CHAPEL HILL -- Arthur Finn thinks the Unsung Founders Memorial on UNC-Chapel Hill's McCorkle Place is beautiful.
The statue by Korean artist Do-Ho Suh depicts 300 black figures holding up a polished table and honors the African-Americans - enslaved and free - who built the campus.
But Finn, a retired professor of medicine, said he never thought about the juxtaposition of the low-to-the ground statue to the nearby Confederate Monument, nicknamed Silent Sam, until local poet C.J. Suitt pointed it out during a forum on race relations this month.
About 55 people attended the meeting, "What Would It Take to Heal the Wounds of Racism in Chapel Hill," held by the town's Justice in Action Committee at the Hargraves Center. Mayor-elect Mark Kleinschmidt attended, as did council members Sally Greene and Jim Ward and council-member-elect Penny Rich.
Suitt was one of a half-dozen panelists. When his turn to speak came, he got up from his chair, walked to the front of the crowd and recited a poem, "My Lovely Little College Town."
The university "has erected a 20-foot-tall monument to the Civil War, 'Silent Sam,' and less than a hundred yards away is a slave monument that's ... a table - a table that has these two-foot slaves holding it up," he said. "The last time I walked past there was a lovely white family enjoying lunch."
Tense moments
Suitt's performance silenced the room. In his remarks, he said the statue offends him, not just because the table is small and Confederate soldier large, but because only one black person was on the selection committee. No black artists were considered, he said, and the artist who was chosen specialized in "miniatures."
"These are the things that are appalling to me," said Suitt, who is black.
Suitt is mistaken, university officials said later. The Unsung Founders Memorial was a gift of the Class of 2002. Two of the four students on the selection committee were black. One of three artists who came to Chapel Hill for interviews was black, they said.
But that didn't detract from the poet's main point, said Finn, who is white. Finn said the fact that he never considered how others might perceive the statues in relation to each other showed his own lack of racial sensitivity.
Familiar controversy
Unsung Founders was meant to counter criticism of the Confederate Monument, "perhaps the most controversial memorial on campus," UNC's Center for the Study of the American South says.
The bronze and marble Confederate Monument by artist John Wilson was commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to honor UNC alumni who fought and died in the Civil War. Critics say it glorifies the Confederacy and should be removed. Others say removing it "would do more harm than good by denying the reality of this period of UNC's [and the nation's] history," according to the UNC Center.
Although Unsung Founders was a gift from students, the university added $40,000 to the Class of 2002's $50,000 and agreed to place the memorial on McCorkle Place.
Beth Braxton, UNC's director of annual giving, said the students sent requests to 70 artists and 11 wrote back. The students chose four finalists and three eventually came to Chapel Hill for interviews: a black person, a Latino person and Do-Ho Suh, the Korean artist eventually selected.
Complaints have come up before, but Braxton said that's to be expected.
"It's a piece of art; just like any piece of art, it's subjective," she said of Unsung Founders. "They don't look small to me. They look mighty. They're Herculean. They're holding up this ... huge heavy weight of the world."
