Regarding Silent Sam, how does the Aftermath's Reactions incorporate the Supporters of the toppling?
Supporters of the toppling Newspapers
The editorial board of The Charlotte Observer, North Carolina's largest newspaper, saw the toppling of the statue as an act of civil disobedience, "a tradition that goes back at least to Henry David Thoreau, who famously argued that it is the citizen's duty not to acquiesce and allow the government to perpetrate injustice." The toppling of the statue is compared to Rosa Parks, who broke the law by refusing to give up her bus seat, the Greensboro four, and the Boston Tea Party. The Observer said the action was not "mob rule": "Mob rule was what happened at Little Rock Central High School in 1957 when nine black students, even armed with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, were turned back by an angry and violent white mob."
Editorial board of the Winston-Salem Journal: "Silent Sam had to go.... Their cause was just, if not their methods. And it is easy to understand their mounting frustration and anger.... Blame 'mob rule' if you will. But it was poor leadership in Chapel Hill and Raleigh that ultimately led to Monday night."
Editorial board of The Fayetteville Observer: "The most surprising thing about the toppling of "Silent Sam" on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus Tuesday night was that it took so long to happen. ... And as cities and states across the South have seen frequent protests and have wrestled with decisions about the nature, meaning and location of their many monuments to the Civil War and the soldiers who fought in it, North Carolina's official position has been to do nothing. ... It's clear that Silent Sam was meant to be a reminder to blacks of the doctrine of white supremacy that was prevalent then and is still too much with us today." Myron Pitts, staff writer at The Fayetteville Observer, said in the newspaper "It was past time to remove UNC's Silent Sam. State and university officials' lack of leadership led to last week’s events."
Editorial in the Daily Tar Heel, UNC-CH's student newspaper: "[I]t's heartening to hear that leaders in UNC and Orange County do not want Silent Sam replaced or reinstated, but at the end of the day, their lack of action in the moments that matter make them complicit in white supremacy. Finding [Maya] Little guilty and spending $400,000 a year to keep a Confederate statue up relay the same message: The leaders in our community refuse to completely denounce white supremacy and its symbols.... When leaders refuse to completely denounce obvious symbols of white supremacy, no progress will be made toward systematic injustices that are woven into the culture of this University. The Editorial Board hopes community leaders will take substantive action in the future regarding Silent Sam and other Confederate symbols."
Editorial in Technician, NC State student newspaper, reprinted  in the Daily Tar Heel : "[W]e fully support the actions of the protesters. The practice of vandalism is something that in normal circumstances, Technician does not condone. However, as all legal recourse had been pursued, and UNC students' authority to shape their own campus environment had been undermined by the state and the university, we support the risk taken by these individuals, in full knowledge of the legal repercussions they may face."
Editorial board of The Daily Reflector (Greenville, N.C.): "Frustrated at being given no alternatives, protesters took matters into their own hands.... Those responsible have to be charged and prosecuted.... But our history demonstrates the inevitability of the public's embrace of freedom and individual rights — and the progressive disappearance of institutions and symbols that stand in the way."
Editorial board of The Washington Post: "It's not a surprise that citizens would take matters into their own hands when arbitrary curbs had been placed on local democracy."
UNC students
The UNC undergraduate student government executive branch posted a letter to all students, saying "the African-American activists had 'courage and resilience' and had 'corrected a moral and historical wrong that needed to be righted if we were ever to move forward as a university.'"
UNC faculty
Groups
42 UNC faculty members signed a letter published in The News & Observer on August 23 claiming UNC administration "dodged" the Silent Sam issue, leading to "not the most desirable" situation but one that had to come nonetheless. "The time is now for the university administration to show leadership, not bureaucratic obfuscation," the letter reads. "Show us that you and the university do indeed stand for Lux et Libertas, not sustaining and enforcing the symbols of human cruelty." The letter quoted John F. Kennedy: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."
29 faculty members in the Department of History (August 23): "Civil disobedience, particularly among students, has a long and storied history in the United States, especially in the American South. The hyperbolic characterization of Silent Sam's toppling as 'lawlessness' and 'mob action' by Chancellor Folt and UNC System leaders demonstrates a purposeful, obdurate disregard for historical and social context."
The University of North Carolina's Center for the Study of the American South (August 23): "UNC's leadership refuses to recognize that their own inaction put our community in danger. We acknowledge the constraints they face but we urge them to stand on the right side of history and join us in rejecting simplistic interpretations of last night's actions as vandalism. Silent Sam was violence. Protestors who removed it sought to reorient our future toward non-violence."
The University of North Carolina's Center for Civil Rights (September 7): "Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights demonstrators of the 1950s and 1960s knew that there were just laws and unjust laws, and they were prepared to pay the price of violating unjust laws. As those who train new generations of students in law, we at the UNC Center for Civil Rights cannot advocate lawlessness, but we can teach about the traditions of resistance to unjust laws. We did not urge protesters to take the actions that brought down Silent Sam, but we do believe that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the State of North Carolina will be better for having Silent Sam removed from its place of honor on the campus. Silent Sam was never silent."
