Skip to content Skip to footer

North Carolina Protesters Topple Confederate Statue “Silent Sam”

Students denounced school administrators for refusing to remove the symbol of racism and oppression.

Demonstrators rally for the removal of a Confederate statue coined "Silent Sam" on the campus of the University of Chapel Hill on August 22, 2017, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Students and other protesters tore the statue down on August 20, 2018.

Did you know that Truthout is a nonprofit and independently funded by readers like you? If you value what we do, please support our work with a donation.

Yet another racist monument down, around 1,700 more to go.

What began as a demonstration in support of student activist Maya Little — who was arrested in April for pouring red ink and her own blood on the Confederate statue “Silent Sam,” located on the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill campus — ended in students and other protesters ripping the monument down Monday night after denouncing the school’s administrators for refusing to remove the symbol of racism and oppression.

“It’s time to build monuments to honor those who have been murdered by white supremacy,” said Little, who attended and delivered a speech at Monday’s demonstration. “It’s time to tear down ‘Silent Sam.’ It’s time to tear down UNC’s institutional white supremacy.”

Watch the moment when the statue was toppled, leaving “Silent Sam” face-down in the dirt:

“So thankful for the students at UNC who toppled the Confederate statue on their campus. They did what the administration and politicians in North Carolina should’ve done decades ago,” The Intercept’s Shaun King wrote on Twitter early Tuesday. “It was erected at the height of lynching by friends of the KKK as an act of intimidation.”

“Silent Sam,” a monument of a Confederate soldier, was constructed in 1913 with donations from the the United Daughters of the Confederacy. According to the local Raleigh News & Observer, UNC-Chapel Hill spent $390,000 on surveillance cameras and other protections for the statue last year alone.

Just before they felled the Confederate monument, “protesters covered the statue with tall, gray banners, erecting ‘an alternative monument’ that said, in part, ‘For a world without white supremacy,'” the News & Observer reported.

Andrew Skinner, a 23-year-old UNC graduate, said in an interview with the News & Observer that the demonstrators’ destruction of the Confederate statue “shows that we have the power to be on the right side of history.”

“We are part of a long tradition of civil rights in this country,” Skinner added. “We as a country have a lot of change and a lot of healing to do, and we are not going to get there putting racism on a pedestal.”

Media that fights fascism

Truthout is funded almost entirely by readers — that’s why we can speak truth to power and cut against the mainstream narrative. But independent journalists at Truthout face mounting political repression under Trump.

We rely on your support to survive McCarthyist censorship. Please make a tax-deductible one-time or monthly donation.