South Florida Sun-Sentinel Palm Beach (Sunday)
UNC ponders what to do with toppled ‘Silent Sam’
Confederate statue could be restored elsewhere at school
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Less than two weeks after a group of protesters brought a century-old statue of a Confederate soldier crashing down, the sloping lawns of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reveal some signs of what happened and a lot of uncertainty about what comes next.
While many argue that the statue, which they see as a relic of racism, should disappear forever, school officials have indicated that the statue could be restored — perhaps in a less-prominent location on campus.
UNC Chancellor Carol Folt said in a news conference Friday that the divisive “Silent Sam” statue doesn’t belong at the public university’s “front door,” but she said she also thinks that the statue means different things to different people, and that the icon that many see as a memorial to fallen Confederate soldiers, some of them family members, “has a place in our history and on our campus where its history can be taught.”
“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,” Folt said, noting that the disputes around the monument are about profound struggles of race, inclusion, history and honor that the nation needs to resolve.
The pedestal from which “Silent Sam” gazed out, gun in hand, is empty, surrounded by metal crowd-control barricades, with an ankle-turning dent marking where he plunged headfirst into the ground.
The grass has been trampled by protesters who have skirmished and celebrated here, some cheering the downfall of what they deem a racist icon, others mourning the loss of what they view as an important historic marker.
For a while, a bouquet sat inside the barriers with a card inscribed to “James J. Cherry,” one of the Confederate Roanoke Minute Men and a member of the Class of 1862 who “died on the field of honor.”
Some visitors continue to lament the sacrifices made by young men who abandoned their studies here to fight — and die — for a cause they believed in.
“Their bodies are who knows where. What do they have?” said Sandra Aldridge, who spat in disgust as she circled the railings after coming to campus for an appointment. “If you don’t like something, you don’t just tear it down.”
Decades of debate about the statue and its prominence on campus have escalated into a politicized public drama, one heightened by the similarities to the controversy in Charlottesville a year ago.
Silent Sam long has been a flash point, facing defiantly to the north, overseeing a main entryway to UNC’s historic campus.
But the symbolism of this particular bronze effigy of an adolescent soldier became all the more polarizing after documents in the university’s archives revealed the white-supremacist language used at its 1913 dedication, including a gleeful account of whipping a young black woman.
Some members of this liberal North Carolina community now envision another, potentially more painful, battle if the UNC system’s governing body, whose members were chosen by the state’s Republican-held General Assembly, decrees the statue should be reinstalled.
Pressed to act last week, the university system’s statewide Board of Governors met behind closed doors Tuesday, then punted, setting a Nov. 15 deadline for UNC at Chapel Hill’s chancellor and Board of Trustees to present a plan to preserve the sculpture, hauled away to a secret location.
Folt, who decried the way the statue was pulled down, left options open, including “a location on campus to display the monument in a place of prominence, honor, visibility, availability and access, where we can ensure public safety, ensure the monument’s preservation and place in the history of UNC and the nation.”