Tag Archives: Confederate monuments
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
As a Son of Slaves and the Confederacy, I Implore Governor Abbott to Remove the Capitol’s Deceitful Plaque
Heritage is the word most often given for the celebration of Confederate monuments. But my heritage must also be respected.
In 1837, my white great-great-great-grandfather bought my black great-great-great-grandmother for $800. In 1871, his son — the half-brother of her son — bec...Read More
Greg Abbott’s Own Research Shows He Could Remove a Confederate Marker at the Capitol if He Wanted To
Abbott’s recent crash course on Confederate markers shows that immediate steps to remove the Capitol plaque are available — should he find the stomach.
For the past seven months, Governor Greg Abbott has been studying what he can do about a 59-year-old plaque hanging in the Texas Capitol that denies the Civil W...Read More
‘A Shout in the Ruins’ Contends with the South’s Violent History
Kevin Powers is intent on making us see that wars don’t so much start and stop as they generate and breed.
Recent years have brought a resurgent round of literary and cinematic attention to the brutality of slavery, drawing on the rich tradition of the slave narrativ...Read More
Dallas Isn’t Ready to Remove its Confederate Monuments
Citing costs, Dallas’ mayor and eight other Council members voted to delay the removal of the Confederate War Memorial across from City Hall.
On March 3, 1910, Allen Brooks, a 65-year-old black laborer, was beaten, stabbed and dragged through the streets of downtown Dallas. As Brooks, who denied accus...Read More
Abbott Supports Removing Inaccurate Capitol Displays. Do Slavery-Denying Plaques Count?
In debate over Confederate marker, Abbott won’t say whether it’s “substantially inaccurate” to deny slavery’s connection to the Civil War.
In debate over Confederate marker, Abbott won’t say whether it’s “substantially inaccurate” to deny slavery’s connection to the Civil War. ...Read More