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5 Monuments To The Confederacy That Have Been Vandalized

5 Monuments To The Confederacy That Have Been Vandalized

In the latest backlash against Confederate monuments, the statue commonly known as “Silent Sam” at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was found vandalized on Sunday — with statements spray-painted all around it, saying: “Black Lives Matter,” “KKK,” and “Murderer.”

The student newspaper at UNC-Chapel Hill, The Daily Tar Heel, tells the story of the monument:

In 1913 Silent Sam was constructed as a monument to the more than 300 UNC students who died in the Civil War. The sculptor, John Wilson, made the soldier “silent” by leaving out the cartridge box on the the soldier’s belt, meaning he could not fire his gun. The monument was paid for by the Daughters of the Confederacy.

Julian Carr, the namesake of Carrboro [a city in North Carolina], spoke at the monument’s dedication. In his speech he recalled the time he whipped a black woman for insulting a white woman.

“The extensive discussions with the Carolina community this past year by the Board of Trustees and University leadership and the work we will be doing to contextualize the history of our campus is a big part of advancing those conversations,” a university spokesman said in a statement, the Tar Heel reports. “We welcome all points of view, but damaging or defacing statues is not the way to go about it.”

The base of the statue, now defaced, has been covered up with a white tarp and duct tape.

Another notable aspect of Silent Sam, and the mythical imagery that surrounds many Confederate memorials, is that this statue faces northward — as if the Southern hero is preparing to meet the oncoming Yankees.

There is, however, one little historical problem with this bit of imagery: North Carolina was taken by the U.S. Army from the southern direction, as General Sherman and his men made their way up from Georgia and then into the Carolinas.

James Loewen, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Vermont, and author of multiple history books, including Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, and Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong, offers an interesting perspective on the rash of vandalism against monuments that were erected both to promote white supremacy and to distort history.

“I’m in favor of the vandalism,” Loewen, whose work has focused a great deal on educating the public on racism and social progress (and setbacks) throughout American history, told The National Memo. “I think it shows progress when Jefferson Davis gets vandalized at the University of Texas. A few years ago, Martin Luther King at the University of Texas got vandalized so often that they had to post a 24-hour guard, and then installed TV cameras. Maybe we are moving toward a better day in race relations.”

The vandalism of the Martin Luther King statue at the University of Texas, which Loewen refers to, occurred repeatedly in the mid-2000s.

While favoring the defacing of Confederate monuments in the immediate term, Loewen also had his own suggestion for what to do with them. “Historians are always advocating that we should ‘contextualize’ monuments,” Loewen explained. “Silent Sam deserves to have a historical marker in front of him, summarizing what Julian Carr said at his dedication. That would provide important context for the meaning of Silent Sam in his time — and perhaps in ours.”

In Carr’s dedication speech, the industrialist benefactor recounted the “duty” of the Confederate soldiers after the Civil War, in the reassertion of white supremacy against the empowerment of the liberated black people — and shared his own personal anecdote of how the university had provided him shelter in this task when he returned home from Robert E. Lee’s army:

The present generation, I am persuaded, scarcely takes note of what the Confederate soldier meant to the welfare of the Anglo Saxon race during the four years immediately succeeding the war, when the facts are that their courage and steadfastness saved the very life of the Anglo Saxon race in the South — when the “bottom rail was on top” all over the Southern states, and to-day, as a consequence, the purest strain of the Anglo Saxon is to be found in the 13 Southern States — Praise God.

I trust I may be pardoned for one allusion, howbeit it is rather personal. One hundred yards from where we stand, less than ninety days perhaps after my return from Appomattox, I horse-whipped a negro wench, until her skirts hung in shreds, because upon the streets of this quiet village she had publicly insulted and maligned a Southern lady, and then rushed for protection to these University buildings where was stationed 100 Federal soldiers. I performed the pleasing duty in the immediate presence of the entire garrison, and for thirty nights afterwards slept with double-barreled shotgun under my head.

Silent Sam is not the only statue of a Confederate or white-supremacist luminary to fall victim to these latest rounds of vandalism.

Next: Confederate Defenders of Charleston In the days after the mass murder at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, the city’s “Confederate Defenders” monument, fashioned in the style of Greco-Roman heroic nudity in honor of the men who first attacked Fort Sumter, became the first Confederate memorial to be spray-painted with messages for African-American civil rights. This statue was erected in 1932, by the Charleston Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

Next: John C. Calhoun

Shortly after the Confederate Defenders of Charleston, the city’s statue of John C. Calhoun was also defaced.

