Texas varsity removes 4 Confederate statues

Houston, August 21 

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University of Texas President has ordered the removal of statues of four people with Confederate ties, including Gen Robert E Lee, from the campus in the wake of violent clashes at a white supremacists rally in Virginia that killed a woman.

President Gregory L Fenves announced yesterday that the statues with Confederate ties would be removed immediately from the school’s South Mall. “The horrific displays of hatred at the University of Virginia and in Charlottesville shocked and saddened the nation,” Fenves said in a message to the university community.

“These events make it clear, now more than ever, that Confederate monuments have become symbols of modern white supremacy and neo-Nazism,” UT spokesman Gary Susswein said. The removal work was being done after dark and without advance warning for public safety reasons, spokesman said.

Fenves made the decision to take down the statues following talks with student leaders, faculty, staff and alumni in light of the August 12 clashes in Charlottesville in which the 32-year-old woman was killed and 19 injured when a car drove into a crowd of people.

The bronze likenesses of Confederate Lee and Albert Sidney Johnston and Confederate Postmaster John H Reagan will be relocated to the university’s Briscoe Center for American History, Fenves said.

The statue of James Stephen Hogg, the first native-born Governor of Texas and the son of a Confederate general, will be considered for re-installation at another campus site, he said.

The university removed the statues of Jefferson Davis and former US President Woodrow Wilson in 2015 following a task force formed in the wake of the June 2015 church shooting in Charleston. — PTI