Silent Sam No Longer Stands. But the Saga of UNC’s Confederate Statue Is Far From Over.

On Tuesday morning, Michelle Brown walked across the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She slowed her pace near a lush green plaza. There, the recent graduate saw in daylight what she had been working toward for years: a vista with no Silent Sam looming over her.

In a dramatic gathering the night before, protesters had yanked the nine-foot-tall Confederate monument to the ground during a demonstration that drew hundreds of participants. The protest was held to energize the movement against the statue’s presence and support an activist facing charges for splashing it with red ink and blood in May.

“The campus feels … ” Brown said, pausing to search for the precise word, “free.”

Activists reveled in their long-sought victory on Tuesday. For many, like Brown, Silent Sam occupied a big part of their college experience. To African-Americans especially, the statue was a constant and hard-to-avoid reminder that the the Confederacy and its support of slavery were interwoven with — and celebrated throughout — the campus’s history.

The Rise and Fall of Silent Sam

Silent Sam, a statue of a Confederate soldier, dominated the main entrance of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for more than a century, despite decades of protests. But suddenly, in August 2018, the statue was yanked down by protesters. And in January 2019 the campus’s chancellor, Carol L. Folt, removed the statue’s pedestal and other remnants. Here’s how Silent Sam moved from dominance to disappearance.

• UNC’s Silent Sam Settlement Sparked a Backlash. Now a Judge Has Overturned the Deal.
• UNC’s Silent Sam Settlement Was Reached Quickly. The Blowback Might Last Longer.
• UNC Will Give Silent Sam to a Confederate Group — Along With a $2.5-Million Trust

Silent Sam was erected in 1913, part of a wave of Confederate monuments constructed during the Jim Crow era. Unlike the low-key monuments put up in the years soon after the Civil War, these were placed in conspicuous public places: traffic circles, parks, the heart of a university campus.

Since at least the 1960s, the monument has faced sporadic, often lonely, calls for removal. Those calls gained urgency last summer after a deadly weekend in another college town, Charlottesville, Va., where white supremacists marched, ostensibly to protect a statue of Robert E. Lee.

Since then Chapel Hill appeared to be headed for a collision. Activists surrounded Silent Sam in protests that took place almost daily. Faculty members in many departments, including history, signed statements urging the statue’s removal.

Campus officials stood by: Even while some signaled their objections to the monument, they repeatedly said that they didn’t have the authority to remove the statue, because of a 2015 state law that protects “objects of remembrance” on public land. Members of the UNC system’s Board of Governors couldn’t agree on whether Silent Sam should come down.

Something had to give, and on Monday night, it did. But the monument’s historical hold on campus hasn’t been broken yet. Silent Sam is gone, but the question of what to do with it is just as urgent — if not more so.

A strong response to the statue’s toppling from university and system leaders has set the stage for the next battle over Silent Sam. Activists and some professors had hoped that the university would quietly move on from a chapter of its history that seemed to bring little but grief.

But UNC’s statements — one of which described the Monday protest as “mob rule” — seem to suggest university leaders have different plans.

Meanwhile, the political climate remains charged for nearly everyone. Angry state lawmakers have condemned Monday’s events. Observers are speculating about the future of Carol Folt, the Chapel Hill chancellor, who has faced criticism for her position on Silent Sam. Students who participated in the protest are worried about what punishment they might face.

It’s not even clear where Silent Sam — the Confederate icon, unceremoniously hauled away in a truck — was taken.

Police and Politics

One of the most hotly debated issues on Tuesday was how the university and its police officers handled the event.

In its initial statement on Monday night, the university adopted a relatively flat tone, saying that “we are investigating the vandalism and assessing the full extent of the damage.”

A statement on Tuesday from Margaret Spellings, the UNC system’s president, and Harry Smith, chair of the Board of Governors, was more strongly worded. They vowed to pursue a criminal investigation into the statue’s removal.

“The actions last evening were unacceptable, dangerous and incomprehensible,” the statement read. “We are a nation of laws — and mob rule and the intentional destruction of public property will not be tolerated.”

On Monday night, though, the response of campus law enforcement wasn’t as forceful as that language might indicate. Officers didn’t step in to disperse the protesters. There were a few tussles between officers and demonstrators, and one attendee said the police acted aggressively at times, but only one arrest was made.

Just before Silent Sam fell, said Tarik Woods, a UNC junior, he didn’t see many officers in the thick of things. Once it toppled, he said, police officers closed in on the scene, encircling the fallen statue and its pedestal.

But Woods said there were only about 10 officers, and from what he could tell, the police weren’t trying to push anybody away. He said he overheard one officer telling students they could take as many photos of the statue as they wanted as long as they didn’t get too close.

