Football Players Demand UT's Fight Song, 'The Eyes of Texas' be Retired

 

AUSTIN, TX — Before they will participate in recruiting or alumni events, players on the University of Texas Longhorn football team want their school to retire their fight song, “The Eyes of Texas.”

The song, apparently, is racist.

According to the UT school newspaper, The Daily Texan, in April 2018, “The University of Texas, at least originally, had very clear minstrel connections,” vice provost for diversity Ted Gordon said. “(‘The Eyes of Texas’) was first sung and played at a minstrel show which featured performers in black face.”

He further charged that the fight song was adopted in 1903, a period of time when lynchings were frequent and African-Americans in Texas lived under Jim Crow laws.

“This is definitely about minstrelsy and past racism,” Gordon told the Daily Texan in 2018. “It’s also definitely about school pride. One question is whether it can be both those things or whether it can be one or the other.”

The football players have more demands, including that the school administration rename four buildings, Robert Lee Moore Hall, Painter Hall, Littlefield Hall, and James Hogg Auditorium.

Hogg, a former governor of Texas, was too young to serve in the Civil War, but his father died as a Confederate general during that war. Governor Hogg was an outspoken follower of the New South Creed, a populist southerner movement in the late 19th century. The New South Creed aimed to eliminate the attitudes of the pre-Civil War antebellum South. However, his sin was that while he pushed for anti-lynching legislation, he also supported a movement to segregate railroad passenger cars in Texas.

Robert Lee Moore Hall, built in 1972, is the tallest building on the UT campus. Named for a UT mathematics professor, Robert Lee Moore (1882-1974), history reveals he was against desegregation and refused to admit African-American students into his classroom after UT was desegregated.

T.S. Painter (1889-1969) was a zoologist whose most famous work was in the study of chromosomes. He was president of UT when an African-American man named Heman Marion Sweatt applied for entrance to the university. He was denied admission because of his race. Painter was sued, along with the university, in 1950.  Sweatt v. Painter became the precursor to Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas that led to desegregation of all U.S. public schools.

Littlefield Hall is named after Alice Littlefield (1846-1935), wife of Texas businessman and philanthropist George W. Littlefield. Husband George held the rank of major in the Confederate States Army and suffered an injury in battle. The town of Littlefield is named after George and the Sons of Confederate Veterans named their Austin camp after him. The SCV attempted to sue UT in 2015 for secretly removing Confederate statues from campus. George Littlefield had commissioned the statue of Robert E. Lee that formerly was on display on campus.

The football players also demand 0.5 percent of annual earnings from UT athletics programs be donated to the Black Lives Matter movement’s organizations, the Darrell K. Royal Stadium be co-named after the first black UT football player named Julius Whittier, and that a permanent black history exhibit be added to the UT athletics Hall of Fame.

The football players stated on Twitter that while the UT administrators decide to meet their demands or not that they will continue to practice and workout.

UT Athletics Director Chris Del Conte responded within an hour of the players’ demands being posted on Twitter.

“I am always willing to have meaningful conversations regarding any concerns our student-athletes have. We will do the same in this situation and look forward to having those discussions,” he tweeted back.

Subscribe to the LIVE! Daily

The LIVE! Daily is the "newspaper to your email" for San Angelo. Each content-packed edition has weather, the popular Top of the Email opinion and rumor mill column, news around the state of Texas, news around west Texas, the latest news stories from San Angelo LIVE!, events, and the most recent obituaries. The bottom of the email contains the most recent rants and comments. The LIVE! daily is emailed 5 days per week. On Sundays, subscribers receive the West Texas Real Estate LIVE! email.

Required

Most Recent Videos

Comments

Soon there will be nothing left because if you dig far enough into the history of anything there will be something to offend someone. Now people are just digging for issues to shame and inflame, reveling in the power and glory of being heard. How about this? How about some new policies for football players? Support your school the way it is or make another choice. There are plenty of football players waiting to replace the demanders.

Here's a great replacement...

https://youtu.be/psuRGfAaju4

Everyone join hands and celebrate being the first generation of perpetual crybabies, who for all you mommy and daddy's money, haven't learned much more than how to sniff out petty grievances, and complain about a world that you've contributed absolutely nothing to.

