Just days after an advisory panel recommended the University of Texas at Austin relocate some or all of its statues of Confederate leaders, UT-Austin President Gregory Fenves announced that the statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis will soon have a new home.
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Following a task force’s recommendations to relocate some or all of the statues, Fenves said the Davis statue would be better placed in an educational exhibit at the Briscoe Center.
Fenves said the best place to explain Davis’ role in the history of the American South is through an educational exhibit.
While the Davis statue is headed for the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, several other Confederate symbols across the campus – including statues of Robert E. Lee and Albert Sidney Johnston, a Confederate general – will remain in place, Fenves said. “Robert E. Lee’s complicated legacy to Texas and the nation should not be reduced to his role in the Civil War”, Fenves said.
To preserve symmetry on campus, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson will be moved to another exterior location on campus.
The University of Texas (UT) at Austin confirmed it will not remove their statue of Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy’s President, but will uproot it and move it indoors.
Shortly after becoming president in June, I appointed a task force to identify options for the statues along the Main Mall that have long been a source of discussion, debate, and more recently controversy.
Pressure on UT to do something about the long-controversial statues had intensified since the slaying in June of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., in what authorities say was a racist attack by a white gunman who sympathized with the Confederacy.
UT will begin work to move the statues Friday morning.
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“The Davis statue will be incorporated into this exhibit, where it will play a prominent role in educating students and visi9tors”, Carleton said. Protests against the statues date back decades, and UT’s Student Government adopted a resolution in March calling for moving Davis’ statue to a museum. While James Stephen Hogg’s father was a Confederate commander during the Civil War, Hogg did not have direct ties to the Confederacy. Their history will be described in the Briscoe Center. Instead, a university statement said officials would consider placing a plaque on the mall to provide historical context for the inscription and the remaining statues. After the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, Lee’s order to his troops to put down their arms and “become good citizens” is seen as short circuiting an effort by many Southern soldiers to wage a guerilla war which could have lasted for years. UT Austin is also now defending its use of race and ethnicity as one factor in its admissions process in a case before the United States Supreme Court.
