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Texas honors KKK night rider
He has a dorm named after him at
Univ of Texas
"We hang niggers - you got any?"
A dormitory at the University of Texas
that has been named after the founder of the Florida branch of the Ku
Klux Klan,
since the 1950s, may finally receive a 21st century name change, thanks
to a scholarly journal article published by a
Denver law school professor. Thomas D. Russell’s article drew attention
to the campus dorm named after Klansman
William Stewart Simkins, as part of a greater profile of odious
institutional racism at the university, developed to
combat compliance with the United States Supreme Court’s decision in
Brown v. Board of Education.
When the KKK dorm became the subject of unwanted national attention,
the Austin-based school’s
president announced he would recommend a name change to the Board of
Regents.
Russell’s provocatively entitled piece, ‘Keep the Negroes Out of Most Classes Where
There Are a Large Number
of Girls’: The Unseen Power of the Ku Klux Klan and Standardized
Testing at The University of Texas, 1899-1999,”
drew attention to past racism at The University of Texas,
as well as the vast number of college buildings named after KKK
members throughout the South. The article’s title is a quotation from
the University of Texas registrar nine days after the
decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
William Stewart Simkins was a revered former University of Texas Law
School professor and Confederate soldier.
But he also is known for founding the Florida Klan with his brother
after the Civil War:
“Professor Simkins helped to organize the Ku Klux Klan in Florida at
the conclusion of the American Civil War,
and he advocated his Klan past to Texas students. Like the university
registrar during the 1950s, Professor Simkins
was explicitly concerned with the sexual defense of white women.”
And Russell points out that naming the school building after Simpkins,
was an act of defiance
by university officials, in response to pressure to desegregate its
classes:
So, the Civil War never really ended - it just went dormant for 140 years.
Obama's election was just too much for the racists to handle, so they have re-organized as the Tea Baggers.
Add some GOP money and the media's instant willingness to
throw gas on all racial fires
and we have the makings of a new civil war that could make the last one
look like a dry run.
Has the GOP always knows this day was coming?
If not, why are they so cozy with the NRA?
Why do Republicans think every white man needs an assault rifle?
...and I'm stuck in a party that is allergic to self-defense.
Remember the movie Fail Safe?
Walter Matthau surmised that, after a devastating nuclear
attack by Russia, America would be left
with hardened criminals who survived because they were insulated by so
much concrete,
and librarians, who were insulated from the blasts from paper, which
blocks radiation.
He said the resulting fight for supremacy would be
between the convicts, who were ruthless killers,
and the librarians, who could better organize because they knew order
and discipline.
Is that what we're down to?
The ruthless, murdering Republicans and the Democratic
librarians?
...and I'm stuck in a party that is allergic to self-defense.