BY HANK REICHMAN

“We do not fear arrest.”  So declared seventeen full or endowed professors at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in a letter to UNC Chancellor Carol Folt demanding the University take down Silent Sam, a Confederate monument that has been a focus of controversy on the campus since the Charlottesville events last summer.  The group said if the University does not take down the statue before Thursday, they will do it themselves.

“We do not fear arrest, indeed we welcome the opportunity to demonstrate the commitment that the Carolina faculty has to the wellbeing of its students and the principles that make this university great,” the group said in the letter.  Although the letter’s signatories understandably wish to remain anonymous, editors at the Daily Tar Heel, the campus newspaper to which the letter was originally sent, have met with one faculty member who confirmed the group’s existence.

Erected in 1913, in remembrance of “the sons of the University who died for their beloved Southland 1861-1865,”  Silent Sam stands on McCorkle place, the University’s upper quad, facing Franklin Street. The monument was given to the University by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1909. Canadian sculptor John Wilson created the statue as one of a series of similar statues called “Silent Sentinels.”  The statue was said to be “silent” because it does not include a cartridge box on the Confederate soldier’s belt so he cannot fire his gun.  At its dedication, Confederate Civil War veteran Julian Carr praised the Confederate Army as the saviors “of the Anglo Saxon race in the South” and recalled “horse-whipp[ing] a negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds” after his return from Appomatox for allegedly offending a white woman.

The monument has been a subject of controversy and a site of protest at least since the 1960s.  In March 1965, a discussion about the monument’s meaning and history occurred in the letters to the editor of the Daily Tar Heel.  After the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 1968, the monument was vandalized.  In the early 1970s, the monument was the site of several demonstrations by the Black Student Movement.  Students gathered by the statue to speak out after Los Angeles police officers were found not guilty in the 1992 Rodney King trial.  Following Charlottesville a crowd of several hundred people gathered in August 2017 around the statue to call for its removal and demonstrations and calls for the monument’s removal have continued ever since.

In response, Folt and UNC President Margaret Spellings signed a letter to Governor Roy Cooper seeking permission to move the statue, saying they were worried about potential violence between protesters and counter-protesters.  Cooper responded that the university could act on its own to take down the statue, citing the safety threat.  But university leaders declined, arguing that their lawyers interpreted the law differently.  They claim they cannot take action on Silent Sam because of a 2015 state law that prohibits the alteration of historic monuments on state property.  There are exceptions, however, to preserve the object, to make way for construction or transportation projects, or in cases when a building inspector has determined that the object poses a hazard because of its physical condition.

The statue has also been vandalized in recent years, prompting the university to install 24-hour surveillance cameras. Earlier this month, a video emerged from last summer, showing a man climbing the statue and beating it with a hammer.

In January and February several people submitted petitions to the North Carolina Historical Commission to move the statue.  The petitions say the statue poses “an ongoing threat to public safety,” citing potential violence between protesters and counter-protesters, continued police presence at the monument and even UNC’s deployment of an undercover officer who befriended protesters last year.  The petitioners quoted previous statements from UNC Police Chief Jeff McCracken, who wrote last year that “the statue now serves, more than ever, as a magnet drawing together extreme factions intent on committing acts of violence.”  The petitions came from members of the Campaign to Move Silent Sam, a group that wants to remove what it views as a monument to white supremacy and racism.

The following is the text of the anonymous faculty group’s letter to Chancellor Folt:

Dear Carol.

We are a group of seventeen of your senior faculty (all at the Full or Endowed Chair level) who have been discussing how best to fulfill our responsibilities as faculty at Carolina.

The principles of integrity and ethical behavior are in the DNA of this great university. As Tar Heels we respect and protect all our students no matter the color of their skin. We celebrate our students, not demean and diminish them.  The proudest moments of the university have been when Carolina has been on the right side of history. Not cowed by bigots, intim[id]ated by white supremacists or fearful of retribution. We believe the confederate monument (Silent Sam) must be immediately moved to an appropriate setting that contextualizes and teaches the history of white supremacy, rather than glorifies it.

