Confederate Monuments

Jefferson Davis was hailed as the “champion of a slave society” when he was selected in 1861 to become President of the Confederate States of America. Davis was an unrepentant white supremacist who fervently believed the Southern cause, slavery and segregation were right and just until his last dying breath in 1889. It is therefore outrageous that a major Virginia thoroughfare, Jefferson Davis Highway (aka Route 1) which abuts the Pentagon and other US Capital landmarks continues to bear the name of a morally depraved, non-Virginian who rejected the very idea of a United States.   The back-story of the decision in 1920 to name southern sections of Route 1 after Davis adds to the disturbing legacy of racism in America. At that time, the Daughters of the Confederacy along with US Rep. Earl B. Mayfield of Texas, a close ally of the Ku Klux Klan, began a campaign to attach the name of the Confederate president to Southern roads in a futile attempt to create a transcontinental highway bearing his name. At the height of the Jim Crow era, when lynching of Southern blacks was conducted with regularity and impunity, these advocates of white domination routed a road symbolizing black oppression and enslavement across several predominately black neighborhoods, as if to reinforce the message of racial subjugation. The choice of name is, therefore, an affront to African-Americans and, indeed, all Americans who are repulsed by the evils of slavery, segregation and racism. It's time for the Commonwealth of Virginia, to remove the name of this Confederate leader from all sections of Route 1 in Virginia. Virginia is a state that prides itself on its diversity, technological innovation, leadership in education and progress. The name Jefferson Davis is far from what the state should honor. Let's stop indulging the race haters who named the road after their race hating hero. Let’s change the image of this important roadway from hatred and rename it to memorialize hope and progress. Please sign this petition calling on Governor Terry McAulliffe, the Virginia General Assembly and the Commonwealth Transportation Board to rename  all sections of Jefferson Davis Highway.  

Maya Little faces potential expulsion for an act of civil disobedience against a Confederate statue. We support the statement below, and we petition the UNC Honor Court to drop the charges against her. Maya’s statement: On June 4, the UNC Office of Student Conduct officially charged me with violating the honor code by “stealing, destroying, or misusing property.” My Honor Court hearing may very well coincide with the criminal trial I already face for spilling red ink and my blood on Silent Sam. The Honor Court will determine whether my protest against Confederate monuments is conduct unbecoming of a UNC affiliate. I can find no record of the Honor Court charging students for painting Silent Sam Carolina blue in 1982. But Daily Tar Heel records confirm that neither campus nor Chapel Hill police made any effort to arrest those students. Similarly, the paper reported that NC State students who painted Sam in 1974 were released by campus police without charges. At UNC, dousing the monument in paint in the name of basketball is deemed a pastime while doing the same to contextualize and fight racism is a crime. Revealing the racist violence upon which Sam was built -- exposing a truth the university would like to keep covered -- could result in my expulsion. UNC uses its disciplinary boards to punish political activism and its police to suppress free speech. Chancellor Folt and the Associate Vice Chancellor for Campus Safety and Risk Management, Derek Kemp, appointed an undercover police officer to infiltrate our movement and lie to and gather information on students fighting against racism. Why was it necessary to use tactics designed to entrap and engender mistrust among us? Perhaps because they are longstanding tactics of UNC administrators targeting anti-racist activists. Kemp and Folt carry on a practice that can be traced to campus police collusion with the FBI to spy on Black Student Movement (BSM) members in the 1970s. It is likely that black students protesting the 1971 murder of James Cates by a white motorcycle gang in the Pit were also targets of this surveillance.  This spring, Silent Sam protesters created a series of historical markers to educate the public about Cates’s murder and the untold history of white supremacy at UNC. When UNC police ripped apart these markers on April 30, 2018, they destroyed the only memorials to Cates that existed on our campus. The Honor Court, Board of Trustees, and Faculty Council have stood by idly as members of campus police, Derek Kemp, and Chancellor Folt continue to violate our First Amendment rights. How long will students be punished for demanding that black lives matter at UNC? In 2015, another activist wrote “Who Is Sandra Bland?” on Silent Sam. It was a fitting addition to a statue christened by boasts about horsewhipping a black woman who had sought safety on university grounds. Not only did UNC fail to protect her, it bestowed an honorary degree upon her attacker, Julian Carr. To this day, he holds that honorific. He is memorialized  in the names of a building I have taught in and the town that I live in.  Those who speak up are silenced and targeted, but violence against people of color and women goes unpunished. That violence is then celebrated in the protection of monuments such as Silent Sam, Aycock Hall, and plaques to families including the Kenans, who built their wealth on enslaved black labor. These are the crimes I hoped to expose when I poured my own blood on Silent Sam. Now I ask, how will UNC’s Honor Court act? Will they preserve what Dr. King called “a negative peace, which is the absence of tension,” or will they stand for the rights of their peers fighting for racial equality? It is time to truly uphold lux libertas, light and freedom, at UNC. Chancellor Folt, the Board of Governors, and Margaret Spellings have already shown their opposition to both. The student representatives of the Honor Court have chosen to investigate me, but they can still take this opportunity to act for free speech -- and against white supremacy.   The students of the Silent Sam Sit-In ask that the UNC Honor Court drop all charges against me for my protest of Silent Sam on April 30.   We ask that the proper disciplinary boards formally consider charges against university officials responsible for the continued surveillance and suppression of activists involved with protests against racist monuments.   We ask supporters to contact the Director of the Office of Student Conduct, Aisha Pridgen, at apridgen@email.unc.edu and Graduate and Professional School Student Attorney General, Courtney Bain, at cbain@live.unc.edu to ask the Court to drop the charges against me. We ask our supporters to demand an investigation by the Faculty Council of UNC Police, Derek Kemp, and Carol Folt for the undercover infiltration of our protest and the destruction of our signs. These actions constitute harassment, retribution, and silencing. We ask our supporters to sign and circulate this petition demanding the Honor Court drop charges against me for my April 30th action. As always, we ask our alumni supporters to withhold donations to the university until it removes Silent Sam and white supremacy from our campus. I hope to see you all on August 20 at my criminal trial on a misdemeanor charge for which I could possibly spend 60 days in jail. In the face of these betrayals by officials tasked to protect us, we support each other. When one acts, we act together.   Maya Little, on behalf of the Silent Sam Sit In, UNC Student and Graduate Worker 6/14/2018