Calhoun, a vice president of the United States and then a U.S. senator until his death in 1850, could very well be considered to have been the spiritual godfather of the Confederacy, having long argued for the South’s right to secede if slavery were to be threatened. He is also most famous for his 1837 speech on the Senate floor, “Slavery a Positive Good,” in which he asserted slavery to be the valued foundation of civilization itself.

Next: Jefferson Davis At about the same time, the statue of Confederate States of America president Jefferson Davis at the University of Texas was also defaced.

Next: “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman

And back in South Carolina, at the state Capitol building in Columbia, a statue of “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman had a balloon of red paint thrown at it. Tillman was one of the leaders in the violent overthrow of Reconstruction, and the inauguration of the Jim Crow regime.

The State newspaper described Tillman:

Tillman, a former governor and U.S. senator whose political career spanned 1890 to 1918, promoted white supremacy, including lynching and denial of voting rights to blacks and women. He also was a participant in the massacre of black militia members during Reconstruction.

Photo: Ishmael Bishop via Facebook

North Carolina Prosecutors Seek Death Penalty In Killing Of 3 Muslims

North Carolina Prosecutors Seek Death Penalty In Killing Of 3 Muslims

By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

DURHAM, N.C. — A prosecutor described in court here Monday how Craig Stephen Hicks, accused of killing three Muslim college students Feb. 10, methodically shot each one several times after a dispute over a parking space.

Hicks told police that he first argued with neighbor Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, at Barakat’s front door about “certain issues … involving parking,” Assistant District Attorney James Dornfried told a packed courtroom.

Then Hicks walked to his adjoining apartment, retrieved a handgun and returned to shoot all three students one at a time, Dornfried said as he requested the death penalty in the case.

Hicks first shot Barakat several times, Dornfried said. When Barakat’s newlywed wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 22, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, began screaming, Hicks stepped inside the apartment and shot both women, Dornfried said.

“They were alive after the first volley,” the prosecutor said. “Each one of these women was then shot in the head.”

He added, “The defendant then started exiting the apartment and shot Deah Barakat a final time.”

Moments after Dornfried described the killings, Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha, the father of the two women, passed a few feet behind Hicks at the defense table and muttered, “Coward. Scumbag.”

Hicks, 46, who sat manacled in an orange prison uniform, glanced up at Abu-Salha but did not respond.

Friends and relatives of the victims’ families glared at Hicks as they left the courtroom after the brief hearing.

Terry W. Alford, a private attorney assigned to assist a court-appointed state capital defender who is leading Hicks’ defense, did not contest the prosecutor’s request for the death penalty.

Durham Superior Court Judge Orlando F. Hudson, Jr. ruled that the prosecution had met the state standard for a capital case. “This defendant is death penalty qualified,” Hudson said in court.

Hicks is charged with three counts of first-degree murder and discharging a firearm into an occupied dwelling.

Dornfried said Yusor’s blood was found on Hicks’ pants, and shell casings from the scene matched a handgun confiscated from Hicks’ apartment.

Hudson set the next hearing in the case for the first week of June.

The three students lived in an apartment below the unit occupied by Hicks and his wife on Summerwalk Circle in the Finley Forest complex in Chapel Hill. Gunshots rang out in the busy complex just after 5 p.m. on Feb. 10.

Chapel Hill police said the shootings stemmed from a parking dispute.

Neighbors said Hicks was notorious for angrily confronting residents and visitors about parking or noise. He often called a towing company to remove cars he said were parked in spaces he claimed were reserved for him and his wife.

A police search warrant noted that Hicks “kept pictures and detailed notes on parking activity.”

Two days after the shootings, the U.S. Justice Department announced that the FBI had begun a preliminary investigation into whether the shootings amounted to a hate crime. The decision came after the case received worldwide attention, propelled by a social media campaign tagged #muslimlivesmatter.

Friends and family members of the three students said the victims were targeted because of their religion. Barakat’s brother, Farris, and Deah’s close friend and former apartment roommate, Imad Ahmad, told the Los Angeles Times that Hicks’ anger intensified after the Abu-Salha sisters, who wore Muslim head scarves, began spending more time at the apartment. Yusor Abu-Salha moved in after the couple married Dec. 27.

In early January, Hicks accosted the sisters’ mother, Amira, when she parked in front of the Hicks’ apartment while delivering her daughter’s wedding dress. Yusor Abu-Salha asked Hicks why he confronted them, Ahmad said.

“Yusor told me he said, ‘I don’t like the way you look,'” Ahmad said.

On the day of the shootings, none of the three cars belonging to the students was parked in the spaces claimed by Hicks, Ahmad and Farris Barakat said.

Deah Barakat was a dental student at the University of North Carolina. His wife was to join him in the dental program this fall. Razan Abu-Salha was a student in the design school at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

Hicks, a paralegal student at Durham Technical Community College, surrendered to police the evening of the shootings.

