Howard students wore nooses in the 1930s as part of a protest effort. Now, these UNC students do, too.

It was 1934. Howard University students spoke out against lynching by looping nooses around their necks.

More than eight decades later, that wrenching act served as prologue for another protest, when two students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill fastened nooses around their necks amid demonstrations against a Confederate monument on their campus.

In volatile, polarized times, the country is confronting lynching: In the spring, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, with its searing look at the deadly violence of white supremacy, opened in Alabama. And in December, the Senate unanimously passed a bill that would make lynching a federal hate crime -- nearly a century after the first efforts to do so.

Jerry J. Wilson, a graduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill, wanted a way to jolt people into understanding how black people on campus feel about the statue known as Silent Sam. While some revere the monument honoring students who fought for the Confederacy, others see a blatant symbol of racist violence, erected a century ago with a dedication speech that gloatingly referred to horsewhipping a black woman. Protesters pulled it down in August, and school officials are debating whether, and how, to return it to the public university campus.