Posted on 08/11/2015 3:59:56 PM PDT by markomalley
A statue of Woodrow Wilson may be removed from the University of Texas statuary because of the underlying intent of the effigy, which was commissioned by a Confederate veteran who admired Wilson's presidency. A task force was assigned the duty of explaining why the statues need to come down, or at the very least have a plaque added which will provide some "historical context."
The reasoning behind the task force's recommendation is explained in its report. Six of the seven statues featured at the university were commissioned in 1916 by Confederate veteran and the school's largest initial benefactor George Littlefield during a time of "white Southern nostalgia." Four of the statues are Confederate leaders Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Albert Sidney Johnston, and John Reagan. All of the statues are men Littlefield admired, including Wilson.
The report states the following as the reason these statues are in question:
[T]he statues were commissioned during a period of resurgent white Southern nostalgia for the social order of the old South embodied by the Confederacy. This “neo-Confederate” or “Lost Cause” movement, during which numerous Confederate monuments were erected across the South, paralleled the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and an upswing in discrimination and violence against people of color.1, 2 Despite claims by sculptor Coppini that Littlefield’s intent with his memorial to the Confederacy was to show a coming together of the two “nations” as soldiers departed for Europe to fight World War I, the memorial was a celebration of a new Southern patriotism in which a neo-Confederate or Southern nationalist approach was posited as the basis of that national unity through principles of white supremacy.
The report also notes that President Wilson objected to the commission because he would be displayed next to Confederacy President Jefferson Davis. At the time he said, "I must express my entire unwillingness to have my effigy mounted as is suggested in association with the proposed memorial. Moreover... I don’t fancy the partner they offer me."
If the university president declines to simply add plaques that would put the statues in historical context, the statues will be ordered removed and relocated to nearby American history museums. There is also an option to move the statues to less traveled areas of campus. In fact, the report offers five options for consideration whether to add plaques, remove all statues, or just remove and relocate some of them. It is stated that if they only remove the four Confederate leaders, a "new emphasis" would be aimed at the Wilson statue remaining because of his association with the former.
Controversy over these statues dates back to the 1960s, with a resurgence in the 1990s and 2003.
Do we get all our income taxes refunded, too?
That’s it, p.c. sissies, take away all our history of the United States of America and turn it into some Muslim Country....
Lol !!! He’s buried under a stained glass window in the National Cathedral - wait til they carry him out ! Lol !!!
Sure - if they want to return to the Littlefield family the endowment he set up, plus interest of course.
Airbrushing American history. Stalin would be proud of our American Marxists.
The consistent year in year out “best” president ad selected by leftist academics.
Where will this crap end?
Enough is enough. Those who love and admire others are free to put up their statues, too, without tearing down those already there.
Either that, or someday a certain pile of rock in DC is going to see hammers rented at 5 bucks a swing--and a Brinks truck nearby to guard the gate take.
Let’s see; how about releasing all the JFK Oval Office tapes from his presidential library?? What are they scared of? Did he use the “N” word (his father, a very loud racist, sure did); then they would have to change the name of JFK Airport back to Idlewild, which appears to offend no one. Once this starts, it does not stop.
WILSON was a BAD BAD man.. along the lines of Saul Alinsky and the Obamanoid...
AND a democrat like TRUMP.. was and maybe still is..
Indeed. All icons of small minded liberals (I know, the first two words are redundant) should be removed, trashed, burned, and the ashes peed upon, then sent to Dorkbama the Muslim’s house.
It was FDR who carried out the progressive programs of the Bryan/Wilson cabal.
We should start a WH petition to remove the FDR memorial. He committed the single greatest unconstitutional act in our history, when he forcefully removed American citizens of Japanese descent to settlement camps.
Politics of 1984.
“Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” Ingsoc (Newspeak for English Socialism or the English Socialist Party) is the political ideology of the totalitarian government of Oceania in George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
The left in this country hates the truth, it values lies far above the truth, and even goes so far as to claim that truth does not exist.
When the Taliban destroyed cultural artefacts, the old media was vociferous in their denunciations. When it comes to destroying cultural artefacts of Western Civilization, they are all for it.
I think they need to dismantle the school too following their idiotic reasoning.
Take them all down except for Robert E. Lee, and add a plaque commemorating specifically his freeing of his wife’s slaves, the honor he showed in surrender, and his work of reconciliation after the Civil War, specifically mentioning his expulsion of students from Washington College for attacks on blacks and his work to establish a college for free blacks in Virginia.
To say the least, FRiend! America had a change of heart after the disastrous years of the traitorous Wilson regime, opting for the normalcy of Warren G. Harding, which then gave rise to the one of the two truly fine presidents of the 20th Century, Calvin Coolidge. Had Coolidge run in 1928, the Republic of today would be a far different place and a strong case can be made that DemonKKKrat party would have gone the way of the Whigs.
As a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, I would say that they can haul off Wilson’s statue on the basis that he was a stinking Marxist racist bastard unworthy of commemoration. Robert E. Lee can stay. I don’t really care what they do with Jeff Davis...having made all the really big decisions in this matter, I’ll leave that one and all the other minor details to others.
The modern GOP is mainly supported by people whose ancestors voted for Williams Jennings Bryant.
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