Uprooted Monument Might Get New Home

After a spate of heated demonstrations over the “Silent Sam” statue at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the school’s chancellor suggested on Friday that she wanted to move the Confederate monument to another part of campus.

In a statement, the chancellor, Carol Folt, said the statue’s previous location made it a cause for division and a threat to public safety. The university system’s Board of Governors gave approval earlier this week to seek a “safe, legal and alternative” location for the monument, Folt said, adding that she is seeking input from students, staff and alumni — as well as state legislators and the governor — to decide where it should go.

“Silent Sam has a place in our history and on our campus where its history can be taught,” Folt said in the statement. “But not at the front door of a safe, welcoming, proudly public research university.”

On Aug. 20, protesters gathered around the 105-year-old statue and brought it to the ground, prompting debate over whether the monument should be restored to its pedestal in a large park at the entrance to the campus.

Twice in one week, hundreds of demonstrators gathered to rally for either the statue’s disposal or its preservation. While some saw the statue as an emblem of white supremacy and bigotry, others saw its toppling as vandalism.

Since the night of the demolition, 18 people have been arrested in connection with the downing and the ensuing demonstrations, said Carly Miller, a university spokeswoman.

The statue, unveiled in 1913, depicts a Confederate soldier grasping his rifle. He is considered “silent” because he has no ammunition to shoot.

The fall of Silent Sam has drawn new controversy to a state lately marked by bitter political battles and caustic rhetoric, often placing North Carolina in an uncomfortable national spotlight.

Although UNC leaders had expressed interest in relocating the statue, they found themselves — to the irritation and aggravation of Silent Sam’s fiercest critics — severely restricted by a 2015 state law declaring that a “monument, memorial or work of art owned by the state” may not be “removed, relocated or altered in any way” without the consent of a state historical commission.

The law is similar to statutes in other states that protect Confederate-themed displays. And while certain Confederate displays have come down across the South in recent years, including the battle flag that flew outside the State House in Columbia, South Carolina, and enormous statues that dotted New Orleans, those changes were largely completed with the consent of the courts or legislators.

The removal in North Carolina followed no such course, leading even critics of the statue to complain about the means of its abrupt takedown and effectively inflaming a dispute that was already causing angst in Chapel Hill and Raleigh, the nearby state capital.

“Many of the wounds of racial injustice that still exist in our state and country were created by violent mobs, and I can say with certainty that violent mobs won’t heal those wounds,” Phil Berger, the state Senate president pro tempore, said last week.

The response from Raleigh put intense pressure on university leaders, in part because lawmakers elect the members of the systemwide Board of Governors, and university officials adopted a harsh tone in response to the statue’s removal and the protests that followed.

But among many faculty members, students and alumni, there was also a simultaneous sense that the university could not simply restore Silent Sam to its pedestal and risk sustained damage to its reputation.

“The statue should be somewhere where the full and unsettling story of Silent Sam and its dedication can be told,” said Darren Jackson, a UNC alumnus and the Democratic leader in the North Carolina House of Representatives. “That obviously needed to be a new place on campus.”

In her statement Friday, Folt, the university chancellor, acknowledged just how many competing — and politically influential — constituencies she must consider, including the university system president, Margaret Spellings. In all, Folt vowed to weigh suggestions “from our campus, our alumni, UNC System President Spellings, the Board of Governors, the legislature, the governor, other decision-makers, as well as from citizens across the state and the nation.”

University leaders have until Nov. 15 to present a plan for the statue.

She also condemned a piece of racist commentary that was documented at the statue’s unveiling in 1913 and has been cited during the recent debate. At that event, one speaker boasted that, just 100 yards away, he had “horsewhipped a Negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds” after his return from the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, in 1865.

“Our university repudiates those words and the system of oppression they represent,” Folt said. “I hope we can agree that there is a difference between those who commemorate their fallen and people who want a restoration of white rule.”