The University of Texas said on Thursday it would move a statute of Confederate president Jefferson Davis from the campus to an educational exhibit in response to protests over the public display of symbols of the Confederacy. The University of Texas is removing their statue of Jefferson Davis from outdoors.
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Greg Fenves, president of the university, put together a task force of 12 people to decide what to do with the statue in light of the recent massacre of nine African-American church goers in South Carolina.
The move was originally planned for this weekend, but the new order from the state district court has caused the university to postpone their plans until the court is able to review the issue next week, according to USA Today.
Vandals have targeted the statue and thus had been criticized as a symbol of racism that kept on increasing day by day. The group is also claiming that the leaders of the 50,000 student campus have no unilateral authority of relocating the statue.
Earlier this year, the Sons of Confederate Veterans lost at the U.S. Supreme Court over Texas rejecting a specialized license plate featuring the Confederate flag.
“That and Charleston pretty much started this free-for-all against the Confederate flag”, said Kirk D. Lyons, a North Carolina-based attorney for the group. It wouldn’t matter if I knew with 99 percent certainty that we’d be blown out of the water in court.
Universities have the discretion under state law to relocate statues on their campuses.
COVER: A statue of Confederate president Jefferson Davis was one of seven statues cast by Italian-born sculptor Pompeo Coppini for the University of Texas’ south mall. “It’s the right thing to do to stand up to this nonsense”.
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At this time, the other statues related to the Confederate States of America are not going to be moved, as previously reported by Breitbart Texas. Robert E. Lee and Albert Sidney Johnston and Confederate Postmaster General John H. Reagan will remain near the university’s central clock tower.
