We honor the flawed, but Davis has to go
To get to Tuesday’s campus hearing on the future of the statue of Jefferson Davis (and those of other Confederates) at the University of Texas, I turned left on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, a street named for one of the most pivotal people in U.S. history, but one whose personal life was imperfect.
To my right as I drove east was the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, a wonderful facility honoring the memory and dream of a state official whose life was marked by impressive public achievement and depressing personal excess.
The museum is not far from a state office building named for William Barret Travis, who, before becoming an Alamo hero, was a failure as a newspaper publisher and lawyer, and who married a 16-year-old former student of his.
Nearby was the John H. Reagan State Office Building, named for the Confederacy’s postmaster general. Anybody know whether the Confederate Postal Service was any good at delivering the mail?
I parked blocks from the Frank C. Erwin Jr. Special Events Center, named for the late UT regent who, as The Handbook of Texas notes, had a tenure “marked by contro-
Bland names would result if only the perfect were honored.
versy” and an authoritarian attitude that “clashed with that of a student protest movement that saw in Erwin an example of the societal elite who, in the student protesters’ view, dominated America.”
On foot en route to the hearing, I walked past Gregory Gym, named for Thomas Watt Gregory, a UT alum and regent, who, while U.S. attorney general, helped craft the Espionage and Sedition Acts that restricted freedoms during World War I.
The old gym isn’t far from the McCombs School of Business, named for generous UT backer Red McCombs, who, in addition to saying bad things about Charlie Strong when he was hired as UT football coach, lost a U.S. Supreme Court decision that said he had improperly tried to shield $45 million from taxation.
As the discussion on the future of the Jefferson Davis statue continues, let’s remember that if we only honored the perfect, everything would carry as bland a name as the building where Tuesday’s hearing was held — the Student Activity Center.
To determine who among the imperfect is worthy of public honor we have to do the math.
Edwin Dorn, former LBJ School of Public Affairs dean and current professor there, said it well at Tuesday’s hearing: “Statues of historical figures honor those who have made large, lasting and positive contributions. No human being is perfect. So when we erect a statue, we’re making a calculation. We’re saying that the good things this per- son has done far outweigh any wrongs he or she may have committed.
“It is impossible to make such a favorable calculation for Jefferson Davis. He was a slave owner, a traitor, a failure at the very thing for which he is best known: president of the Confederate States. There is nothing honorable in any of this. He should have been hanged for treason,” Dorn said.
I’m not sure about hanging, but it’s clear he shouldn’t be standing at UT. If there ever was a day when it was appropriate, that day is long gone.
Somebody please find an appropriate museum for this statue.