Articles tagged: Confederate monuments
In Gainesville, the Past Is Repeating Itself
Criminal charges against protesters, intimidation from counterprotesters, and the threat of violence by right-wing groups numbed protests against monuments in the North Texas town.
From the May/June 2021 issue. Justin Thompson initially reached out to the Gainesville Police Department (GPD) early last summer because he didn’t want to bre...Read More
A Texas Agency is Defending the Confederacy
As cities and counties across the state try to take down their Confederate memorials, the Texas Historical Commission keeps making their job harder.
In 1908, the Texas chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy built a 15-bedroom mansion in Austin’s leafy Hyde Park neighborhood, a mile north of the...Read More
The Racist History Behind El Paso’s XII Travelers Memorial
Protesters in El Paso have focused on toppling the Equestrian, a monument to a racist colonizer. But the story behind the monument goes deeper.
As anti-racist insurrections swept across the country this summer, protesters in El Paso set their sights on one statue: the Equestrian. A 36-foot-high bronze s...Read More
A Monumental Undertaking
Protests to remove racist statues and iconography are part of a larger effort to reframe Texas history.
A Monumental Undertaking Protests to remove racist statues and iconography are part of a larger effort to reframe Texas history. By Michael Barajas August 11, 2...Read More
The Ghosts of Jefferson
This East Texas tourist town calls itself “the most haunted town in Texas,” but its whitewashed ghost stories elide a complex racial history.
This East Texas tourist town has an economy built on nostalgia tourism, but its whitewashed ghost stories elide a complex racial history. * by Asher Elbein Octo...Read More
The Texas GOP’s War of Municipal Aggression
With their approval of a bill to “protect” Confederate monuments from liberal city halls, Senate Republicans exposed the raw racial dynamics of the party’s preemption crusade.
For more than a century, a pillar of granite and marble has loomed 60 feet high in downtown Dallas, topped with a statue of a Confederate soldier. Statues of f...Read More
Civil Rights Activists Push Lawmakers to Confront Texas’ Dark History of Convict Leasing
Convict leasing, which historians have called “slavery by another name,” was used to build the Capitol and earn profits for the state and private companies for decades.
The Texas Capitol is a source of pride for those who walk its ornate hallways each day. But the building’s thick stone walls hold a dirty secret lawmakers and...Read More
Republicans Push Back Against Making Election Day a Texas Holiday
Citing lost productivity, GOP lawmakers pounced on a bill that would make voting a little easier for state employees.
Confederate Heroes Day, honoring the likes of Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, has been a state holiday in Texas since 1973. But during a House Committee on S...Read More
Abbott, Patrick, Bonnen Quietly Vote to Remove Slavery-Denying Plaque from Texas Capitol
“The reality is that plaque never should have gone up in the state Capitol in the first place, and it shouldn’t have taken 60 years to take it down,” state Representative Eric Johnson said.
Since the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville a year and a half ago, Texas officials have faced increasing demands to purge the statehouse of a plaque...Read More