Читать книгу Feature Writing and Reporting - Jennifer Brannock Cox - Страница 59

In Chapter 3, history begins to catch up to the present as Stancill and Carter inch readers toward a shift in mood and the growing tension between the opposing sides of the monument argument.

Those who suggested changes to Silent Sam often suffered consequences.

In 2003, Gerald Horne, a communications studies professor who is African American, wrote to The Daily Tar Heel, sarcastically asking why Chapel Hill people were so happy at the TV images of Iraqis tearing down statues of the ousted Saddam Hussein.

“We were instructed sternly that toppling statues was attempting to rewrite history,” Horne said in an interview. The “fusillade” of negative reaction, including harassing phone calls, Horne said, helped him decide to leave for the University of Houston.

The statement-evidence-quote format is often used in feature storytelling. Naysayers suffered consequences (statement). One professor protested (evidence). His quote illustrates the consequences of his protest using the source’s own words.

Adam Domby, a UNC graduate student in history, joined the conversation in 2011, revealing a piece of evidence that would become key to future activism around Silent Sam.

While doing research in the Southern Historical Collection at Wilson Library, Domby had stumbled upon Carr’s speech from the dedication day. He showed it to several historians, who said they’d never seen it. Domby wrote a letter to the editor at The Daily Tar Heel, with excerpts of Carr’s speech.

Students contacted Domby to discuss the history he had uncovered. The students were part of a nascent movement called the Real Silent Sam Coalition.

“I said, ‘You’ll never get this thing down,’” Domby recalled in an interview.

Students within the movement disagreed over their demands when it came to the statue. Some wanted to push for removal; in the end, they chose a more pragmatic approach.

“This home grown group started as wanting to compromise,” said Domby, now a faculty member at the College of Charleston.

A member of that group, Will McInerney, said in an interview that he had been convinced by the historical context and he wanted others to be educated, too.

“It felt very clear to me that the monument, as it stood, was a misrepresentation of history,” McInerney said. “It felt important that the university, an institution of great academic accomplishment, and an incubator of knowledge—particularly one of great prestige around Southern American history—should have a historically accurate understanding of it.”

On Feb. 15, 2012, the coalition presented a four-point proposal to then-Chancellor Holden Thorp and the trustees.

“Our intent is not to remove monuments or revise history; rather, we seek to challenge the university to provide a more complete historical narrative,” the group’s proposal said. “Through historical accuracy we hope to invigorate a culture at the university that celebrates difference and cultivates a diverse, egalitarian, and truth-seeking student body.”

What the group wanted was a plaque with context about the founding of Silent Sam. But they also asked for a similar-sized statue to honor a prominent African-American, a memorial review process that would occur every decade and an educational component for all students, including the “Black and Blue” tour of black history at UNC.

The Real Silent Sam Coalition didn’t succeed in getting its plaque. But the group’s efforts led to a major turning point in 2015, when the trustees renamed the academic building previously known as Saunders Hall, which had been dedicated for 19th Century Ku Klux Klan leader William Saunders. At the same time, the trustees passed a 16-year moratorium on renaming other buildings and launched a broad effort to curate UNC’s history with accurate markers.

In the last few grafs of Chapter 3, Stancill and Carter speed-walk readers up to the present-day circumstances that laid the groundwork for the campus uproar. In Chapter 4, readers get a walk-through of the months, days and even minutes leading up to the statue’s toppling.

The winds of change were blowing.

In June 2015, Dylann Roof was charged with the racially motivated killing of nine people in a Charleston, S.C., church. The next month, the Confederate flag was removed from the South Carolina State House grounds at the recommendation of then-Gov. Nikki Haley.

About two weeks later, though, North Carolina’s elected leaders took their own stance on history. Then-Gov. Pat McCrory signed into law legislation that prohibited the alteration of historic monuments and “objects of remembrance.”