Detectives found an arsenal of weapons in his apartment: 14 rifles and handguns, including a Bushmaster AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.

On his Facebook page, Hicks wrote, “Some call me a gun toting Liberal, others call me an open-minded Conservative.”

The page featured a photo of a handgun and the comment, “Yes, that is 1 pound 5.1 ounces for my loaded 38 revolver, its holster, and five extra rounds in a speedloader.”

Hicks, who described himself as an atheist or “anti-theist,” railed against organized religion on the Facebook page. He did not specifically criticize Islam, and neighbors said in interviews that they never heard him make any comments about the religion.

“He had equal-opportunity anger toward all the residents,” neighbor Sarah Maness said of Hicks.

The “religious views” section of Hicks’ Facebook page says, “I have every right to insult a religion that goes out of its way to insult, to judge, and to condemn me as an inadequate human being — which your religion does with self-righteous gusto.”

The comment did not mention a specific religion.

According to search warrants, police seized computers and cellphones belonging to Hicks and to the three students.

Karen Hicks, Hicks’ wife of seven years, denied that the shootings were a result of religious hatred.

“He believes everyone is equal,” she said at a news conference the day after the shootings. “It doesn’t matter what the person looks like.

“I can say that it is my absolute belief that this incident had nothing to do with religion or the victims’ faith, but in fact was related to long-standing parking disputes my husband had with various neighbors regardless of their race, religion, or creed,” she said.

Karen Hicks suggested that her husband had mental health problems. Hicks had a concealed-carry permit.

Because of legal challenges, there has been a de facto moratorium since 2007 on executions in North Carolina. The last execution in the state, which has 149 inmates on death row, was in 2006.

When Namee Barakat, the father of Deah Barakat, was asked in February whether his son and the two women were killed because of their Muslim faith, he replied, “Very possibly.”

“This is more than just about parking,” Barakat said. “Three people get shot in the head. The death penalty would not be enough.”

(c)2015 Los Angeles Times, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Photo: Murder defendant Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, left, listens while his co-defense counsel Terry Alford makes notes during a Monday, April 6, 2015 death penalty hearing for Hicks in Durham, N.C. Presiding Judge Orlando Hudson found the shooting deaths of three Muslim college students at Finley Forest residential complex in Chapel Hill in February 2015 made the Hicks case eligible for the death penalty. (Harry Lynch/Raleigh News & Observer/TNS)

Grand Jury Indicts Man Accused In Chapel Hill Shooting That Killed 3

Grand Jury Indicts Man Accused In Chapel Hill Shooting That Killed 3

By Anne Blythe, The News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.) (TNS)

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — A Durham County grand jury handed up indictments Monday, charging Craig Stephen Hicks with three counts of murder and one count of discharging a firearm into an occupied dwelling in the fatal shooting last week that left two families and two university communities struggling for answers.

The charges come six days after fatal shootings in the Finley Forest condominium complex.

Hicks, 46, turned himself in to two deputies outside the Chatham County sheriff’s office after the violence that police contend is rooted in a long-running parking dispute.

Deah Shaddy Barakat, a 23-year-old University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, dental student, was found dead at the threshold of the condominium front door with blood around his head, according to search warrant documents released last week.

Barakat’s 21-year-old wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, a recent North Carolina State University graduate, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, a 19-year-old NCSU design student, were found inside the condo with fatal gunshot wounds to the head, according to warrants and family members. One sister was in the kitchen doorway. The other was in the kitchen.

Within hours of the shooting, police had Hicks under arrest and conducted a search of his home that turned up at least a dozen shotguns, handguns and rifles.

A search of his vehicle outisde the Chatham County sheriff’s office turned up the weapon that police say was used in the killings.

Neighbors, a tow truck driver and others have said Hicks often complained about residents and visitors at Finley Forest parking in his reserved space. He called one tow truck company so often they stopped responding to his calls.

Though many have questioned whether the victims were targeted because they were Muslim, no hate-crime charges have been brought against the man accused.

Federal investigators opened an inquiry last week to determine, in part, whether religious bias was a motive. For a federal hate-crime charge to be brought and successfully prosecuted, legal analysts say, religious bias must be the predominant motivating factor, not one of many.

Photo: Namee Barakat (center, bottom) watches as his son Deah Shaddy Barakat is buried Thursday, Feb. 12, 2015 at the Islamic Association of Raleigh’s cemetery in Wendell, N.C. Barakat and his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha were killed in a shooting Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2015 in Chapel Hill, N.C. Deah Barakat’s sister Suzanne is at right. (Chuck Liddy/News & Observer/TNS)

Slayings Of 3 In North Carolina Arouse Muslim Fears

Slayings Of 3 In North Carolina Arouse Muslim Fears

By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — They were young newlyweds — Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, a dental student at the University of North Carolina, and his wife, Yusor Mohammad, 21, soon to enter the same dental program.

