History

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 On June 2nd, 1913, the University of North Carolina and the Daughters of the Confederacy dedicated the Confederate Monument, better known as Silent Sam. 

During the last century, Silent Sam has stood at the gateway of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "greeting" students, workers, professors, community members, tourists, and the like. And for the last 100 years, the University has chosen to celebrate the history and identities of those who wished violence and subjugation upon people of color. They have done such by choosing silence. 

On June 2nd, 2013, the Real Silent Sam, Reverend WIlliam Barber of the NC NAACP, and our greater communities have chosen to speak out. We will raise our voices in celebration of a New South. A south that celebrates those who built this university brick by brick. A south that celebrates the workers who maintain the campus. A south that empowers students of color who have been welcomed by the university, as opposed to its landscapes, both physical and hidden. 

We ask you to join us at Silent Sam on this day, to ring in the New South, with performance and community love.
On June 2nd, 2013, the Real Silent Sam, Reverend WIlliam Barber of the NC NAACP, and our greater communities have chosen to speak out. We will raise our voices in celebration of a New South. A south that celebrates those who built this university brick by brick. A south that celebrates the workers who maintain the campus. A south that empowers students of color who have been welcomed by the university, as opposed to its landscapes, both physical and hidden. 
We ask you to join us at Silent Sam on this day, to ring in the New South, with performance and community love.

Student opposition to North Carolina’s 1963 Speaker Ban Law will be the subject of the annual Gladys Hall Coates University History Lecture Thursday, April 11, at the Wilson Special Collections Library.

Former UNC student body president Robert Spearman (’65) will discuss the controversial law that barred certain individuals from speaking on campus. Known members of the Communist Party, those who advocated the overthrow of the federal or state government, and those who pleaded the Fifth Amendment when questioned about communist or subversive activities were all prohibited from speaking at state-supported campuses.

The 5:30 p.m. lecture, sponsored by the North Carolina Collection and University Archives and Records Management Services, is free and open to the public.

The passage of the Speaker Ban Law fifty years ago drew almost immediate reaction from students and faculty, who protested that the law infringed on their rights to free speech. Students invited banned speakers to address their classmates from the sidewalk on Franklin Street and eventually initiated a lawsuit in federal court.

Spearman, now an attorney for a Raleigh law firm, testified before a state commission tasked with revising the law, which was eventually overturned in 1968.

Prior to the lecture, attendees can view the North Carolina Collection Gallery exhibition A Right to Speak and to Hear: Academic Freedom and Free Expression at UNC beginning at 5 p.m.

The exhibition uses original letters, documents, and photographs to examine the University’s long history of free speech controversies from the nineteenth century to the present.

The exhibition runs through June 2, 2013.