As a citizen of Jefferson County West Virginia, it is troubling to see a plaque honoring Confederate soldiers posted on our county courthouse building!  This petition is simply asking that the plaque, described in this recent Washington Post article, be removed from public's passive display and peacefully relocated to a museum or other appropriate place where such history belongs. Jefferson County is rich in history from Harpers Ferry National Park, to our county seat of Charles Town, named after George Washington's brother, to Shepherdstown, home of Shepherd University.  While the Washington Post article points out several citizen observations (no equivalent Union solider plaque, Courthouse was destroyed by Confederate soldiers), it was the response from the Commission that too was troubling. The Commission denied the peaceful request, cited a "radical minority", and then scrapped a citizen committee to further study the issue. 

At least 581 people have been lynched in the state of Mississippi throughout U.S. history, the vast majority of whom were hung because of one thing: they were black. This history is troubling enough, but it’s even more so when you see Mississippi’s junior Senator, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, making a joke this month at a political fundraiser where she laughs about how if one of her donors invited her, “she’d attend a public hanging.” The comment drew sharp responses from voters on the left and the right, noting that Sen. Hyde-Smith’s opponent is an African American. But Sen. Hyde-Smith has yet to apologize. This kind of language would be unacceptable in so many places around the country. But not yet in Mississippi, my home state, where one of the most violent and destructive symbols in all of American history -- the Confederate emblem -- still adorns our state flag. It’s time to say enough is enough. Join me in calling on Mississippi to remove the Confederate symbol from its state flag. Over the last few years we’ve seen so many communities come to terms with the racist and shameful legacy of the Confederacy, and pull their support of this symbol which for so many people represents the violence and hatred that led to hundreds of “public hangings” all around the South. South Carolina’s government stopped displaying the Confederate symbol; cities around Mississippi, including tourism-friendly places like Biloxi, have also stopped flying our state flag because it bears the Confederate emblem. Even a judge in Mississippi over the last month removed the Mississippi State Flag from his courtroom because he felt the Confederate symbol sent the message that not everyone was welcome or equal in his court. The Confederate symbol in our state flag is a dying, hate-filled relic, and it’s time for a change. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith’s comments are appalling and show a complete lack of understanding at the race-based violence so many people in Mississippi have faced for the last 150 years. But her comments are just a symptom of a larger issue in our state that stems directly from the tolerance, acceptance and celebration of the Confederate symbol in our state flag. A symbol that for so many years has been championed by those who want to hurt, minimize, humiliate, and enslave an entire population of people. I'm proud to call Mississippi my home state, but I know that it not only can do better -- it needs to do better. Now is the moment to show Mississippi and the rest of the country that hateful symbols have no place in our politics. Let’s send a message now to Mississippi lawmakers that the historic emblem that normalizes so much violence toward people has no place in our State Flag. Join me in calling on Mississippi lawmakers to remove the Confederate symbol from our flag.