Posted on 07/15/2010 8:56:19 AM PDT by BnBlFlag
Break with the Past: Changing a dorm name makes a good Step towards healing UT's troubled racial history
After several months of discussion within the University of Texas community in Austin, UT President William Powers Jr. will ask the school's board of regents today to consider renaming a dorm that now honors a former law professor, William Stewart Simkins, along with a neighboring park dedicated to his brother Eldred, a judge and UT regent.
The reason? Simkins was not only a legal educator at UT from 1899-1929. He and his brother were members of the Ku Klux Klan during a period in which it terrorized black communities through lynchings and shootings and dozens of murders.
In a 1916 article in the UT alumni magazine, The Alcalde, professor Simkins boasted of participating in the Klan's infamous night rides: "The immediate effect upon the Negro was wonderful," he wrote, "the flitting to and fro of masked horses and faces struck terror to the race."
A former UT law professor, Tom Russell, helped ignite the campus controversy over 55-year-old Simkins Residence Hall with a paper detailing the professor's dark past. The paper also explores the UT leadership's last-ditch efforts to resist integration following the U.S. Supreme Court's historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954 that struck down separate but equal education systems. UT responded by instituting admission tests designed to exclude a disproportionate number of African-American applicants.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
It most certainly is about honoring Simkins. They generally don't name dorms or parks after criminals.
And based on Simkins' boastful quote -- from which we may justifiably conclude that he took part in lynchings....
So I ask again: is that the sort of guy you want to honor?
lol!
within a week of flying all their flags at half staff for Bobby Byrd no doubt
I spent 2 years in Simkins Hall when I was a student at UT.
Shame on them. Now they will not get my alumni donation .....again.
Good point, (in other words they were Democrats). Idea sparked here...no reference should be made to the Klan without the modifier “Democrat”...as in, “he was a member of the Democrat Klan.”
“UT responded by instituting admission tests designed to exclude a disproportionate number of African-American applicants.”
Admission tests designed to exclude a disproportionate number of stupid applicants.
Of course, then the next in line is the worst, by process of elimination, and the criteria for elimination become progressively less until capricious dislike is sufficient.
If the man was honored by having a campus building named after him, either it was for something beneficial and non-nefarious, or the entire institution should be held to account for having so honored him.
Ah, I see. One may reasonably surmise from his quote that Mr. Simkins participated in lynchings: and if so he was a murderer. You're saying that we should maintain the honor given to a likely murderer ... just to defend history, doncha know.
If the man was honored by having a campus building named after him, either it was for something beneficial and non-nefarious, or the entire institution should be held to account for having so honored him.
Simpkins was more than just a garden variety racist; he acted out on it. He might well have been honored for being nefarious; or, they may just have a tradition of naming buildings after past presidents.
Nevertheless, his activities were certainly no great secret, since he boasted about his them in an alumni magazine: he was proud of them; and the people of his time were obviously not ignorant of the facts.
More generally, one might say that the evidence points to UT having a dark past in regards to blacks. Simpkins was apparently just a particularly egregious example of a more general problem. Maybe they should be held to account.
They should change the name... right after everything with Robert K. Byrd's name on it has it's name changed. But until then..
"...UT's troubled racial history..."So says you, author. I don't find any of it troubling. What I do find troubling is the leftist media constantly attempting to frame the debate.
"...So I ask again: is that the sort of guy you want to honor?..."Lighten up, Francis. In his day, he was not doing anything abnormal or exceptional. He was not a criminal by the standards of his day. We cannot judge people in the past by the standards of today. To do so is lame-o.
What evidence? This stupid article on this particular incident?
You have no idea what you're talking about.
It's a matter of record. A couple of examples from the article:
"UT previously had refused to admit black students after World War II, resulting in a 1946 lawsuit by Heman Sweatt, who was represented by future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall....UT's supporters in the Legislature, in order to provide a separate-but-equal legal defense for segregation, passed a bill creating what would become Texas Southern University in Houston."
It's no use pretending that such racial discrimination (and worse) did not take place in Texas and elsewhere. It really did. And Mr. Simkins appears to be a poster child for just how far some folks were willing to go.
"Professor Simkins boasted of participating in the Klan's infamous night rides: 'The immediate effect upon the Negro was wonderful,' he wrote, 'the flitting to and fro of masked horses and faces struck terror to the race.'"
You don't find any of it troubling?
I rather doubt that lynching was legal, even by the standards of his day.... And it seems quite likely that Mr. Simkins played those games.
And if Texas did not pursue or prosecute those who took part in those acts of murder, that is nothing to be proud of.
It's amazing the lengths to which you fellows will go to excuse the inexcusable.
Fox News just had a blip on this. The new name is “Waller Hall” since it is close to Waller Creek.
“Russell is a frequent media commenter regarding legal issues. Russell once was a candidate for the Colorado House of Representatives and has been active in health-care reform. A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Russell now lives in Denver’s Lowry neighborhood with his wife and two children.”
Why am I not surprised?
"...It's amazing the lengths to which you fellows will go to excuse the inexcusable...""You fellows"?
"YOU FELLOWS"?
That's racist !
"...And it seems quite likely that Mr. Simkins played those games..."Well golly, it seems "quite likely" that you molested my puppy last night, but since I have no proof of that, that statement is merely conjecture, just like your comments are.
Anybody can make wild claims. And no, I know you didn't molest my puppy. It was FReeper Colonel Kangaroo. He hates puppies, as well as anything involving Southern pride. This thread is lamer by his absence. I miss his irrational hatred sometimes.
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