A judge put a halt to the Silent Sam fiasco. Here’s how to fix it for good.

Silent Sam is not going quietly. In fact, he’s coming back.

That’s the result of a judge’s ruling that nullified an outrageous legal settlement regarding Silent Sam, the UNC-CH campus statue that honors UNC students who fought for the Confederacy. Under the settlement, the University of North Carolina System Board of Governors agreed to give the statue to the Sons of the Confederacy (SCV) along with $2.5 million to display it elsewhere.

Protesters toppled the statue at the entrance to UNC’s Chapel Hill campus in August of 2018. It’s now in the possession of the SCV, but likely will be returned following the ruling by Orange County Superior Court Judge Allen Baddour. He approved the settlement in November and reversed himself on Wednesday.

The ruling is a welcome one and marks a temporary return to sanity regarding the fate of the rifle-toting bronze figure that evolved from a campus landmark to a symbol of racism. The Board of Governors had no business giving a Confederate group $2.5 million to display Silent Sam elsewhere. The statue could easily be moved to a Civil War battlefield or a Confederate cemetery at a modest cost.

And such locations are where it should go. But that will require that the sanity of Baddour’s reversal extend to a dysfunctional Board of Governors and Republican legislative leaders who started the mess by pandering to supporters of Confederate monuments. A law, passed in 2105 and signed by former Gov. Pat McCrory, prevents removing, relocating or altering monuments, memorials, plaques and other markers that are on public property without permission from the N.C. Historical Commission. The law was passed after a white supremacist’s fatal shooting of nine people a black church in Charleston, S.C. brought a push to take down Confederate monuments.

McCrory said at the time that he supported the law’s aim to protect “the complete story of North Carolina,” but he was concerned that it prevents local governments from moving or removing monuments on their own property, a restriction Democrats were unable to strip from the bill.

Those concerns proved prophetic. The restriction on local action regarding monuments effectively tied the hands of UNC-CH leaders who wanted to take down Silent Sam. That left the statue at the center of a growing protest that eventually led protesters to act on their own.

The UNC System Board of Governors likewise felt compelled by the law to either put the statue back up or display it elsewhere. Some of the board’s 24 voting members, who are elected by the General Assembly, also were eager to please supporters of Confederate monuments in the legislature. That led to the quiet, convoluted and fraudulent settlement that aimed to get the divisive statue off campus, but accord it high honor in the hands of the SCV.

The settlement almost held up. Fortunately, a group of UNC students and a faculty member sought to legally challenge the settlement. Their effort caused Judge Baddour to review his earlier approval and find that the SCV had no valid ownership claim on Silent Sam and therefor no standing to enter into a settlement with the Board of Governors.

Now Silent Sam is down, but not quite out. It ought to go back into storage at the university. In meantime, the Board of Governors can seek an exemption from the monument law under a provision that allows for the removal of monuments that present a public safety concern. Better yet, legislators can amend the law to let local officials do what they think is best regarding local monuments.

This story was originally published February 13, 2020 at 6:21 PM with the headline "A judge put a halt to the Silent Sam fiasco. Here’s how to fix it for good.."