That approach struck many activists and observers as surprising, given UNC’s costly efforts throughout the last year to keep Silent Sam standing.

On Tuesday, both university and UNC system leaders signed off on a statement saying that “at no time did the administration direct the officers to allow protesters to topple the monument.”

They said they had asked the state bureau of investigation to help investigate the case. Then they added: “We do not support lawlessness, and we will use the full breadth of state and university processes to hold those responsible accountable for their actions.”

When it comes to security issues, campus police departments typically follow a set playbook, said S. Daniel Carter, a longtime campus-safety consultant. What makes the Chapel Hill situation complicated, he said, is the overlay of political concerns.

Campus law enforcement has two responsibilities, he said: keeping the peace and providing security, including protection of property. In the moment, officers have to consider if it’s worth using force to protect property, especially when students are involved. “While students may not always see it,” Carter said, “university officials are typically sensitive to the political interests of their students.”

But will Silent Sam’s supporters, including lawmakers, be sensitive to the political challenge facing UNC’s leaders? Harry Watson, a Chapel Hill history professor, said he suspects that some of the people to whom Chancellor Folt is accountable — including the campus trustees, the system’s board, and state lawmakers — are furious about how the protest was handled.

“I’m sure some of them wanted to see the police get really proactive about protecting the statue, and they weren’t,” Watson said. “If I were a fervent defender of the statue, I’d want to know why those steps weren’t taken.”

W. Marty Kotis III, a member of the system’s board, said Folt is in a difficult position. “She’s very responsive to students,” he said, “and I think she’s trying to do the best she can.”

Kotis said he’s just glad no one got hurt when Silent Sam went down. “If that had fallen and really hurt somebody, or hurt a police officer,” he said, “it would be interesting to see what the dialogue would look like.”

Kotis’s biggest worry is that the statue’s fall will become a rallying point for white supremacists, antifa, and other outside groups who want to cause trouble in Chapel Hill. “I’m concerned,” he said, “that this will escalate the tension on campus more.”

Battles Yet to Come

Silent Sam no longer stands today. Will it stand again?

In a video posted online, Silent Sam was seen being lifted by a backhoe to be deposited in a truck and driven away. It’s unclear where the statue was taken. A UNC spokeswoman would not make a university official available for comment and would not answer what plans, if any, there are for the monument.

Kotis said he wasn’t sure what the university should do next, or what the system board might do. He had wanted a fence erected around the statue.

Harry Smith, the governing board’s chair, suggested last month that the board would discuss petitioning the state’s historical commission to review Silent Sam’s place at UNC, but he quickly reversed his position. He said the state law preventing the relocation of historic monuments meant that the board couldn’t take action.

The existence of that law points to the fact that Silent Sam still has plenty of supporters, not just among the general public but also among lawmakers and UNC board members. Thus far there have been few calls for the monument to be restored swiftly, or for students involved in its removal to face a specific punishment.

But those calls could yet come. Philip E. Berger, a Republican who serves as state Senate leader, issued a statement criticizing “the deceitful mischaracterization of violent riots as ‘rallies’” and calling for “re-establishing the rule of law in each of our state’s cities and counties.”

Harry Watson, the history professor, made the case against heeding political pressure. “I devoutly hope no one is foolish enough to try to restore the statue,” he said. “That would be a profound mistake. Having said that, there are bound to be people who want that to happen.”

Watson said he hoped the strong statement from Spellings and Smith was simply posturing designed to placate outrage in a largely conservative state. It will take days or weeks to know what administrators’ true intentions are, he said.

“If they say anything in favor of preserving the statue or restoring it,” he said, “they will have written the protesters’ agenda for them.”

As a historian, though, Watson knows the campus won’t truly turn the page on the Silent Sam chapter. “Just as the South hasn’t left the Civil War or the legacy of slavery behind,” he said, “I don’t think our campus will leave the legacy of the statue and its removal behind for a long time to come.”

For now there is joy among many on the Chapel Hill campus. “I can’t get the smile off my face,” said Jasmin Howard, a 2013 graduate. She is pursuing a Ph.D. at Michigan State University but has recently been doing research in North Carolina. When Silent Sam fell, she and others at the protest immediately started cheering, dancing, and hugging. “I don’t know if we expected it to actually happen,” she said. “We couldn’t contain ourselves.”

Hours later, on Tuesday, Brown saw McCorkle Place, a plaza that for 105 years had been dominated by the bronze statue, in a way she never had before.

“It feels like I’m looking at something photoshopped,” Brown said, staring at the pedestal where Silent Sam, rifle in hand, once stood. “It just feels open, and new, and liberated.”

Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.

Vimal Patel covers graduate education. Follow him on Twitter @vimalpatel232, or write to him at vimal.patel@chronicle.com.