He sent dental kits to Syrian refugees and helped the homeless. She was an honor student. He was Syrian-American and she was Palestinian-American. Both were U.S.-born.

And they had complained to their families about an angry, aggressive upstairs neighbor well-known to residents for confronting neighbors about parking spots and noise.

Late Tuesday afternoon, the couple and Mohammad’s 19-year-old sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, were shot and killed inside their apartment in a leafy neighborhood two miles from campus. Authorities charged their upstairs neighbor, Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, with three counts of first-degree murder in what they said was an ongoing dispute over a parking space. The shooting will also be investigated to determine whether religious hatred played a role because of the victims’ Muslim faith.

Barakat’s sister, Suzanne Barakat, spoke Wednesday of “execution-style murders” and demanded that authorities “investigate these senseless and heinous murders as a hate crime.” National Muslim activist groups also called for a hate-crime investigation as photos of the three victims — with the two women wearing head scarves — went viral worldwide on social media under the hashtag #muslimlivesmatter.

News of the shooting caused revulsion across Europe and the Middle East, where it energized long-standing fears among Muslims that the violent loss of Muslim lives would not get the same attention by the mainstream media as killings of white or Christian people. “U won’t see this on the news because it’s about a Muslim,” one user tweeted overnight, in a sentiment that was retweeted more than 1,400 times and widely shared across other social media.
Chapel Hill Police Chief Chris Blue pledged in a statement that investigators would “exhaust every lead to determine” whether the killings were motivated by hatred.

“It is a question of what we find — motive, facts — things that need to be confirmed and will be part of the decision-making process,” said Durham County District Attorney Roger Echols, who will consider the possibility of hate-crime charges.

Lt. Joshua Mecimore said a preliminary investigation indicated “that the crime was motivated by an ongoing neighbor dispute over parking.”

When Namee Barakat, father of Deah Shaddy Barakat, was asked whether his son and the two women were killed because they were Muslim, he said, “Very possibly.”

“This is more than just about parking,” Barakat said. “Three people get shot in the head. The death penalty would not be enough.”

Hicks made his first court appearance Wednesday morning and was ordered held without bail after a five-minute hearing. A probable-cause hearing was set for March 4.

Hicks nodded when asked whether he understood the charges. Echols said no decision had been made on whether to seek the death penalty.

Hicks was described by neighbors as an angry, hulking figure who exploded in rage over parking spaces and noise in a neighborhood where parking is at a premium in the evenings.

“He was very disgruntled, very aggressive. He would scream at people,” said Samantha Maness, 25, a technical college student who lives across a small parking lot from the building where Hicks and two of the three slain students lived.

“He made everyone feel uncomfortable and unsafe,” Maness said Wednesday.

Maness said she never heard Hicks refer to anyone’s religion or race. “He had equal-opportunity anger toward all the residents,” she said.

Karen Hicks, the suspect’s wife of seven years, denied that he had acted out of hatred.

“I can say that it is my absolute belief that this incident had nothing to do with religion or the victims’ faith, but in fact was related to long-standing parking disputes my husband had with various neighbors regardless of their race, religion or creed,” she said.

A Facebook profile bearing Craig Hicks’ name and photo paints a portrait of a vehement atheist who shared anti-Muslim and anti-Christian posts and links.

“I have every right to insult a religion that goes out of its way to insult, to judge, and to condemn me as an inadequate human being — which your religion does with self-righteous gusto,” it says under the “religious views” portion of the profile, not indicating whether it’s talking about a particular faith.

A banner photo on the Facebook page promotes “anti-theism” and says, “I don’t deny you your right to believe whatever you’d like; but I have the right to point out it’s ignorant and dangerous for as long as your baseless superstitions keep killing people.”

Suzanne Barakat said her family “wept tears of joy” when her brother and sister-in-law, an honors architecture student at North Carolina State University, were married Dec. 27.

“Today,” she said, “we are crying tears of unimaginable pain. … We are in a state of shock and will never be able to make sense of this horrendous tragedy.”
___
(Times staff writers Michael Muskal and Matt Pearce contributed to this report from Los Angeles.)

Photo: UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol Folt speaks to hundreds of mourners gathered in on the UNC campus in Chapel Hill, N.C., Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2015. A vigil service for Deah Barakat; his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha; and her sister Razan Abu-Shala was held after the three were killed in a triple homicide on Tuesday. (Chuck Liddy/The News & Observer/TNS)