Texas State University recently removed an 85-year monument honoring Confederate President Jefferson Davis from its San Marcos campus.
A statue of Jefferson Davis is seen on the University of Texas campus, Tuesday, May 5, 2015, in Austin, Texas. As University of Texas administrators consider a request to remove a statue that symbolizes the Confederacy, the number of memorials in Texas honoring the Confederate cause and its leaders continues to grow. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
“It is not an appropriate monument for a modern Texas university,” a university spokesman told the Observer newspaper.
The move came after months of protest from students, faculty and community groups amid a nationwide outcry over the devaluing of Black lives by law enforcement and in other spheres of public life.
Last May, after no action had been taken, a coalition of San Marcos groups calling itself the Cousins of the Confederacy even staged protest by covering the highway marker in a trash bag and putting up a sign that read, “Temporarily Closed Pending Further Race Analysis,” according to the Observer newspaper.
““It’s just not ethical to destroy or erase any of our history, but I do think that there’s something to be said about not endorsing it,” Kendall Ward, a history sophomore, told The University Star back in February, reflecting popular opinion. “Having a monument to the Confederacy, especially on-campus, is still endorsing a bad part of our history. We should recognize and acknowledge it, but I don’t think that we should monument it.”
Part of the delay—even after the Faculty Senate had voted to remove the memorial—was determining who had the authority to do so. The United Daughters of the Confederacy installed the marker on federal land along the busy highway almost 90 years ago. The university eventually purchased the lot but the Texas Department of Transportation retained the right-of-way on the parcel where the monument was situated. The University eventually assumed the responsibility and has moved the marker seven miles away to land donated to the Daughters of the Confederacy.
“The university paid for everything: removing it, cleaning it of graffiti, moving it to Hunter and setting it there,” said Kathy Hillman, Texas division president of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, expressing gratitude to the university.
Despite the removal of the controversial marker, race continues to be a contentious issue at the institution, where African Americans comprise an estimated 9 percent of the more than 33,000 undergraduate students on campus. After “die-in” demonstrations against police brutality at a recent football game and on campus led by Black students, a Twitter user re-tweeted images of the protest with the message: ““N—–s leave my school #blacktxst.” University officials are investigating.
“It makes you feel unsafe. It makes you feel like this is the reason why we’re doing the things we’re doing around the city and campus,” said Lonvis Naulls, a senior who co-founded Black Lives Movement of San Marcos, as quoted by the San Antonio Express-News. “For that to be said, this is like an example of what we’re fighting for— not for a certain group to be looked at differently or pictured differently.”
