Campus symbols recall segregation, KKK

Enshrined on campus, his name etched in stone, is a Confederate leader who brings a dark cloud to UT's detailed past. But he is not bronzed on the South Mall.

He is William Simkins, a law professor during the early 20th century who co-founded the Florida chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, and has a dorm on campus named in his honor.

The statues of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis that tower over the South Mall seem to be the most visible reminders of our University's tainted history. Some students have been calling for their removal for decades, and UT President Larry Faulkner recently issued, among other suggestions to relieve racial tensions, a plan to move the controversial Confederate statues to a more appropriate location near the perennially escaping horses of the Littlefield Fountain.

However, if one digs up some history behind the names for which several of the buildings on campus are named, skeletons steadily roll out of UT's closet.

Take for instance the lecture epicenter of the physics department, T. S. Painter Hall, which is named after a respected figure in the field of genetics who later became UT president in 1946. During this time, a black student, Heman Sweatt, was denied an application to the law school. Sweatt took his case against President Painter all the way to the Supreme Court, which eventually handed down a unanimous decision in 1950 that forced UT to admit Sweatt since no educationally equal public all-black law school existed in Texas.

Although Painter was merely the figurehead behind this controversy, the Court's decision, named Sweatt v. Painter, offers little sanctuary for exonerating the man who stood quite visibly in the way of racial equality on our campus.

Several Confederate soldiers also live on in the monikers of buildings around campus. George Washington Littlefield, who endures as a fountain, a dorm and a house, fought for the South with the 8th Texas Cavalry and led a campaign against what he saw as a Northern bias in campus textbooks. Waggener Hall is named after Leslie Waggener, a Confederate soldier who took part in the Hundred Days' March from Dalton to Atlanta.

Robert Lee Moore, of RLM fame, did not fight for the Confederacy, although his father did. His brand of professorship, the Moore Method, is still used in many math classes today: an individual, bookless and graphical approach to calculus that demanded competition. However, several students remember Moore in a different light. Former student Chandler Davis writes, "R. L. Moore was firmly anti-black, refusing to teach any black students." Another student, Raymond Johnson, once said, "When Moore discovered that the student was black, he walked out of the lecture."

Yet, no building on campus is named after a more controversial man than Simkins Dormitory. Ironically, this once all-black (and still poorly ventilated) dorm is named after Simkins, the law professor who claimed to have participated in the firing on Fort Sumter as a Confederate soldier and, with the help of his brother, helped found the Florida chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.

In a lecture defending his sympathies with the KKK, Simkins boasted, "Many a time I have seen the negroes force white persons from the sidewalk, but the right of way was never denied to those young men whom they suspected of being members of the Ku Klux." He also vilified the Freedman's Bureau, noting that it assisted in "crushing the pride of the South by the elevation of the negro to political control."

To water down an argument by saying that those on the side of the Confederacy were solely so to defend slavery makes a mockery of the hundreds of thousands who died in the American Civil War. Yet one cannot deny that the horrific institution of slavery was part of their platform, and thus possibly heroic names such as Robert E. Lee become associated with an unjust and awful cause.

Undeniably, these men were not only racists; they were active members in founding the University. Simkins donated part of his private library to UT, Littlefield gave more money to the school than any other individual in its first 50 years, and Moore is considered to be one of the most influential American mathematicians of the early 20th century. But their often racist pasts remind us that history is not as pure as the marble with which we often immortalize it.

With the addition of statues honoring black congresswoman Barbara Jordan and Hispanic labor rights activist Cesar Chavez within the decade, a more whole picture of civic opinion will be erected on campus.

Likewise, buildings on campus honoring Union sympathizer George Washington Brackenridge and the progressive integrationist Homer Rainey (who ironically lost the Texas governor election of 1946 to the segregationist Beauford H. Jester in a lopsided election) offer a dissenting and more complete ideological picture of the University.

A foul past is not meant to be forgotten; it is meant to be remembered and learned from. Renaming controversial buildings or removing statues deletes from public memory the courage it took to overcome the crooked goals some figures once stood for.

Although it is benign to honor someone's past by naming an edifice, the act creates a symbol to be admired. What may be best admired is not the subject itself, but those who overcame its associated injustices.

Hermes is a physics junior, a Daily Texan copy editor and design director for Texas Travesty.