“History Is the Things That Stay With You”: The Rise and Fall of Silent Sam

I didn’t have enough time yesterday to read much about the toppling of the Silent Sam statue at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, though I did manage to reference it in class.

In trying to introduce my students to the constructed nature of history and convince them that we should care about the past, if only because it helps us understand the world today, I mentioned the statue being pulled down Monday night.

We had talked about the process of doing historical research. Yawns. We discussed a few quotations. More yawns, though a few sparked interesting conversation, like this one from Paul Beatty’s The Sellout:

“That’s the problem with history, we like to think it’s a book—that we can turn the page and move the f*** on. But history isn’t the paper it’s printed on. It’s memory, and memory is time, emotions, and song. History is the things that stay with you.”

When I described Silent Sam being pulled down, though, this got their interest. We had been talking about how the stories we tell about the past have changed over time. They understand the notion of history being “written by the victors,” so we talked about whose stories might have been told in 1913 when Silent Sam was erected–and whose were not. Without going too deep into it (it was only Day 2 of the school year), I reminded them that in that time and place, African Americans were denied an equal education, were generally barred from voting, and certainly were not permitted to attend the University of North Carolina. It was an interesting discussion, and they asked some insightful questions. One student asked, “Who put the statue up way back when? Because that might influence how I feel about it.” She then did her own research on the spot, and came across the speech given by Julian Carr at the statue’s dedication, which I myself was previously unfamiliar with.

One of the most interesting–and impromptu–parts of the discussion came when I asked them to imagine a student from another country who had just arrived in the United States to attend the University of North Carolina, but who knew absolutely nothing of American history. Then, I asked them to picture that student walking across campus Monday night and unexpectedly coming across this boisterous scene. What would they think? How could they possibly make sense of it? My students understood, I think, that only by having some understanding of the past can we hope to make sense of the present. As Faulkner wrote, “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.” Or, in Beatty’s words: “History is the things that stay with you.”

I’m looking forward to following the story out of Chapel Hill, and I’m hoping to see more analysis from historians like David Blight and W. Fitzhugh Brundage.