Rep. Eric Johnson
Following more than a year of complaints from elected officials of all political stripes, a state board that oversees the Texas Capitol grounds voted unanimously Friday to remove a controversial Confederate plaque that falsely asserts that the Civil War was “not a rebellion, nor was its underlying cause to sustain slavery.”
The decision comes more than a month after Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who chairs the six-member State Preservation Board, called for it in a letter to Executive Director Rod Welsh. State Rep. Eric Johnson, D-Dallas, has led a crusade to get rid of the “Children of the Confederacy Creed” plaque, which was erected in 1959, for more than a year. He has said that the plaque “is not historically accurate in the slightest, to which any legitimate, peer-reviewed Civil War historian will attest.”
Texas House speaker Dennis Bonnen and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, both Republicans, serve as co-vice chairs on the preservation board under Abbott.
[…]
In a statement after Friday’s vote, Johnson said he was glad the board voted unanimously to remove the plaque but added the caveat that “none of us in state government should be high-fiving each other or patting ourselves on the back today.”
“The plaque should never have been put up by the Legislature in the first place, and it certainly shouldn’t have taken 60 years to remove it. And that’s on Republicans and Democrats alike, to be perfectly honest,” Johnson wrote.
See here for the background. Kudos to all for making this happen, but especially to Rep. Johnson, who has been the driving force behind it since 2017. (Several of Johnson’s Democratic colleagues got the ball rolling two years earlier; Johnson took it across the finish line.) He’s also right that this stupid and offensive monument to slavery and lying about our history should never have been there in the first place, and shouldn’t have taken sixty years to remove. It’s good that it’s finally going, but we need to do a lot better than that. The Observer has more.
This is great news
“People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.”
George Orwell, 1984
“He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.”
― Groucho Marx
The plaque stated a lie, Bill. Why are you defending the propagation of lies, Bill?
(We know why)
That plaque stated a LIE, Bill. Why do you support the propagation of lies?
(We know why)
Get a grip, Bill. It’s a plaque. It’s removal certainly doesn’t rise to the level of a crisis.
To be fair to Bill, the president of the US is talking about sending US troops to the Texas to seize land from private citizens under emergency powers, so his paranoia might be justified.
Valid point, Robbie. Get this, tho… I haven’t seen any monuments or plaques to the Nazi’s, yet I still remember what a bunch of genocidal, murderous, goose stepping, jack booted thugs they were. My point ? Removing a plaque isn’t going to erase the memory of slavery-loving folk.