Catag94 said:

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I will never understand why a statue, of a man who did much good for our state, and University's future well over a century ago, and in a time far different from today, is somehow causing anyone actual issues of any kind in this time.
First, how about pay it no attention. It's a statue for crying out loud. it, in and of itself is not racist.
Second, anywhere you go, you may find individuals who display some sort of hatred toward others for whatever reason, but that doesn't mean it's widespread and certainly not systemic.
3. People of all backgrounds, colors, religious beliefs, etc have attended universities like TAMU with great success and support. Mond, as an example, would probably be hard pressed to argue that he has been treated anyway but fairly in his time here. I will never understand how this representation of the past is interfering with his future. In fact, while some may argue the good doesn't put weight the alleged bad, Mond would be somewhere else, most likely right now, where it not for Ross fighting for TAMU. But does he even think about his gain from the good Ross did?
4, How about considering where this country is now compared to where it was back then and before? Why make yourself some sort of victim today? It makes no sense.
5, Some want these inanimate objects removed that do nothing to interfere with their opportunities today, but do they want active forms of racism removed, including things like affirmative action that actual do benefit/oppress people based on skin color?
I believe the actions we see today would completely enrage and embarrass Dr. Martin Luther King, and others who were on the right side of civil rights so long ago.

I encourage Mond and anyone/everyone to follow Jesus, honor God (who hates racism, btw), by loving God with all your heart, soul, and might, and love your neighbor (any other person) as yourself. If our society did this and focused on things above and not ourselves, our history and the statues we have reminding us of it, good or bad, will be of no consequence, and true freedom would exist.

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The narrative that is being circulated does not sufficiently explain Ross's role in the displacement, dispossession, and denigration of Indigenous peoples

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Desert Professor said:

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Texas A&M University Department of History Faculty on the Institutional History of Lawrence Sullivan Ross
It has come to our attention that recent calls for removal of the Lawrence Sullivan Ross statue from Academic Plaza are being answered by the Chancellor's office with a document titled "Lawrence Sullivan Ross: Soldier, Statesman, Knightly Gentleman" that is outdated, incomplete, and unreliable. Elements of this partial history are likewise being uncritically repeated in various forums online and elsewhere. Let us be clear, the "real story of Sul Ross," as it was termed in one email, was not produced by the Department of History at Texas A&M University and does not meet the rigorous standards of our discipline (i.e., it is missing attribution, bibliographic citations, and an acknowledgement of varying interpretations, among other flaws).1 Our commitment to the scholarly standards of our profession, as well as to academic and personal integrity, compel us to offer the following statement by way of clarifying, contextualizing, and enriching our collective understanding of Ross as an historical figure.
As historians in the Department of History at Texas A&M University, we find the "real story of Sul Ross" to be unreliable in three important ways.
1. The narrative that is being circulated does not sufficiently explain Ross's role in the displacement, dispossession, and denigration of Indigenous people in Texas. Instead, it relies on: a partial account of his time as a Texas Ranger without the full history of the Ranger force as one that terrorized Indigenous peoples as well as Mexican and African Americans, facile characterizations of Native groups as "friendly" or "hostile," and little consideration of his role in the massacre at Pease Creek and the expulsion of most Native American Texans from their ancestral homelands to Indian Territory.2
2. The narrative makes no mention of Ross's role within and on behalf of the Confederate States of America nor does it even use the term Civil War, referring instead to a "call to duty" and concern for states' rights. What might that duty and those rights be? The leading Texas secessionist, John Marshall, spelled it out in the Austin State Gazette, April 20, 1861: "It is essential to the honor and safety of every poor white man to keep the [N]egro in his present state of subordination and discipline." While the consequences of the Civil War are still unfolding in the present, it is a matter of consensus among professional historians that preservation of an agrarian economy, culture, and society based on human bondage and white supremacy was the primary catalyst for Confederate secession, whether or not a given individual was a slave owner (as was Ross's father and from which he directly benefitted).3 In addition, Texan Confederates' proclivities for
1 We recommend consulting: the American Historical Association's "Statement on the Standards of Professional Conduct."
2 We recommend consulting: Gary Clayton Anderson, The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820-1875 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005); Paul H. Carlson and Tom Crum,
William Carrigan and Bill Clive, Forgotten Dead: Mob Violence against Mexicans in the United States, 1848-1928 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); David LaVere, The Texas Indians (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004); Monica Muoz Martnez, The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018).
and Massacre: The Pease River Capture of Cynthia Ann Parker (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2012);
3
Eighth Census of the United States 1860; National Archives Washington DC, USA; Series Number: M653; Record
Group: Records of the Bureau of the Census; RG29,
2.
1
Myth, Memory,

