UNC – Chapel Hill has established a dedicated email address for the public to submit ideas regarding the future of the Confederate monument on the campus known as Silent Sam.
The statue was pulled down from its base on McCorkle Place last month. There have been three subsequent rallies around the statue’s remaining pedestal. More than two dozen individuals have been arrested over the course of these events.
The UNC System Board of Governors has directed UNC – Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol Folt and the campus Board of Trustees to develop a plan for the “disposition and preservation” of the monument.
Folt and the trustees announced in a letter to the campus community Monday morning that the university had established an email address for “anyone to submit ideas about the statue’s future,” at uncmonument@unc.edu.
“While we will not be able to provide individual responses,” the message read, “we will carefully review and consider all ideas as we prepare a plan to present to the Board of Governors in November.”
The Town of Chapel Hill sent a letter to the campus on Friday reiterating its desire that the statue be permanently relocated.
Folt said after the directive from the Board of Governors that the university would be looking at all options for the future of the monument, including alternative locations on campus.
Folt and the trustees have a mid-November deadline to develop a plan for the future on the monument and present it to the Board of Governors.
90% of white Southern men did not own slaves. Both Confederacy and Union had drafts. Most men had no choice but to join and fight. Silent Sam is not in any government. He should be respected. Two dishonest letters were printed in a New York newspaper during Robert E. Lee’s life. A letter written by Mrs.Lee said that they are lies so atrocious that they will not honor them with a response. (Researched & printed in a book with bibliography called “The Lee Girls”.)Lee did not own slaves, he wrote papers to free his father- in-law’s slaves during the war & before the Emancipation Act.
Put Silent Sam back UP..