UT Students Deface Statue of Jefferson Davis

[Southron]

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...n-davis-statue

Pity Jefferson Davis, if you will. Vandals have defaced the Confederate president’s statue on the University of Texas campus, most recently with the words “Davis must fall” and “Emancipate UT”.

Student leaders are also seeking to remove the statue from the Austin campus.

“We thought, there are those old ties to slavery and some would find it offensive,” said senior Jamie Nalley, who joined an overwhelming majority of the student government in adopting a resolution in March supporting his ouster.

But as students take aim at Davis, the number of sites in Texas on public and private land that honor the Confederacy is growing – despite the opposition of the NAACP and others. Supporters cite their right to memorialize Confederate veterans and their role in Texas history, while opponents argue the memorials are too often insensitive or antagonistic, while having the backing of public institutions like UT.

The Texas Historical Commission has recognized more than 1,000 such sites from far South Texas to the upper reaches of the Panhandle. And the Sons of Confederate Veterans are planning others, including a 10-foot obelisk a few miles from the Davis statue to honor about 450 Confederate soldiers buried at the city-owned Oakwood Cemetery.

“I don’t think we’re trying to put up stuff just to put up stuff,” said Marshall Davis, spokesman for the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Texas. “We don’t want to impede anyone else from honoring their heroes. We would like to honor our heroes with the same consideration, tolerance and diversity.”

Besides the obelisk, other recent projects include a Confederate memorial along Interstate 10 in the East Texas city of Orange that will feature 32 waving flags representing Texas regiments of the Confederate army, along with 13 columns for each Confederate state. That project began after a Confederate Veterans Memorial Plaza was unveiled two years ago in downtown Palestine, near what the NAACP says was the site of a “hanging tree”.
Advertisement

As for Jefferson Davis, student leaders and the NAACP say his statue has no place on the UT campus since his link to Texas is primarily based on the state’s ties to the Confederate States of America.

“I think it’s offensive that you exalt Jefferson Davis but you don’t exalt Abraham Lincoln,” said Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas NAACP.

[Sola_Fide]

Jefferson Davis had an adopted black son named Jim Limber, which he and his wife rescued from an abusive guardian. When the South was conquered, his son was taken away from them.

[Pericles]

"The principle for which we contend is bound to reassert it's self, though it may be at another time and in another form."
--- President Jefferson Davis, C.S.A.

"Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late... It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision... It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties."
--- Maj. General Patrick R. Cleburne, CSA

[oyarde]

I doubt these students know anything about Davis .

[Tywysog Cymru]

I don't support vandalism but I'm so sick of the glorification of the Confederacy in some parts of the country.

[William Tell]

What are these little vandals doing in my state? Go north little liberal slobs.

[Occam's Banana]

“I think it’s offensive that you exalt Jefferson Davis but you don’t exalt Abraham Lincoln,” said Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas NAACP.

And there you have it, folks - the wit's end of the worship of the State and the sectarian idolization of its Prophets ...

[dannno]

I don't support vandalism but I'm so sick of the glorification of the Confederacy in some parts of the country.

When it's done intelligently it makes some sense.

[otherone]

Jefferson Davis had an adopted black son named Jim Limber, which he and his wife rescued from an abusive guardian. When the South was conquered, his son was taken away from them.

Irony
"which" or "who"?

[Southron]

http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/re...vis-a-traitor/

[Sola_Fide]

Irony
"which" or "who"?

"which", because we all know I was trying to dehumanize this person because he was black.