UNC Silent Sam settlement will vastly increase NC Confederate group’s finances
The $2.5 million payment by UNC-Chapel Hill to a trust for the North Carolina Sons of Confederate Veterans is nearly 31 times greater than the organization’s expenses in the 2018 fiscal year.
The Confederate group has access to the money through a trust that was established as a result of a lawsuit and settlement with the UNC System over the Silent Sam statue, which now belongs to the SCV. The group also got $74,999 from UNC-Chapel Hill to refrain from displaying flags and banners on campus.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans, North Carolina Division, revenue was about $128,224 and it spent about $81,658 during the 2018 fiscal year, which ended in July 2019. The group’s net assets totaled $258,555, the group’s federal financial statements show.
“UNC has turned the Sons of Confederate Veterans into a very wealthy white supremacist organization,” said Lindsay Ayling, a UNC graduate student and activist.
How has the SCV spent its money?
The group’s revenue has been on the rise in recent years, but the average was just under $59,000 since 2010, the tax forms show. The form from 2014 was not available.
The SCV’s most significant expense was more than $20,000 for an outreach program in 2018, according to the 990 federal tax forms the SCV filed as a nonprofit organization.
That cost was followed by nearly $11,500 for a booth at the N.C. state Fair and more than $10,000 toward the “Johnston statue,” which is likely the bronze statue of Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston put up by the SCV near the Bentonville Battlefield in 2010.
In 2017, the group’s effort to put up Confederate flags across the state was its largest expense at $7,601, followed by more payments for the Johnston statue and state fair booth.
UNC professor Fitz Brundage said that for SCV now to have $2.575 million to engage in activities ”is like winning the lottery.”
Students and faculty are afraid of what the SCV could do with the money. And while the UNC System released a document that outlines how the money can be administered, the restrictions and rules are broadly defined.
The money can be used for the “maintenance, display, and preservation of the bronze statue of the confederate soldier,” the agreement says.
That could include property acquisition and construction of a new facility to house the monument, repair and renovation of the monument and facility, security costs, legal fees and “such other reasonably necessary and appropriate costs and expenses as may arise from and/or relate to the foregoing activities.”
Outrage over the deal reached the national political stage when presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren posted about the settlement on Facebook and Twitter.
“Shame on the UNC Board of Governors—and the Republican legislators who used a power grab to appoint this radical board. Public funds should be used for students, not paying off Confederate groups,” Warren’s tweet said.
A fear of violence
Ayling, who’s been on the front lines of the Silent Sam protests over the past year, said she is concerned for the safety of UNC students.
She said the group could use this money to purchase land and house Silent Sam in a new headquarters that could have a firing range connected to it.
Ayling said she’s received multiple death threats from Confederate protesters.
She also drew connections between members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and members of the Heirs to the Confederacy, who have frequently protested in Chapel Hill, sometimes armed, and members of the League of the South, which is designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The Move Silent Sam activist group shared photos that it says show SCV members wearing white supremacist emblems. The group has also posted on Twitter saying some SCV members are tied to racist and white supremacist groups and individuals.
Based on those connections, Ayling said, the additional $75,000 paid to the SCV to prevent them from displaying flags and banners on university campuses is problematic.
She said the money is not going to keep them off campus, but fund other Confederate groups to rally at UNC-Chapel Hill, which SCV members could join.
“The money does not dissuade Confederate groups from violently rallying on campus, in fact, it encourages them to,” Ayling said.
She said the university has made no effort to compensate or aid the students who have “risked our lives to protest white supremacy.”
The SCV’s educational outreach
Some faculty and others in the UNC community are also concerned about how the SCV will spread its message of hate.
The SCV’s “outreach program” expenses don’t detail whether it consists of educational or recruiting efforts or both. But the SCV’s website includes links to lesson plans for educators, recommended speakers and a map of more than 100 chapters or “camps” where men can join.
