The Unsung Founders Memorial in the center of McCorkle Place has an inscription on the tabletop that reads, “The Class of 2002 honors the University’s unsung founders, the people of color bond and free, who helped build the Carolina that we cherish today.”
The memorial is a two-foot tall stone table held up by bronze figurines and surrounded by five stone stools, inspired by the stones in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery that mark the graves of unknown Black individuals, many of whom were enslaved, who contributed to the creation of UNC.
Earlier this year, Kenneth Wilson, a retired Duke University professor and UNC alumnus, wrote in an email to The Daily Tar Heel saying he noticed the monument was “dirty and unkept.”
When Wilson visited the memorial last March, the figurines holding the table up had some cobwebs, he said. When he went back a few weeks later, he said he noticed a layer of filth over the tabletop, and that somebody had spilled what looked like a milkshake on the seats.
Wilson said that when he showed his cousin the monument on Nov. 3, she was “taken aback” by how poorly maintained it was. When he visited three days later, Wilson said the apparent milkshake had been cleaned up but there were more cobwebs around the figurines and bird poop on the seats.
“So I thought, well, let me look at the other memorials, or whatever you want to call them, in the area,” he said.
He added it was clear somebody had made efforts to keep the nearby General William Davie Bench, Joseph Caldwell Monument, Old Well and Morehead sundial relatively clean.
“This just stood out as being neglected when the other things weren't being neglected,” Wilson said.
