One of the speakers at that stop is still facing criminal charges following last year’s toppling.

“We also celebrate, not only the toppling of a symbol, but the toppling of white supremacy,” Raul Arce Jiminez said. “And as white supremacy crumbles to the ground, we the people – here, us – we’ll be the ones to rebuild a world without white supremacy.”

The rallygoers then huddled around the Unsung Founders Memorial, a monument dedicated by the Class of 2002 honoring “The People of Color, Bond and Free – Who Helped Build the Carolina That We Cherish Today.” Attendees placed flowers on the monument and held a moment of silence.

The rally continued to the Old Well – where others were waiting in line to drink from the Old Well on the first day of classes, per university tradition. There, across from the university administration offices in South Building, the protesters called for the university to change the names on buildings across campus honoring those with ties to slavery and white supremacy.

“The memorials to white supremacy at UNC are both a symptom and a cause of racism in this town, this state, this nation,” a speaker told the crowd. “But we tore down Sam; we renamed Hurston Hall, and we will do it again and again and again and again and again and again, until they all fall.”

The rally spilled onto Cameron Avenue, up Columbia Street, to the intersection with Columbia and Franklin, where protesters shut down the intersection. The roadway was closed for roughly 15 minutes. No major incidents were reported at the rally.