2 charged with defacing slave memorial with slurs

The suspects, Nancy Rushton McCorkle, 50, and Ryan Francis Barnett, 31, face misdemeanor charges of vandalism and ethnic intimidation. Barnett also faces a misdemeanor charge of public urination.

Efforts on Monday evening to reach McCorkle and Barnett by phone and through email were unsuccessful. The university police did not immediately respond to further questions about the arrests.

The Unsung Founders Memorial was defaced with racial slurs and urine March 31, and at least one of the vandals had ties to a group called Heirs to the Confederacy, the university said.

The university has not specified what was written on the memorial or whether the slurs were directed at anyone in particular. McCorkle and 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 meant to honor “those men and women of color — enslaved and free — who helped build the Carolina we all know and love,” according to the university. It features a stone tabletop 6 feet in diameter that is held up by 300 bronze figurines.

Its vandalism inflamed tensions at the university, where in 2018 protesters toppled a Confederate monument called “Silent Sam,” seen by many as an emblem of white supremacy. The Unsung Founders Memorial, situated on the same plaza as Silent Sam, became a rallying point for those who opposed the statue.

“When we were doing sit-ins on Silent Sam, protesters would organize to put flowers on Unsung Founders,” said Lindsay Ayling, a graduate student in the history department who helped organize protests of the statue.

The toppling of Silent Sam came amid a greater reckoning nationwide over what to do with Confederate symbols and tributes. Confederate monuments have been removed across the country, from Los Angeles to New York.

Silent Sam is being stored at a secure, undisclosed location on campus, until the university’s board of governors decides what to do with it, the university has said. Protests have continued both for and against that statue’s removal.

Lance Spivey, chairman of the Heirs to the Confederacy, said Monday that both McCorkle and Barnett are members of the group. He said he was investigating the charges they face, but did not have further comment.

He said he did not know if the two had retained lawyers.

Heirs to the Confederacy has previously been involved in a number of high-profile confrontations on campus protesting the removal of Silent Sam since it was felled in August.

In a March 12 blog post about the motivations for his activism, Spivey said, “I am willing to die for what I believe; I am more so ready to kill for it.” Four days later, he carried a handgun onto campus before being turned away by university police, according to the university and Spivey’s account.

Ayling said she was “worried about the fact that the Heirs to the Confederacy have been coming to campus armed.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.