The removal of the monument satisfies the official policy of the university which states: “the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all members of our community. The University values safety, diversity, education, and equity and is firmly committed to maintaining a campus environment free from discrimination, harassment, and related misconduct.” The confederate monument is in direct breach of this policy and is an ever-present signal to students, faculty and staff of color that they are not welcome nor equally valued on campus. The decision to maintain the statue at the heart of campus, despite the legal opportunity to move it, condones the philosophy that the statue was explicitly erected to celebrate.

As proud and loyal faculty members of the University of North Carolina we take seriously our charge of pastoral care of our students. The talented young women and men of North Carolina and beyond who deserve more than an explicit symbol of abuse at the heart of their beloved campus.

We have decided to remove the statue ourselves if the Chancellor’s office does not do so by March 1st 2018 at midnight, and you commit to that plan of action privately.

All the preparations have been made to minimize disruption and personal injury. The statue may be taken down in the next hour, next week or any time this month. It may be removed during the weekday when security is not in attendance, during a basketball game, or at 3am when a single officer is asleep in his car parked on Franklin street. It will be taken to a safe place where it will be curated for exhibition.

We do not fear arrest, indeed we welcome the opportunity to demonstrate the commitment that the Carolina faculty has to the wellbeing of its students and the principles that make this university great.  We are faculty from the College of Arts and Sciences, the Medical School, the School of Public Health, and the School of Law.

The onus is now on you, our Chancellor, to do the right thing and remove the statue before it becomes an even more clear and present danger to the students of UNC and visitors to our beautiful campus.  We are all mindful of Edmund Burke’s quote that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing.” The non-violent removal of the statue represents the principles that lay at the foundation of the American Republic.

It would be helpful if you could respond to this request before we share our press release with the D[aily ]T[ar ]H[eel].

Yours

Seventeen Tar Heel Faculty

In October, thirty-four UNC Law School faculty members signed a petition urging the monument’s removal.  Silent Sam has been “a symbol of white supremacy, violence and indignity” from the beginning, they said, citing the speech that Confederate war veteran Carr delivered at the statue’s dedication.  The statue, the faculty members said, “sends a message of white supremacy that the university should refuse to endorse.”  The statue’s symbolism is particularly worrisome, the statement said, given the UNC Board of Governors’ recent action banning the UNC Center for Civil Rights from representing or counseling clients.

“This disparaging and marginalizing symbol has no place at the core of an inclusive learning environment,” the law faculty said.  “We also believe that the message it sends undercuts the university’s mission ‘to teach a diverse community of undergraduate, graduate, and professional students to become the next generation of leaders’.”

The Department of Communication, the School of Education, and the Department of African, African American and Diaspora Studies also issued statements.  The latter statement said:

For years, we have taught this monument’s fraught history and called attention to the negative signal it sends to contemporary students, faculty, and other UNC workers, especially African Americans.  In the wake of Charlottesville, and given the resurgence of a white nationalist movement which has adopted such Jim Crow era statues as proud icons, the meaning of Silent Sam is no longer in doubt.  No explanatory plaque, or alternative monument in the vicinity, can adequately counteract or compensate for the divisive, racially charged message this statue loudly projects.  In accordance with the university’s core values, the Department of African, African American and Diaspora Studies is committed to diversity and inclusion in all its functions.  To leave Silent Sam where he stands, at perhaps the most prominent site on university grounds, can only be seen as inconsistent with that core mission.  Most disturbingly, the statue invites violent groups, who could pose real danger to students and everyone else on campus. If the statue is of historical interest, let it be moved to a historical museum.

Last fall UNC Police Officer Hector Borges posed as an auto mechanic named “Victor” who was sympathetic to the demonstrators’ cause against Confederate monuments.  As “Victor,” Borges was a daily presence at the statue from August 22 until the end of October.  But on November 2, activists spotted Borges on campus in police uniform.  They confronted him and recorded the conversation, posting a video of the exchange online.  One of the activists said Borges also kept an eye on the protests against the attack on the Center for Civil Rights.

The university’s use of police to monitor demonstrators “has a chilling effect on free speech,” as “activists are afraid to come out to the statue when they know they’re constantly being watched,” said Ayling, adding that “we can’t really call ourselves a democratic society when we’re conducting police operations against free speech.”