The Stephen Dill Lee Institute is the SCV’s main educational outreach program, according to its website. The next event is being held in Raleigh in 2020 where six academics are expected to speak.
The program’s stated goal is to “organize accomplished and distinguished professional scholarship to inform our members and the general public of the Southern side of the war,” including issues of states’ rights, economic motives, Union Army war crimes and “the dubious benevolence behind the slavery issue.”
More than 100 black UNC students, staff, faculty and alumni signed a statement sent to the UNC System Board of Governors on Dec. 8 in response to the Silent Sam deal saying the board is “forcing UNC-CH to provide seed money to further indoctrinate white supremacists and spread hate for generations to come.”
“This decision makes the University complicit in the dissemination of an inaccurate and whitewashed version of history that is completely counter to our mission, a grave insult to our campus constituents, and an affront to the enslaved people who built this university,” the statement said.
They called the proposed settlement “abhorrent” and said the decision has had a “significant impact on the mental and emotional well-being of Black students, staff, and faculty.”
Brundage, whose research focuses on American history since the Civil War, particularly the American South, also said the SCV’s version of history is skewed and not accepted by historians at major American universities.
Brundage said he’s concerned about the SCV hiring a web technician to work on the group’s website and elevate its online presence and put together K-12 lesson plans. He said the group could also hire a curator, who could be a historian that would circulate their message and start to build the “shrine of Silent Sam and to the Lost Cause.”
What are the SCV’s plans?
Kevin Stone, the SCV’s leader, has not responded to calls or voicemails since the settlement news broke, beyond his original emailed statement that said the group had “gained custody” of the memorial and believes the terms are a fair result of their negotiations.
In emails to SCV members, Stone called the settlement a “major strategic victory” that will “insure the future of Silent Sam” and the “legal and financial support for our continued and very strong actions in the future.”
He said the settlement provided money “for the perpetual care of Silent Sam and the purchase of land on which to prominently display him, to build a small museum for the public, and to build a comprehensive Division headquarters for the benefit of the membership.”
Stone also noted that he never dreamed the group could accomplish this in a thousand years, which aligns with the group’s financial situation over the past few years.
Stone has not detailed any plans of where the SCV might re-erect the statue or build or buy a new facility to display it. But he did say the group will follow the terms and restrictions of the trust.
In an email to the UNC System Board of Governors on Dec. 14, Stone specifically said the group is not a white supremacy group.
“The SCV does not allow white supremacists in our group and we do not endorse any such beliefs,” Stone wrote.
Frank Powell, a spokesman for the national SCV group who lives in North Carolina, said members don’t have any comment right now.
Powell said the group has been advised by its attorney not to comment on the settlement as it’s being argued in court and with lawsuits.
Already feeling the effects
Chris Suggs, a junior at UNC-Chapel Hill and president of the Black Student Movement, said he is already feeling a heavier presence from the SCV since the $2.5 million deal was struck.
While driving back home from campus for the holiday break, Suggs said he passed a Sons of Confederate Veterans billboard on U.S. 70, about 20 minutes from his house.
“It solidified the fears for me,” Suggs said.
While that billboard didn’t come from the settlement money, he said it’s “mind-blowing” that he’s seeing advertisements for the group two weeks after his university agreed to pay the Confederates.
Suggs said he’s worried about how the SCV will use this “large amount of money they’re not used to” to continue to spread their propaganda filled with “hateful rhetoric and ideology.”
He knows the new facility to house Silent Sam can’t go up in any of the 14 North Carolina counties with a UNC school, but that still puts 86 counties in the running. He said the group could hold meetings and events for its members, advertise and recruit more people and spread more harm and division across North Carolina.
“Whether UNC wants to admit it or not, it is fueling white supremacy and funding a very hateful and divisive group,” Suggs said. “And it goes against everything the university is supposed to stand for.”
This story was originally published December 18, 2019 at 3:46 PM.
