Protesters topple Confederate statue at University of North Carolina
A large number of protesters have toppled the controversial “Silent Sam” statue on the campus of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, amid a debate about race and the legacy of slavery in the United States.
More than 300 people gathered at the base of “Silent Sam,” a memorial to the Confederate soldiers killed during the Civil War, on Monday evening.
Protesters then marched down Franklin Street before returning back to the Confederate statue's base. About two hours later, the statue, which had been standing on the Chapel Hill campus since 1913, was on the ground.
According to local media reports, demonstrators pulled the statue with rope and threw dirt on it. Students and teachers at the university have called the statue a racist image and asked officials to remove it.
The university issued a statement on Twitter shortly after the statue was toppled: “Tonight’s actions were dangerous, and we are very fortunate that no one was injured. We are investigating the vandalism and assessing the full extent of the damage.”
On Tuesday morning, the university issued another statement about the incident.
A message from Chancellor Folt on the Confederate Monument: https://t.co/Qp42b6410P pic.twitter.com/T3HoBCEfXw
— UNC-Chapel Hill (@UNC) August 21, 2018
The efforts by civil rights groups and others to destroy Confederate monuments such as Silent Sam gained momentum three years ago after a 21-year-old white supremacist, Dylann Roof, opened fire at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, leaving nine African-American worshipers dead in June 2015.
The mass shooting ultimately led to the removal of the flag from the grounds of the state Capitol.
Some 110 symbols of the Confederacy have been removed across the United States since then, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. But more than 1,700 such symbols are still standing.
The Confederate battle flag was first raised atop the South Carolina State House in 1962, as part of the US Civil War centennial commemoration.
The Confederate States of America was an unrecognized confederation of secessionist states, whose agriculture-based economy largely relied upon the labor of black slaves.
The American forces supporting pro-slavery states carried the flag into battle during the1861-1865 American Civil War.
A lot of Americans see such statues as symbols of racism and glorifications of the southern states’ defense of slavery in the Civil War.
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