Letter to Chancellor Folt from 35 members of the History Department, August 24, 2018
“Now that Silent Sam has been removed from his pedestal on our campus, let him remain on the ground: he should be displayed as a contextualized, historical artifact within an appropriate educational space, not in a position of honor. The monument is undeniably a part of UNC’s past, but he no longer needs to be part of UNC’s future.”
Faculty Statement Regarding the “Silent Sam” Monument, October 4, 2017
The faculty of the Department of History urges the officers of UNC and other state officials to pursue every avenue to remove the “Silent Sam” monument. For more than a century it has stood in the most conspicuous public space on our campus. Then and now, the location of the monument speaks to the intent of its creators to ensure that the heritage they commemorated would have pride of place at the front door of the state’s flagship university. While they shared a veneration of slavery, the “Old South,” the Confederacy, and the ideology of white supremacy, many of their contemporaries in North Carolina and elsewhere did not. From its inception, the monument was exclusionary and offered a highly selective interpretation of the nation’s history. In the twenty-first century that interpretation is so incompatible with the principles we faculty and this university strive to uphold that the continued presence of the monument in its current location is a threat to the safety of the people of our university and a daily affront.
Moved to an appropriate place, the “Silent Sam’ monument can become a useful historical artifact with which to teach the history of the university and its still incomplete mission to be “the People’s University.” Until then, the monument will continue to promote malicious values that have persisted too long on this campus, in this state, and in this nation.
This statement was released following a departmental vote. The agreed procedure stipulates that statements of this nature require the support of a minimum of 3/4 of the faculty who participated in the vote. In this instance, 41 faculty members cast ballots.