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Two people were arrested Monday under the charge of vandalizing a memorial dedicated to African-American slaves and workers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, police said. l & # 39; university.
The suspects, Nancy Rushton McCorkle, 50, and Ryan Francis Barnett, 31, face charges of vandalism and ethnic intimidation. Mr. Barnett also faces a charge of public micturition.
Monday night's efforts to reach Ms. McCorkle and Mr. Barnett by phone and email were unsuccessful. University police said they identified the suspects with the help of video surveillance videos.
The memorial of Unsung founders was stained by racial slurs and urine on March 31, and at least one of the vandals had ties to a group called "Heirs to Confederation," the university announced. .
The university did not specify what was written on the memorial nor if the insults were directed against anyone in particular. Ms. McCorkle and Mr. Barnett are also charged with vandalizing an art installation on campus the same night, university police said.
The Unsung Founders' Memorial, installed in 2005, is intended to pay tribute to "those men and women of color – slaves and free – who helped build the Carolina we all know and love," according to the report. ;university. It features a stone tray six feet in diameter which is supported by 300 bronze figurines.
His vandalism ignited tensions at the university, where last year the protesters overthrew a confederate monument called "Silent Sam", considered by many to be an emblem of white supremacy. The Unsung Founders' Memorial, located in the same place as Silent Sam, became a rallying point for opponents of the statue.
"When we were organizing sit-ins on Silent Sam, the protesters organized to put flowers on Unsung's founders," said Lindsay Ayling, a graduate student in the history department who helped organize manifestations of the statue.
The reversal of Sam silent came in the middle a bigger national account on what to do with Confederate symbols and tributes. Confederate monuments were removed across the country from Los Angeles to Brooklyn.
Silent Sam is stored in a safe, undisclosed location on campus until the university's governing council decides what to do with it, the university said. The demonstrations continued both for and against the movement of this statue.
Lance Spivey, president of the Confederation's heirs, said Monday that McCorkle and Barnett were both members of the group. He stated that he was investigating the charges they are facing, but he did not have any other comments.
He said that he did not know if the two had retained the services of lawyers.
The heirs of the Confederation have already been involved in a number of high-profile contests on campus to protest the withdrawal of Silent Sam since its slaughter last August.
In a March 12 blog post about the motives behind his activism, Spivey said, "I'm ready to die for what I believe; I am all the more willing to kill for that. Four days later, he carried a handgun on campus before being rejected by the university police, according to the story of the university and Mr. Spivey.
Ms. Ayling said she was "worried that the heirs of the Confederation came armed on campus."
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