Recently, a memorial dedicated to enslaved African-Americans who worked at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was vandalized. This incident comes more than six months after “Silent Sam,” a confederate statue on campus, was torn down by protestors during a rally.
The Unsung Founders Memorial was installed in 2005 to honor the enslaved and free African-Americans who helped construct buildings on campus. According to police, at about 1:30 a.m. on March 31, 2019, the memorial was vandalized by two people, one of whom has ties to a group called Heirs to the Confederacy. The vandals wrote racist language on the memorial in permanent marker and also urinated on it.
“These events challenge not only our most fundamental community values, but also the safety of our campus,” said Kevin M. Guskiewicz, the campus’s interim chancellor, in a statement.
Since the vandalism, the memorial has been cleaned and barricades have been placed around it to prevent similar incidents.