Individuals
Joseph T. Glatthaar, Stephenson Distinguished Professor of American Civil War Studies, University of North Carolina: "I understand that many people want to honor the sacrifices and efforts of their ancestors, but Silent Sam represented the worst aspects and deeds of those ancestors.... The University and the state should offer magnanimous terms to those students and allow them to return to school unpunished."
Barbara Rimer, Dean of the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in a public letter, "suggested a monument to a person who promoted peace, equity or prevention, instead of a return to Silent Sam." "An ever-potent symbol of a past we said we aimed to transcend, the statue sent a powerful, contradictory message. In its silence, it spoke loudly. It's no wonder that, as other states sought to move beyond the past by removing statues, our inability to do so caused wounds to fester until the pain became unbearable. It is not surprising that it happened Monday night. It is only surprising that it did not happen sooner."
Former UNC-CH Chancellor James Moeser: "I will confess to you that one of my failings as chancellor was not removing that monument when I had had a chance to do it. [When activists toppled the statue] I gave a private cheer when our students had the courage to do what I didn’t have the courage to do."
Scholars (see also Glatthaar, above)
In an op-ed in The New York Times, scholars of slavery Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts, authors of Denmark Vesey's Garden. Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy (2018), professors of history at California State University, Fresno, with Ph.D.s in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: "We once believed that Confederate statues should be left up but also placed in historical context.... Over time, however, we lost our enthusiasm for this approach.... The white supremacist intent of these monuments, in other words, is not a relic of the past.... The prominence of the memorials shows how white Southerners etched racism into the earth with impunity." Their recommendation: leaving the "empty pedestal — shorn all original images and inscriptions — eliminates the offending tribute while still preserving a record of what these communities did and where they did it.... The most effective way to commemorate the rise and fall of white supremacist monument-building is to preserve unoccupied pedestals as the ruins that they are — broken tributes to a morally bankrupt cause."
Karen Cox, professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the author of Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture (2003): "People seem to be at their wit's end. When people feel they're not being heard, when people don't have a place at the table, then this is the result."
Adam Domby, historian of the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the American South, with a Ph.D. in history from UNC at Chapel Hill: "I think ultimately what really did this (toppling) is the Heritage laws were really undemocratic.... They're taking away any recourse for communities who want to remove a monument." It was Domby who unearthed the Carr speech (see above).
Legislators
In a joint statement, State Senator Valerie Foushee, Representative Verla Insko, and Representative Graig R. Meyer said the removal of UNC's Confederate statue was long overdue. "It was past time for Silent Sam to be moved from a place of honor on the campus of the University of the People. It is unfortunate that state legislators chose not to hear and pass the bill we filed earlier this year to move the monument to an indoor site where it would stand as a reminder of the bitter racial struggle that continues to burden our country.
U.S. Representative David Price: "It should not have taken an act of civil disobedience to remove this monument to hate. We should not condone actions that threaten public health or safety but neither should politicians in Raleigh prevent local communities from taking action through peaceful means."
Religious leaders
Olin T. Binkley Memorial Baptist Church: "Racism is still not eradicated in this day. We, members of a Chapel Hill faith community, seek to follow a man named Jesus who, at every turn, identified with the outcasts and spoke truth to power. He did not wait until a convenient time to speak or act. We believe it was time to act in ridding the UNC campus of a very public Silent Sam.... We support placing a placard in place of the statue, reminding us of what once stood there and what it stood for."Museum director
Former Orange County Historical Museum director Candace Midgett: "James Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association, has said that these statues were meant to create 'legitimate garb for white supremacy,' and queries why we would put up a statue of Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson—or, I would add, Silent Sam—in times of real suppression of civil rights of people of color in places like Raleigh, in places like Chapel Hill. There's only one meaning to be extracted from that, and that is that these monuments are about touting white supremacy and intimidating people of color. That is why they were made, and that's what they continue to reflect where they stand. I believe the board of the university and the administration have this one chance to be on the right side of history, and I'm hoping they find a way to take it."
American Historical Association Fayetteville Observer California State University, Fresno The Washington Post Washington Post Daily Tar Heel U.S. Supreme Court ruling The News & Observer United Daughters of the Confederacy Boston white supremacy nine black students The Charlotte Observer Robert E. Lee Valerie Foushee University of North Carolina at Charlotte right NC State University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Center for the Study of the American South Martin Luther King, Jr. Gillings School of Global Public Health The Daily Reflector David Price Denmark Vesey University of North Carolina Tar Heel op-ed civil rights demonstrators of the 1950s and 1960s Confederate Boston Tea Party John F. Kennedy Little Rock Central High School Greensboro four James Moeser The Fayetteville Observer Dixie Verla Insko Graig R. Meyer The New York Times Orange County Winston-Salem Journal News & Observer Technician American Civil War Rosa Parks Henry David Thoreau Professor Time Civil disobedience Greensboro civil disobedience