Today, I heard a speaker who had some soaring words for us. She said: Walk towards the things that makes time stop for you; that make you light up; that you can’t be pulled away from.
Well, I wanted to sit down and tell her all the times I’d tried to walk towards just exactly those things, and I couldn’t get there. It really is not just as easy as “walking towards”, because everything is in place to trip you up.
But I had to leave early on an errand and didn’t get the chance to probe further.
However, today back at UNC, the statue of Silent Sam came down! Now that’s something.
When Silent Sam was dedicated in 2013, supposedly in honor of soldiers who died during the Civil War, this was the speech given:
“One hundred yards from where we stand, I horse whipped a negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds because she had maligned and insulted a Southern lady, and then rushed for protection to these University buildings where was stationed a garrison of 100 Federal soldiers. I performed the pleasing duty in the immediate presence of the entire garrison.”
But read news articles about Silent Sam; you’ll notice they rarely mention this. The news – all those journalists who protest when Trump calls them “fake news” and the enemy of the people – don’t ever mention the real offensiveness of the statue, hardly. They just say, “it’s a Confederate memorial.”
And then people say, “it’s heritage, not hate!”
But the statue is down now!
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