A few things I would like to point out with respect to this specific Silent Sam case as well as UNC in general:
- As we have discussed, Silent Sam is a "silent" figure and is directly related to UNC. It's not a willy nilly throw up of Lee in a random town square in Tennessee
- Much has been made about Julian Carr's statements at the dedication of Silent Sam in 1915. While his statement is pretty disgusting, it still highlights how the world was simply different back then, and that historical figures were much more complex than what we try to pigeon-hole from a 2017 view. While yes he did make that awful statement, at the same time, Carr was a huge advocate to the women's suffrage movement, drawing direct praise and commendation from Susan B. Anthony for his encouragement of forming the Equal Suffrage League of North Carolina. You see, it's fairly stupid to assign one specific binary descriptor (he was racist or he wasn't, e.g.) to historical figures.
- In the early 1960s, the N.C. General Assembly passed what became known as "the speaker ban" that banned any Communists (the wording of the act put specific criteria in place to identify someone as a Communist) from speaking on any campus in the UNC-system. In response, current UNC student body president Paul Dickson invited two known Communists to speak "on" campus. They found a loophole and had the speakers stand on Franklin just on the other side of campus. All of the audience stood just on campus in McCorckal Place (sorry, I know I butchered that spelling) right in front of....you guessed it.... Silent Sam.... to listen to the speakers. Funnily enough, Mr. Dickson was no Communist. He was an Air Force veteran and despised Communism. But, he also respected his fellow students' rights to both have and experience free speech. It was his hope that by inviting the speakers to talk, the students would hear their spiel and would, ultimately, decide for themselves that Communism was evil, etc. etc.
- UNC's campus is a treasure chest of 220+ years of history. It's a campus that has been operational through (by my count), 8 U.S. wars, seen tragedies, seen celebrations, hosted presidents, hosted criminals, and lots of things in between.