sLast week we briefly touched on the Silent Sam controversy in Chapel Hill and wondered why the nickname Tar Heels and the city name Carrboro (Carrboro is basically a tick on the soft underbelly of Chapel Hill) weren’t being protested as well.
As UNC’s own museum site points out, the term Tar Heel is strongly associated with North Carolina soldiers who fought for the confederacy. And Carrboro of course is named for Julian Carr, the man who dedicated the statue in 1913, with his dreadful speech, including boasting about horsewhipping an African-American woman, figuring prominently in the protests.