The University of Texas at Austin is one step closer to removing the name of a Ku Klux Klan leader from a dormitory on the campus. According to an announcement today, the university’s president, William Powers Jr., endorsed the recommendations of a review panel and will recommend to the Board of Regents that the building, Simkins Residence Hall, be renamed Creekside Dormitory. The 55-year-old building was named for William Stewart Simkins, a law professor at the university in the early 20th century and former organizer for the Klan.
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11 Responses to Klan Leader’s Name Should Be Dropped From Dorm, U. of Texas President Says
profrussell - July 9, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Thanks to Bill Powers for doing the right thing.For more on this controversy, please see http://simkins.houseofrussell.com
amcneece - July 9, 2010 at 4:00 pm
I’m waiting for the KKK to ask the ACLU to file a lawsuit against UT on their behalf!
jeff1 - July 9, 2010 at 4:03 pm
What? You needed a committee to decide this? It needs to be a decision based on “steps?” The Board of Regents actually have to consider this? You are really kidding with this one? This is a scary little story!
corbinsmyth - July 9, 2010 at 4:08 pm
One step closer? How many steps can there be? Review panel?
mmeisens - July 9, 2010 at 5:30 pm
More liberal hypocrasy than one can even count. You have history re-written for a Grand Dragon of the KKK because he was a Democratic Senator. Even the first black president shows up to explain how lovable he now is. Is there anything different about this? Except for the fact that academics are liberals and by definition full of hot air. They always attack those who cannot defend themselves because they are dead.
gordonjohnson - July 9, 2010 at 6:14 pm
Mr. Powers:As one of the first black-Americans to earn a graduate degree at the University of Texas at Austin (1972), I must say that your decision fits right in line with the somewhat meandering–but eventual–tendency toward elimination of all of the wicked injustices that I experienced outright or, if in my time they remained sufficiently covert, I simply surmised they had to be there. Yet I choose,then–as I choose now–to believe that one day the more evil underlying historical foundations of social differentiation no matter how deeply entrenched would in time be disclosed and summarily addressed. So I applaud our university’s committee decision and too your courage in recommending that their decision be carried forward.
jherrera - July 10, 2010 at 8:56 am
#6, hypocrisy or not, this is not about liberal or conservative politics, but about justice. The KKK is a terrorist organization akin to Nazism, that has, and still is, targeted certain groups in our country for hate crimes. Did we not fight a war against Nazism because it was an unjust system? For a university to tacitly keep his name on a building is like eulogizing him. Let’s do justice to all who have been negatively impacted by this hate group! Creekside Dorm!
luigi - July 10, 2010 at 11:40 am
I once lived in Simkins Hall. What a dump. The University sould tear it down and replace it will modern, functioning living quarters.
mercy_otis_warren - July 11, 2010 at 8:41 pm
So does this mean that the Robert C. Byrd Biotechnology Center at Marshall University will also be renamed?http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/18/AR2005061801105_pf.htmlAfter all, as #7 points out, for a university to keep the name of a former member of a hate group/terrorist organization like the KKK on a building is like eulogizing him.
mmeisens - July 12, 2010 at 10:10 am
I am amazed that academics cannot see the irony of attacking a dead klansman and feeling morally suprior but having no guts to attack Senator Byrd who in every way is more evil. For politics, to get re-elected Obama and Clinoton did a tap dance historical revisionism; but as most hypocrits they have no moral commitment to anything. I should not be surprised that a dead man’s name on a building would be the focus of academics moral indignaion. Impotancy has always been their hallmark, i.e Heidigger. I have always argued that his name should be banned. Not only for being a Nazi his whole life; but also because his ramblings are worthless.
tptrekker - July 12, 2010 at 3:24 pm
Of those who somehow manage to make this into a diatribe against Obama, Clinton, and progressives via Robert Byrd, I ask:Was Byrd in his later life more like William Stewart Simkins, whoapparently remained an unrepentent Kluxer and a role model forgenerations of racists who followed him? Or was Byrd more likeJohn Newton, the former slaver who cast off the stain of own his wretched racist past and wrote “Amazing Grace,” which many believe was a self-denunciation for his former transgressions? From all I have read of Byrd, he apparently followed much more the road of Newton than of Simkins. But those of you who mentioned or implied Byrd’s name were not writing about Byrd or Simkins anyway. You were condemning those who shared the progressive views Byrd conveyed for most of his years on Capitol Hill. Shame on you.