Silent Sam Protest Continues

After approximately 1,000 protesters gathered on McCorkle Place on the UNC campus Tuesday night to call for the removal of Silent Sam from the Chapel Hill campus, the scene was much different on Wednesday.

After some protesters say they slept near where the monument stands Tuesday night, about a dozen UNC students sat at the base of the Confederate memorial early Wednesday afternoon.

They were able to get close to the statue – and drape banners and signs around the base – after UNC Police removed the two layers of barriers that were present during the larger protest.

One student said that seeing the barriers around the statue come down made them more optimistic.

“I wasn’t here when they took them down,” she said. “But coming from class and seeing that they had taken them down, it really made me feel like things were going to get better from here, like we were actually moving forward.”

The statue has been at the heart of the local debate on Confederate monuments for years, but the intensity of the conversation has increased after the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier this month where a counter protester was killed.

While protesters have been calling on UNC Chancellor Carol Folt to order the statue be removed, Folt has maintained the university doesn’t have the legal standing to do so. A 2015 law passed by the Republican-led General Assembly prevents monuments from being moved. But Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger wrote Folt last week saying there was a provision that will allow the statue to be removed in order to protect the monument from harm. Governor Roy Cooper also said the university had the authority to move the monument if it was proving to be a threat to public safety.

But Folt has reaffirmed her belief the university still does not have unilateral authority to move the statue.

“If [Folt] cares about the students on this campus, if she cares about the image that this campus gives off – not only to the people in this state but to the UNC System as a whole and across the nation – she needs to speak up,” a student said. “She can’t stay neutral in this argument.”

Folt has said she would remove the monument, if she felt the university had the legal authority to do so.

The student added that the support from others around the state was appreciated, but she held out hope for Folt to make the call to remove Silent Sam.

“It’s disappointing in a way because the chancellor is supposed to be for us – for the people, for her students – and I feel like she could do so much more.”

The students said they would be rotating groups through in order to consistently have a presence at the memorial and that nightly vigils were being planned.

“We want to send a message that we’re serious about this; that this is important to us and that this isn’t just going to be some phase,” she said. “We’re not doing this because it’s the cool thing to do at the moment. We’re doing this because this is what we believe in.” She added she viewed the protesters’ role as students and citizens was “to stand up for our rights and to do what is right.”

While the group says they are focused on Silent Sam at the moment, it was also clear the removal was not the end of the road in their mind.

“There are definitely other residence halls, there are different names for buildings, that are still reminders of a racist and oppressive history,” another student said. “And I feel like if we celebrate those by naming them, it offends the people who were oppressed to begin with.”

As for the campus community who had not taken part in the protest so far, the group asked for support.

“I understand that people are busy; that they have schedules,” one student said. “But things like this are important, and it’s important that we have solidarity; that we have numbers; that we have a community standing with us.

“If you can’t be out here physically, there are other ways of showing support.”

When asked for a comment on how the university plans to handle the continuing protest, UNC spokeswoman Joanne Peters said in an e-mail:

“As we’ve said, we’re concerned about how the monument could affect the safety of the campus, so will have appropriate resources in place to keep the area safe.”