A group of students and demonstrators brought down a Confederate monument at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill on Monday night that had long been a target of protests. The Silent Sam statue, erected in 1913, was built to honor Confederate soldiers in the Civil War.
Hundreds of students, faculty members, and residents surrounded the monument, and were met with counter-protestors wearing Confederate flag shirts, some of whom were seen arguing. Student paper The Daily Tar Heel reported that the protestors used a rope to pull the statue to the ground, and that it came down around 9:20 p.m.
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"Next up, Charlottesville!" the protestors shouted. The call to remove Confederate monuments, viewed by many as symbols of white supremacy, has intensified since the deadly rally in Charlottesville, VA, one year ago, which was sparked by the potential removal of the Robert E. Lee statue in the city's downtown (it is still there).
RAW VIDEO: Students topple Silent Sam Confederate statue on campus of UNC-Chapel Hillpic.twitter.com/NdFTk2U9yQ
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) August 21, 2018
BREAKING NEWS: Silent Sam is down! Protesters have toppled the controversial statue on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. #WRAL pic.twitter.com/JLOAERUI5P
— WRAL NEWS in NC (@WRAL) August 21, 2018
Patty Matos, a senior at UNC-Chapel Hill, said she left the protest less than an hour before the statue came down because she was tired and sweaty, and it was going to rain at any moment. But then she got home, checked The Daily Tar Heel's Twitter, and there it was — on the ground.
"This statue has been a constant reminder to Black and brown students of how academia wasn't made for them; it was a physical manifestation of institutional racism and I'm so glad it's gone," Matos told Refinery29.
Matos said she participated in a similar protest last year, but that this one was more organized. Protestors knew the statue was under constant police surveillance, but they came prepared with banners that provided cover for the organizers to secure rope around it and bring it down. There were branded bandanas, too.
"A person handed out handmade Carolina-blue bandanas they had screen-printed that said, 'Sam must fall,'" Matos said. (Hers is pictured above.)
According to the Raleigh News & Observer, the rally began as a gathering of support for UNC doctoral student Maya Little, who is facing criminal and honor-court charges for throwing ink and red blood on the statue in April.
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"It’s time to build monuments to honor those who have been murdered by white supremacy," Little said to the crowd at the rally. "It’s time to tear down Silent Sam. It’s time to tear down UNC's institutional white supremacy."
UNC has long tried to protect the monument, spending $390,000 on securing it last year. The university has cited state law in its refusal to remove Silent Sam; North Carolina, along with other Southern states, recently strengthened its laws protecting Confederate monuments.
"Tonight's actions were dangerous, and we are very fortunate that no one was injured. We are investigating the vandalism and assessing the full extent of the damage," the university said in a statement.
A statement about the Confederate Monument at UNC-Chapel Hill pic.twitter.com/7D45yiAAeb
— UNC-Chapel Hill (@UNC) August 21, 2018
"Y'all call it vandalism? Weird, I call it justice," Matos tweeted in response.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has reported that as of June, at least 110 public symbols of the Confederacy have been removed in the U.S. since 2015, the year a white supremacist killed nine people in one of the country's oldest Black churches. But the group said more than 1,740 still stand.
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