#somelivesmatter

This started back in 2010 when the university began removing statues and names of the treacherous dogs. They belong in history books as a reminder of what was lost during the secessionists attempt to destroy democracy.

Not that the song has racist lyrics. Not that the songwriter was a noted racist. Let's change our school song simply because it was written during a time when racism was much more prevalent. Mind blown.........
I may soon be able to sue my flatware manufacturer because I weigh too much.

And I demand the defense actually tackle, instead of playing two below or ole'. Fans pay good money to enter Darrel K Royal to watch tackle football, not patty cake. The Eyes of Texas are upon you, boys.

We can confirm that the latest generation of useless drones has very thin skin and is offended by the sight of even their self. One would think that knowing this they would never leave the house or moms basement.

We've been kissing your asses for fifty years. I want my reparations for being white trash all my life'

If that's what they want, then let them go play somewhere else. I'll bet there are plenty of up-coming players who would be happy to take their place. Quit catering to the cry-babies. Quit caving in to ridiculous threats. This is Texas; have we lost our backbone; our Texas pride? Just say, NO!

Because they don't fight, they just explode and shred to pieces everything they touch. I have never in my life known such privilege, such a sense of entitlement, as I have witnessed in the most recent weeks. Regardless of race, there are a lot of people imitating the Covidiot-in-Chief in his narcissism. So done with all of this shallow b.s.

Aggies have been telling you for better than 100 years that song sounds like hell and finally you listen to the texas university diversity provost>? I'm thinking we need to talk reparations to the real University of Texas.

It might be time to take classes totally online and test at a testing center that verifies. Turn those universities into community gardens.

Leaving a bunch of Confederate references around for black people is like leaving a bunch of Nazi references around for Jewish people. It's not about people being sensitive themselves. It's about finally being considerate of those whose feelings we have ignored too long. If you have a problem with this, you are a racist whether you can admit it to yourself or not, because you're not considering how black people feel about it.

No, Miri, it is you who have failed to comprehend the situation. We've come to the point that Aaron McGruder talked about years ago, when White Americans are no longer moved to sympathy over the issues of Black America the way they once were because of collective guilt about slavery.

There are many successful Blacks in the United States, and there has even been a Black president. Demands at this point only exacerbate the tension caused by the many concessions that White Americans have largely, collectively made out of a sense of moral duty and which are increasingly ignored or deemed to be insufficient by a minority of activists and political agitators.

This is a a two way street between the two intertwined communities of Americans, and if the sacrifices of those who have been moved by guilt are not acknowledged by those who claim that their plight is still inexcusably abhorrent, then there is no room for discussion and escalating unrest and conflict will be the result.

Black America, you are making adversaries of those who would otherwise take your side. Reconsider, and exercise the magnaninity that King learned from Gandhi and acknowledge the good in those your leaders claim are your enemies.

Otherwise, the story that has played out so often in history will again repeat itself, and though our descendants may look back at the present day as a golden age of the West, our present liberties will have failed them in their future bondage.

The human race must face the facts of our collective history and of our biological differences squarely or we will face the consequences of our collective stupidity and, possibly, the full destructive power of the weapons we've created.

Reconsider.

Systemic racism still exists in this country whether you see it or not. Make whatever excuses you feel like you have to make so you can feel better about yourself. There are those of us that refuse so if you won't help, just get out of the way. Nobody is being hurt by the removal of statues and historic references to racism. We can leave this Civil War stuff where it belongs: in museums.

Not everyone is going to buy into the Marxist theoretical framework when it comes to resolving the country's social issues, racial or otherwise. Its successful implementation is far from being an inevitability and not everyone is just going to just sit back let that authoritarian gulag start springing up around us.

No matter how far from the facts they may be, I respect your right to hold the beliefs that you do, though I do not personally agree with the dialectical materialist elements of your belief system and accept no responsibility when those beliefs are invalidated.

I have considered your opinion. Thank you for this opportunity for engagement. The statues, however, should stand.

That's a solution, just get players that fall in line, not the "uppity" ones. Disgusting!

Post a comment to this article here:

X Close