Judgement Day has finally arrived for my beloved alma mater, The University of Texas at Austin. A long time ago, over four decades now, when I arrived on campus as an 18 year-old I was struck by the large number of Confederate statues placed in prominent places, the buildings named after Confederate heroes, and by the fact that the giant Littlefield Fountain, one of the most popular photo stops for students, parents, and tourists, was named after an obscure Confederate Army officer.
It made me uncomfortable. I felt the university leaders had lost the Civil War, but they used what power they had left to send us a daily reminder of their Lost Cause — of slavery, oppression, and a Southern society ruled by the privileged few. Robert E. Lee, Sydney Johnston, and Jefferson Davis were not forgotten on the UT grounds.
I should have complained, but I didn’t.
But I did complain around 10 years ago when the UT president announced a commission to decide what to do with the statues. It was the only letter I ever wrote to a UT president, but I made it count. “Take them down,” I wrote, “and dump them all in the Colorado River.”
They stayed up until they were removed in middle of the night in 2017. Over 150 years after the end of the Civil War, the University of Texas, this supposed bastion of free thought and one of the most academically respected universities in the Southwest, was forced to shed some of its wretched past in the darkness so no one would rally around the statues to take up the Lost Cause again. (One of the statues was stored away for a while but then placed in a different spot…)
Littlefield Fountain, hopefully to be renamed in the near future…
Now a new generation of UT students are demanding the university shed the rest of its Confederate past, and the voices are coming from the most sacred of UT institutions — the Longhorn football team. They’ve announced they won’t help recruit other African American players until their various demands are met, which include changing the names of buildings and fountains named after Confederate heroes and removing The Eyes of Texas as the school song.
Quit singing The Eyes of Texas? That’s a big demand. The song’s a massive part of the culture, both in the state and at the University of Texas. But when this story of protest at UT began to break last week, I read more about the song’s background.
And I was ashamed.
I never knew about the origins of the song’s melody, that it had been a tune sung by slaves. I had heard that it might have been sung in a minstrel show, but I didn’t know the lyrics had their origins in one. I thought it was already a popular song that had been misappropriated by a small group of idiots. But finding out the racists wrote it? I won’t ever sing it again.
I learned African American athletes, understandably, hate having to stand and sing The Eyes of Texas at the end of athletic events. I find it horrifying they were being asked to sing a slave song. (Spoiler alert: The second verse of the fight song, Texas Fight, is a jazzed up version of The Eyes of Texas, which means the Longhorn Band might be memorizing a new fight song Austin in the near future…)
And I’m asking myself, “What else did I miss?” I, too, am doing my share of soul searching.
I support the players’ demands, not because of football recruiting, but because everyone has the right to walk across a great university and not be forced to look at reminders of ignorance and oppression. The university will never help all of its students reach their full potential until it sheds every last remnant of its Confederate past. Renouncing the Confederacy and throwing The Eyes of Texas into the trashcan won’t remove all of the racism, but it’s a step that has to be taken. The song, and all other things Confederate, have to go. Now.
Some Longhorn alums can’t get over the idea they’re being asked not to sing their beloved school song ever again. They need to understand something: This latest battle over bigotry is over and they’ve already lost. Regardless of what university leaders decide to do with The Eyes of Texas, do we really expect to see black, white, or any other ethnicities of young athletes singing that song from this point forward? No way. They shouldn’t, and they won’t. The discussion might continue among the older folks, but the decision has been made by the young people: the eyes of Texas were upon us.
If the alumni still defiantly sing it at the end of the games, it will be like the founders of the university singing Dixie 100 years ago. The Eyes of Texas will be a new version of Dixie, a racist song sung by a defeated people who just don’t get that they’re standing on the wrong side of history.
I’m still proud to be a University of Texas graduate because of the great people I met there and the incredible education I got in its buildings (some of them unfortunately named after the wrong kind of leaders). But the university needs to take this step that has been a long time coming.
Now we’ll see if today’s university leaders have the courage to undo the pain caused by their predecessors.
P.S. This blog has been released on Juneteenth; the State of Texas is the only state that has made it a paid holiday for employees. If the state can do that, then there’s hope for the University of Texas.