Protester arrested for dousing Confederate statue with blood

A protester was arrested at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Monday for dousing a Confederate monument with blood and red ink.

Student Maya Little took credit in an email for defacing the Silent Sam statue, a statue of a Confederate soldier on campus, and broadcasting the act on Facebook Live, The News & Observer reported Monday.

“Silent Sam is violence; Silent Sam is the genocide of black people; Silent Sam is antithetical to our right to exist,” Little wrote. “You should see him the way that we do, at the forefront of our campus covered in our blood.”

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The video shows Little being taken away by campus police officers as supporters yell “Hey, hey, ho, ho, this racist statue’s got to go!” and “Sam is silent; we are loud.”

Officers stopped to bandage Little’s hand, which was apparently cut in the act.

She was charged with defacing, striking, marking or injuring a public statue and was released on a promise to appear in court, The News & Observer reported.

Little, a doctoral student in the history department, has reportedly been an organizer for the Silent Sam Sit-In movement since September.

The statue has long been a target. However, the number of demonstrations against Confederate statues, including Silent Sam, has spiked since the deadly white nationalist march in Charlottesville, Va., last year.

Protesters toppled a Confederate monument in Durham, N.C., last year. 

UNC Chancellor Carol Folt told the News & Observer that while the statue is “detrimental” to the university, it cannot be moved.

Lawyers determined that relocating the statue would violate a 2015 state law protecting historic monuments, The News & Observer reported. 

The Confederate soldier stands silent, with no ammunition, in memory of UNC students who fought in the Civil War, according to the UNC website.

Julian Carr, who dedicated the statue in a 1913 speech, described in his speech horse whipping a “Negro wench” and said Confederate soldiers “saved the very life of the Anglo Saxon race in the South.”

Little invoked the racism in Carr’s speech during the Monday protest.

“What do you see when you look at this statue, chancellor?” Little said in her statement. “We see the mutilation of black bodies, the degradation of black people, the celebration of an army that fought for our ancestors’ enslavement. I see Julian Carr whipping a black woman. I see your willingness to traumatize, dehumanize and endanger every black person on this campus.”