Explore the 2010–2016 about the Controversies and protests of this artwork, Silent Sam.
Several protests in the late 2010s were directed toward the statue, along with calls for its removal. In January 2011, Adam Domby (then a graduate student in history at UNC, later assistant professor of history at the College of Charleston), wrote a letter to The Daily Tar Heel entitled "Why Silent Sam was built: A historian's perspective". The letter highlighted Julian Carr's speech at the dedication of the statue, which Domby had uncovered in the university archives in 2009. Carr's speech, in which he praised the Confederate soldier as a defender of the "Anglo Saxon race" and bragged about whipping an African-American woman "until her skirts hung in shreds", became a galvanizing force in activists' efforts to get the statue removed.On September 1, 2011, a group variously known as the Real Silent Sam Movement or Committee held a protest "to attract attention to the statue's history". That group "campaigned over the past two years [2011–2013] to replace the current plaque with one that tells what they call "the true history of the confederate soldier."North Carolina NAACP President Reverend William Barber II spoke at a program held on the monument's centenary in 2013.In July 2015, the statue was vandalized with the words "Black Lives Matter", KKK, and "murderer", during a wave of vandalism targeting Confederate monuments. A UNC history professor, Dr. Harry Watson, said that he believed the monument represented an important part of history but that its glorification promoted a false conception of the Civil War. A second protest was held on October 12, University Day, on the steps of Wilson Library.Officials said that "a protective layer would be placed on the monument to ease cleaning efforts for future situations".In late July 2015, the North Carolina General Assembly passed SL 2015–170, the Cultural History Artifact Management and Patriotism Act of 2015, which states that "An object of remembrance [defined as "monument, memorial, or work of art"] located on public property may not be permanently removed". It does allow an object to be permanently relocated, provided that it is "relocated to a site of similar prominence, honor, visibility, availability, and access, ...within the boundaries of the jurisdiction from which it was relocated." Approval of the North Carolina Historical Commission is required.On the night of August 17–18, 2015, the statue, along with the Chapel Hill Post Office, were defaced with the words "Who is Sandra Bland?" On September 9, 2015, the monument was blindfolded with "a Confederate bandanna". Seeing how the monument was being defaced, a "Pro-Confederate Rally" in support of Silent Sam was announced for October 25; the protestors were from Alamance County, and had no connection with the university. They were met by three times as many counterdemonstrators, "most of them students". One of the students handed out 158 copies of W.E.B. DuBois' seminal 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk — 158 being, according to the student, the number of years between the foundation of the university and its admitting black students.On October 12, 2015, University Day, a group of about two dozen students, calling itself The Real Silent Sam Coalition, interrupted a speech by Chancellor Folt, shouting "Tear it down, tear it down, or we'll shout you down". They received applause from some faculty present.On January 12, 2016, UNC police arrested a man for "spray-painting a message on Silent Sam".
College of Charleston Daily Tar Heel KKK NAACP Alamance County Sandra Bland The Daily Tar Heel blindfold Tar Heel Confederate North Carolina General Assembly Black Lives Matter The Souls of Black Folk Julian Carr Cultural History Artifact Management and Patriotism Act of 2015 William Barber II W.E.B. DuBois