“An Epic Poem in Bronze.”

On August 22, 2018, Forbes Magazine published an article written by Kristina Killgrove entitled “Scholars Explain the Racist History of UNC’s Silent Sam Statue”. 1 Two days earlier, the statue had been pulled down by a crowd of students and activists, who saw it as a symbol of “white supremacy” that had no place on the campus of UNC Chapel Hill. Killgrove clearly sympathized with them, and took an approach that many other writers, journalists, and many activist historians also choose to take: selective recitation of quotes to support what they already believe, otherwise known as “cherry picking”. The quote they all choose, out of the thousands of words spoken when Silent Sam was dedicated in June of 1913, is a portion of the last speech of the day. The speech was given by Julian Carr, who had been a student at UNC during the Civil War. Carr enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1864, and returned to school when the war ended. He later became a major industrialist, entrepreneur and philanthropist celebrated for generously donating land and money to various North Carolina colleges and universities. Finally, he was also a benefactor of the Training School for Colored People in Augusta, Georgia.2

The portion of Carr’s speech that everyone quotes is as follows:

More @ The Abbeville Institute