At the north edge of McCorkle Place, UNC-Chapel Hill’s upper quad, a Confederate soldier stands high, facing Franklin Street and watching over his surroundings. He is silent, holding a rifle but possessing no ammunition, rendering him unable to fire his gun.
This is Silent Sam, a statue erected in 1913 in remembrance of the 321 UNC alumni who served in the Confederate army and died during the Civil War. On a typical day, the area around him is peaceful, shared by university students and community members alike.
This silence was broken Oct. 25, 2015, when two groups of protesters encircled him, engaging in hostile chants and verbal disputes. Some were seen waving Confederate flags and talking about states’ rights. Others held banners and signs with the messages “#SilenceSam” and “Black Lives Matter” and shouted slogans such as “Whose university? Our university!” Police officers were present on the scene.
This protest involved the Real Silent Sam Coalition, a UNC student organization, and two Confederate heritage groups: Alamance County Taking Back Alamance County and Orange County Taking Back Orange County. These two groups rallied in support of the statue, while the Real Silent Sam Coalition protested against it, arguing for its removal and contextualization.
Kenya Lee, a Northwood graduate and current sophomore at UNC, attended the event and described her experience.
“I definitely knew there would be a lot of tension,” Lee said. “First, I felt really unsafe, because the first people you encountered when you came from Franklin Street were the Confederate protesters, and it felt like the police officers were more so protecting them rather than protecting the students. They had officers surrounding the Silent Sam statue to protect it, and then they had officers surrounding the [Confederate heritage] group. It was a little bit hostile.”
The statue has been the site of multiple protests and cases of vandalism. Most recently, it has been spray painted with the words “KKK” and “murderer” and blindfolded with a Confederate flag. Lee believes that the Silent Sam statue has no place on campus.
“Personally, I feel like the statue belongs in a museum,” Lee said. “I definitely feel like it stands for a symbol of white supremacy and racism.”
Others have different opinions of the statue. John Atwater, a Northwood graduate and current freshman at UNC, is less critical of the monument.
“It’s a part of history,” Atwater said. “It obviously means a lot to the university. I honestly don’t have a problem with it. I know what it entails, and I know where it came from, but I think we’ve moved on from that point. If anything, I feel as if they should… educate more on why they have the statue up.”
The university has been criticized because many of its campus buildings are named for men with histories related to racism and slavery. UNC recently changed the name of Saunders Hall to Carolina Hall because its namesake, UNC class of 1854 graduate William L. Saunders, was reportedly a chief organizer of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina. However, Atwater feels that completely removing these pieces of history is the wrong solution.
“I realize that we’ve made a lot of mistakes in U.S. history, but I don’t think that those mistakes should just be erased because they weren’t positive,” Atwater said. “Some of the stuff those people did was terrible, but they did a lot that obviously impacted the university and the community. I trust the university to establish or keep buildings that shed a positive light on the university. I’m trusting that they are using their good judgment in [honoring] people who deserve to be remembered and commemorated.”
Lee offers a compromise.
“I think the moderate solution is definitely to contextualize it and teach people about the history of the Civil War, because the way it is taught in schools is very varied depending on which history teacher is teaching it,” Lee said. “They should at least put a plaque on [the statue] saying, ‘This is what it was, and this is what it stands for.’”
On a larger scale, debates over the use of the Confederate flag rage across the nation. Some argue that it promotes southern heritage, while others say it represents racial oppression.
Opinions vary on where it is appropriate to display the flag.
“I’ve always been bothered by the use of the Confederate flag,” Lee said. “I definitely agree that it does not belong in [state] flags or on capital grounds. As a person of color, when I see the flag, I just really feel unsafe. I feel like I don’t know if I can approach this person. I understand that people are still going to buy it and put it on their trucks and in their homes, but I just don’t agree with its use in public places.”
Some support its continued use.
“It’s a symbol for a lot of people,” senior Tyler Johnson said. “It’s the way we grew up and the way that we were taught and raised. It’s not racist.”
The flag holds many different connotations depending on whom one asks.
“It means ‘redneck,’ ‘rebel,’ ‘not scared to do things,’” freshman Abby Douglas said. “It’s something that has to do with Southernism, not racism.”
This dilemma comes into play at school, where the dress code explicitly bans “…racial slogans and/or other material reasonably likely to cause a substantial disruption in the school setting, including the Confederate battle flag.”
Assistant principal Phillip Little discussed the flag’s impact.
“Symbols have power, and although an argument can be made that the Confederate battle flag is a symbol of history, and indeed it is, it also has been used as a symbol for hate by various groups for the last 150 years since the Civil War,” Little said. “As a result, because that symbol can hurt people’s feelings, we have eliminated that, because we want people to be able to come to school and feel safe.”
Much of the confusion surrounding the Confederate flag stems from misconceptions about its history. According to an article by John M. Coski on historynet.com, although the Confederate battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia is the most popular and well-recognized variant of the Confederate flag, it was never the official flag of the Confederacy.
This battle flag was designed by William Porcher Miles of South Carolina, who was part of the “Fire-Eaters,” a group of extremist, pro-slavery Democratic politicians who wanted the southern states to secede from the Union. The flag was rejected as the national flag in 1861 and instead adopted by the Army. However, its design was incorporated into the Confederacy’s second and third national flags.
“I know that in physical appearance it’s just a couple of colors and stripes and stars, but what it really stands for definitely makes other people feel uncomfortable,” Lee said.
Junior Kristian Eanes has a similar perspective of the flag.
“When I see someone wearing it, I have two thoughts in my head,” Eanes said. “Some people feel very strongly about the fact that it’s southern pride, and I totally understand that, but some people really just wear it because they’re told by their parents not to like black people.”
Spanish teacher Henry Foust doesn’t believe that hate is always the primary motivator in someone’s opinions.
“The things people say and do are sometimes done in ignorance, and I really think they don’t mean to say anything that’s insulting,” Foust said. “But the fact that they don’t understand that it’s insulting is evidence that there is still a lot of work to be done in race relations in this country and the world.”
Senior Justice Brooks believes that the flag’s history is not racist.
“I see why [people] feel [like it’s racist], but if they understood the history behind it, it doesn’t have to do with racism,” Brooks said. “The southern soldiers were supporting land rights… the taxes were being raised, and they were trying to keep the taxes fair and trying to keep their farmland. The Union didn’t want that; they wanted to raise taxes and boost industrialization.”
Social studies teacher Sara Keever says that the argument isn’t so simple.
“You have to ask the question, ‘What are you arguing for?’ The whole idea of states’ rights and the fight against federal power is so tangled up with the system of slavery that you can’t say that they’re two different things,” Keever said. “This ‘state pride’ and states’ rights over federal power issue is the issue of slavery. If you look at the secession statements of South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida… they’re clearly saying that God created these two races unequally and that one should be subservient to the other, and in order to maintain that system, they’re leaving [the Union].”
Despite the controversy over its history, many believe that it is no longer necessary to view the flag negatively.
“In the past, it was used in a bad way, but if we don’t move on from that, we’ll never better ourselves as a country,” senior Morgann Tew said. “If you live in the past, you can never have a better future.”
Though the roles of Confederate symbols in our society are largely disputed, many agree that discussion is the best way to bridge the gaps of understanding.
“I think it’s okay to get uncomfortable talking about race, because you have to bring it up,” social studies teacher Melissa Hayden said. “The less you talk about it, the more misunderstanding people have about each other. That’s why it’s really important to put it right out there in front and just be raw about talking about race. It’s not going away.”
– By Becca Heilman