Chapel Hill residents and students react to Silent Sam rally

Hundreds of people protested for the removal of the Silent Sam statue yesterday at a rally on UNC’s McCorkle Place. Since the protest, Chapel Hill residents and UNC students have expressed a multitude of reactions.

Town resident Edward Leak grew up in Chapel Hill and said this is the first protest he's seen in his 67 years regarding the Confederate statue. He said he was surprised to see a protest in Chapel Hill against Silent Sam and noted the differences between his generation and millennials.

“We missed the vote,” Leak said. “That shit had been done years ago, and then you come along a generation later and we’d been doing the same thing we’d been doing in the '60s. We were removing stuff. Tearing down stuff, but we were livid burning down stuff. We weren’t just knocking on doors or writing it on the walls, we were setting fires.”

Marina Crisp works on Franklin Street and said she thinks peaceful protests can be effective and that the statue should come down.

“I’m just wondering what the hell has happened to this world,” Crisp said. “I don’t know much about Silent Sam honestly but I do know we shouldn’t have statues that represent hate, so I can understand people protesting against it. I wish we could just all get along.”

Senior Cory Lambert expressed similar opinions to Crisp about peaceful protesting. Lambert wasn’t at the protest, but said those involved were effective in getting everybody to pay attention without violence.

“We’re in a time in America right now where it’s a sensitive subject,” Lambert said. “I’m glad that nothing too serious happened because you had all the violence in Charlottesville and I’m glad Chapel Hill students could handle that maturely.”

Lambert does not think the statue will come down because of the legal repercussions, but said he supports the right for Chapel Hill residents and students to protest.

Gabrielle Johnson, a senior, was at the rally and said protesters were effective. 

“Since we’ve been getting a lot of media attention, it is opening a lot of eyes,” Johnson said. “It’s promoting conversation which I think is always a good thing. I don’t see anything negative coming from this protest.”

Some town residents said they thought the statue will be removed at least partially because of the rally. Karen Burkette, a Lowe's customer service attendant, said Confederate statues are already being removed across the country, but it needs to be a community effort for it to truly be effective. 

“I understand what they’re doing and why they’re doing it,” she said. “They brought some attention to it so far. But it’s going to take everybody to get together, not just a few, but everybody to get together and say ‘Hey, this is not right.'”

Leak said the goal of the protests shouldn’t be the removal of the statue, but rather a focus on a bigger issue: racism. 

“If the statue comes down and you put it in a museum or in a graveyard, is that going to end racism?” Leak said. “Will people stop hating people because of the color of their skin? I could put my dog up there. I’ll put my dog up there and make a symbol and say ‘Look, this is a dog world.’ And everybody will bring their dogs out here and they start fighting because one dog is bigger than the other dog and he doesn’t like the way one dog smells. A symbol is a symbol and America’s built symbolism.”