Neo-Confederate rally for "Silent Sam" ends with pepper spray, arrests

Protesters carrying Confederate battle flags rallied around the site of the toppled “Silent Sam” statue Thursday night — until they were escorted to their cars by police who used pepper spray to keep counterprotesters at bay.

It was the second attempt at a public rally in support of Silent Sam, a memorial to an anonymous Confederate soldier that had stood on the campus of the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill for nearly 100 years. That was, until it was ripped down by protesters on Aug. 20.

Police made three arrests Thursday night, and used barricades to separate Silent Sam supporters from protesters who showed up to “dance on the grave” of the statue and eat ice cream. Dozens of members of the Alamance County Taking Back Alamance County — which has been deemed a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center — gathered in a fenced-off area near the statue’s former location. They unfurled a Confederate flag. A lot more people showed up in opposition of that group and yelled things like “Fuck your flag!” and “Go home!”

This carried on for about an hour, and then police officers started leading the Confederate supporters back to a parking lot. The protesters of that group trailed them to the parking lot, and police deployed pepper spray into the crowd. People scattered, coughing and chanting “Fuck you, pigs,” videos posted to social media show. “We spoke for Sam, our lord, our monuments all across the Southland and to all the amazing Southern people,” the neo-Confederate group said in a post on Facebook after the rally. “Stand up, get involved and be proud. God bless you all and lord, oh lord, bless our sweet Dixieland.”

Local police haven’t released the names of those arrested, but the university said in a statement that two people were arrested for affray (provoking a fight), and a third was arrested for resisting an officer, according to the News & Observer.

Meanwhile, the university’s Board of Governors has directed the university and campus trustees to come up with some sort of plan for Silent Sam by Nov. 15. It’s currently being kept at an undisclosed location. A few weeks ago, more than 200 people gathered to knock over the divisive statue. Silent Sam was given to the university by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1909. When it was unveiled in 1913, a Ku Klux Klan supporter gave a racist address saying that he “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.”

Last spring, Maya Little, a graduate student, read aloud from that address and covered the statue with her own blood and red paint in protest.

Thom Goolsby, a member of UNC’s Board of Governors, said in a video posted to his YouTube channel Thursday that the statue’s removal was part of a “sophisticated political agenda” by “non-student radicals.”

Cover: Members of ACTBAC and protesters face off at McCorkle Place on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill, on Thursday, Aug. 30, 2018, during a rally to commemorate the Confederate statue known as Silent Sam by the Alamance County-based group, in Chapel Hill, N.C. (Chuck Liddy/Raleigh News & Observer/TNS via Getty Images)