Victory: Good Night and Good Riddance, Silent Sam

University of North Carolina Chapel Hill announced today that Chancellor Carol L. Folt 1) will be stepping down after graduation and 2) has authorized the removal of the “stump” of Silent Sam.

Silent Sam was a controversial monument to the Confederacy erected on the university’s campus in 1913. Establishing such a monument on the campus was a project undertaken by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) in 1907, at a time in United States history when such monuments were being erected across the South in support of a white supremacist political agenda.

The statue was unveiled in its prominent spot at the “front door” of the campus on June 2nd, 1913, with its dedication accompanied by a speech promoting white supremacy given by UNC Trustee, industrialist, politician, and proponent of slavery, Julian Carr.

Silent Sam’s presence on the campus has been protested since at least the mid-1960s. On August 20, 2018, students finally toppled it.

In the months that followed, UNC’s powers that be attempted to push through plans to replace the monument on its pedestal. Had they succeeded, the statue would be on its way to having its own high-security building, along with increased security measures and policing. This project would have cost the school $5.3 million for the initial project and nearly $1 million a year in maintenance and salaries.

UNC students, grad workers, teachers, staff, and alumni joined to oppose the reinstatement of the statue on campus, sending letters, withholding donations, protesting at the site of the statue and outside meeting, and attending hearings to speak out against replacing an icon of white supremacy at a public university. Grad student teaching assistants took it to a labor action, disrupting the normal functioning of the university as they withheld fall 2018 semester grades in protest.

Through all this they faced not only the closed ears of the administration and trustees but also police violence and white supremacist counter-protesters.

The tireless work of all these groups, and the risks taken by many, including the teaching assistants and those who faced tear gas, arrest, and counter-protester violence, proved in the end that direct action gets the goods. Silent Sam’s base and commemorative plaques will be removed from their place on the campus. No building will be built to house and protect the statue.

We would like to congratulate everyone involved—from the 1965 through to 2019—for their hard work in making this happen. Removing the statue was the right thing to do. It never should have been installed on the UNC Chapel Hill campus to begin with.