UNC Statue Latest To Be Hit With ‘Black Lives Matter’ Imagery

By Sameer Rao Jul 06, 2015

In the latest vandalism to hit a statue featuring Confederate and colonialist statues across the United States (primarily in the South), the "Silent Sam" statue at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill was defaced this weekend with text saying "KKK," "MURDERER," and "BLACK LIVES MATTER."

The statue, unveiled on the campus in 1913 as a tribute to students who died fighting for the Confederacy, is the latest to be tagged with "Black Lives Matter" or other anti-racist graffiti – actions that have happened with increasing frequency since the massacre in Charleston last month. Among those landmarks tagged include a Confederate memorial in Durham, North Carolina; monuments in Richmond, Virginia; a Jefferson Davis statue at the publicly-funded University of Texas; a statue of ex-South Carolina governor and noted white supremacist Ben Tillman in Columbia, South Carolina; and a Christopher Columbus monument in Boston. 

The tags have been receiving increasing attention as debates on the presence of Confederate flags or tributes in public places have gotten more and more public visibility.

(H/t Huffington Post, ABC11/WTVD