violence extended to other ethnic groups such as Germans and Tejanos and also to white dissenters from "the cause."4
3. The narrative pointedly disavows any participation in the Ku Klux Klan but does not explain that white supremacist violence characterized the state in the years after Reconstruction far beyond the functioning of any single organization. As a Texas Ranger in his early life and as the Texas governor who oversaw the Rangers later, Ross represented and carried out anti-Mexican, anti-Black, and anti-Indigenous beliefs and policies. These were not hidden attitudes, as one lyric of an official Rangers song attests: "all the Mexkins [sic] ought to be...in a narrow grave just six by three."5 Ross's direct involvement in the so-called Jaybird-Woodpecker War in 1888-89 resulted in the disfranchisement and violent expulsion of Black Americans from Fort Bend County and ensured whites-only primaries and elections for decades to come.6 In these and other actions, Ross was not alone. Anti-Black laws, poll taxes and voter intimidation, and violent attacks against people of color were the primary way that white southerners consolidated their power in the post-Reconstruction era. It is unequivocally true that Ross agreed with, supported, and defended these policies until his death, even as he carried out what might be considered isolated acts of charity towards some communities of color.7
There are many other important historical contexts and bodies of testimony that should be considered in any legitimate accounting of Lawrence Sullivan Ross's life and legacies. Historians have a responsibility to consult myriad sources from multiple perspectives and all those voices cannot always be reconciled. Instead, we must inhabit the uncertainties and contradictions of the human condition and be ever-mindful of how choices made in the past affect our lives in the present. The "real story of Sul Ross" does none of this.
4 We recommend consulting: Dale Baum, The Shattering of Texas Unionism: Politics in the Lone Star State during the Civil War Era (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998); Walter Buenger, Secession and the Union in Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1984);
5 David Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1987), 102.
6 Leslie Ann Lovett, "The Jaybird-Woodpecker War: Reconstruction and Redemption in Fort Bend County, Texas, 1869-1889," (M.A. Thesis, Rice University, 1994), 78-79; Pauline Yelderman, "Jaybird-Woodpecker War," Texas State Historical Association Online, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/wfj01.
7 We recommend consulting: Randolph B. Campbell, Grass-Roots Reconstruction in Texas, 1865-1880 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997); Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (New York: HarperCollins, rev. ed. 2014); John Hope Franklin, Reconstruction after the Civil War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 3rd. ed. 2012); John William Gorman, "The Crucible of Freedom: Reconstruction Violence in Texas, 1865-1868 (Ph.D. Dissertation, Texas A&M University, 2019); Jumpin' Jim Crow: Southern Politics from Civil War to Civil Rights, ed. Jane Dailey, Glenda Gilmore, and Bryant Simon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Montejano, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986.
Randolph B. Campbell, An Empire for Slavery: The Peculiar
Institution in Texas, 18211865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989); F.R. Lubbock,
Texas: Or, Memoirs of Francis Richard Lubbock, Governor of Texas in War Time, 1861-63. A Personal Experience in
Six Decades in
Business, War, and Politics (Austin, B. C. Jones & co., printers, 1900); Sul Ross, "Life & Adventures," [n.d.], Ross
Family Papers, Baylor University Library; Andrew J. Torget, Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the
Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015).
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The discipline of history itself is rooted in vast inequities, in privileging some forms of knowledge over others. This has changed over time, largely as the result of work by determined individuals and communities whose very voices had been marginalized or ignored. As a profession, we still have far more work to do. But we are also laboring in a moment in which ill- informed opinions and comfortable fictions are trumpeted as examples of serious academic inquiry and against this trend, we protest.
We stand in opposition to the uncritical reverence of historical figures who represent racist, colonialist, and sexist attitudes and policies of the past. We advocate for the careful and unflinching study of our shared history. But we also advocate a compassionate and nuanced approach in the present. We value the Aggie traditions of respect for all members of our communityon campus and beyond, integrity in our work and our livesas teachers, researchers, and mentors, and excellence in our approach to dealing with even the most troubling and traumatic histories our work uncovers.
We study history. We teach history. But we do not worship it. And we do not know how we will be judged by it in the future. But we do know that students, colleagues, and community members feel hurt, frustrated, humiliated, and silenced by the continued pride of place accorded the Ross statue and legacy by the Texas A&M University system.
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Armando C. Alonzo
Terry H. Anderson
Troy O. Bickham
Carlos Kevin Blanton Cynthia A. Bouton Albert S. Broussard Jonathan Brunstedt Jonathan C. Coopersmith Olga Dror
April Lee Hatfield
Sonia Hernndez
Felipe Hinojosa
Angela Pulley Hudson Violet M. Showers Johnson Walter D. Kamphoefner Kim, Hoi-eun
Brian McAllister Linn Lawrence "Trent" MacNamara Sarah McNamara
Robert P. Resch
Stephen Badalyan Riegg
Brian Rouleau
Rebecca Hartkopf Schloss Daniel L. Schwartz
Anthony N. Stranges
David Vaught
Katherine Unterman
[Updated 6/15]
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