A controversial statue commemorating fallen Confederate soldiers was vandalized on Sunday as someone sprayed it with black paint with the words “Black lives matter,” “KKK,” and “murderer.”
The statue, which is known as “Silent Sam” and is supposed to memorialize the 321 University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill alumni who died during the Civil War while fighting for the Confederacy, has been vandalized before and underwent some restoration in 1986. Installed in 1913, it was commissioned by the state’s chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
“We welcome all points of view, but damaging or defacing statues is not the way to go about it,” the university’s spokesman, Rick White, said in a statement.
The statue, which depicts a Confederate soldier holding a rifle without a cartridge box, has since had the spray-painted messages covered.
This was not the first such statue to be hit with vandalism in the wake of the recent explosions in race relations. A Charleston statue that was dedicated to Confederate fighters was hit with the words: “Black lives matter.”