White dolls that depict lynching removed from trees on UNC Charlotte campus

Dec 12, 2018
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White dolls with nooses around their necks were found hanging from trees on the campus of the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. While the images shocked the school community, the university contends it was an end-of-semester art project, Fox 46 reports.

The news editor of the student-run Niner Times, Megan Bird, reported a Snapchat photo of a  “sculpture of a white body….the display is clearly intended to depict a lynching”.

“The photo was taken from Snapchat and the photographer is unknown,” news editor Megan Bird told the Charlotte Observer in an email.

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While many thought the display was intentional and a clapback directed to those who were protesting the Confederate Silent Sam statue on the campus of UNC Chapel Hill, Christine Reed Davis, UNCC’s associate vice chancellor for student affairs and dean of students, cleared the air and emailed student leaders to say that “the display is a student of color’s final art project.”

The school said “university officials were notified today of what appeared to be noosed figures hanging from a tree outside of the Rowe Arts Building. After an investigation by the Department of Police and Public Safety, it was determined to be an art project submitted by a student of color for an end-of-semester assignment.

“At this time, there is no evidence to suggest the project was motivated by racial bias,” UNCC said in the email.

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“It was not a response to the Student Government Association’s Silent Sam letter, as has been reported in some media outlets.

“The representation of a figure being lynched is hurtful, threatening, and offensive,” the university said in its email. “The project was immediately removed.”

“However, it’s not clear that the student had permission to display it outside of the building,” the Niner Times reported.

Students at UNC Chapel Hill have fought long and hard to make a Confederate statue called “Silent Sam”, a thing of the past and even toppled it in protest.

So, news of the university’s plan to bring it back to life is causing heated resistance on campus and has ignited more protests after it was revealed that the university plans to erect the statue inside of a new $5 million facility, The Huffington Post reports.

Tensions were high as several hundred students took to the streets on Monday to rally against the planned resurrection of the statue, whose very presence some consider racist.

“It’s time to tear down ‘Silent Sam.’ It’s time to tear down UNC’s institutional white supremacy,” Maya Little, a UNC doctoral student who has led the fight earlier this year and was even arrested fighting to get the statue removed.

On Monday, UNCC’s Student Government Association issued a statement urging UNC’s Board of Governors “not to reinstall (the Confederate statue) ‘Silent Sam’ on the campus of North Carolina’s flagship university,” according to a copy of the statement retweeted by UNCC’s SGA.

 

 

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