The University of Texas at Austin joins the growing list of institutions and cities across the country that remove statues that honor leaders of the Confederation.
The president of the university, Gregory Fenves, announced on Sunday night that the school was demolishing statues of Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Albert Sidney Johnston, as well as Confederate Post General John Reagan.
"The horrific displays of hatred at the University of Virginia and at Charlottesville shocked and saddened the nation, and these events make it clear, now more than ever, that the Confederate monuments have become symbols of modern white supremacy and neo-Nazism." , Fenves wrote in a letter to the UT community.
The crews did not waste time, dismantling the statues on Monday morning in front of a crowd of a few dozen supporters and protesters.
Fenves, in his letter, noted that the statues were "erected during the period of Jim Crow's laws and segregation." The statues "represent the subjugation of African Americans," he said. "That is still true today for white supremacists who use them to symbolize hatred and intolerance."
The university formed a working group of professors, students, alumni and university leaders in 2015, after a declared white supremacist killed nine members of a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, to evaluate statues on the Army campus. Confederate and political leaders. At that time, the school decided to move the Confederate President Jefferson Davis, which is now part of an exhibition at the Dolph Briscoe Center for the History of the United States
"After considering the Original report of the working group and events of last week and my discussions with the campus community in mind, I have decided to relocate "the remaining statues," said Fenves.
The statues of Lee, Johnston and Reagan will be added to the collection at the Briscoe Center.
A statue in honor of former Texas Governor James Stephen Hogg, who formed The statue of Hogg, who served as governor in the 1890s, will be considered for reinstatement elsewhere on the campus.
Baltimore was one of the first cities in tearing down Confederate statues last week after the violence in Charlottesville earlier this month. Cities across the country followed suit, and more than a dozen jurisdictions have taken steps to reconsider the placement of Confederate statues or approved their elimination.
Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, authorized the removal of a statue of Lee from the front of his chapel on Saturday.
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