The stories behind the statues
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During her lifetime, Barbara Jordan achieved a number of firsts, including being the first African-American woman from the South to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. After her death in 1996, the native Houstonian became the first woman to be honored by UT with a statue, erected in 2009. -
An talented mezzo-soprano, Barbara Smith won the leading role in UT’s 1957 production of Dido and Aeneas. However, outcry over the fact that Smith, an African-American woman, had been cast as the lover of a white Aeneas, grew until it reached the Texas Legislature. Despite her mistreatment, Smith stayed on at UT, graduating in 1959. -
Best known for his role in the grape boycott of the Sixties, Cesar Chavez was the co-founder of the United Farm Workers and a labor activist. UT unveiled his statue, the first to honor a Latino, in 2007. -
The highest ranking member of either the Union or Confederate Army to be killed during the Civil War, Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston died during the Battle of Shiloh in 1862. -
General-in-Chief of the Confederate Army, Robert E. Lee is perhaps the most revered of Confederate figures. -
The statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis has garnered the most ire of any of the monuments commemorating Confederates and segregationists. This year, the newly elected UT student government passed a resolution calling for the removal of the Davis statue. -
The only native Texan of the four Confederate statues on the South Mall, John H. Reagan was not only the postmaster general of the Confederacy, but also a member of U.S. Congress both before and after the Civil War. His legacy is prominent in Austin: One of the buildings in the Capitol Complex bears his name, as does Reagan High School. -
The Confederate statues were commissioned by George Washington Littlefield, himself a former Confederate major and UT’s most generous benefactor at the time. Littlefield had originally wanted an arch at the university’s south entrance, but had to settle for a fountain, after costs proved prohibitive. -
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Littlefield’s charity and influence can be further witnessed at the Littlefield Residence Hall, a women’s only dorm, and the former residence of Littlefield and his wife Alice. The building is named in her honor. -
Established in 1995 on the ground floor of the Jester Center, the Malcolm X, or X Lounge, named for the fallen civil rights activist, is “intended to be an area for the black community but open to all,” according to a 2012 Daily Texan story about the space. -
The first UT monument to honor an African American, the Martin Luther King Jr. statue was unveiled in 1999 after 12 years of fund-raising, largely by students. At the time, it was the only statue of King on university grounds outside of King’s alma mater, Morehouse. In 2003, the statue was egged; in 2004, it was defaced with spray paint, attracting national media attention. -
UT’s largest library is named in honor of Ervin S. Perry, UT’s first African-American professor, and Carlos E. Casteñeda, a Mexican immigrant and UT professor who helped build UT’s Latin American Collection. -
A longtime math professor (from 1920-69), Robert Lee Moore was an inspirational professor to those he taught. Unfortunately, those did not include African Americans; Moore was a staunch segregationist who refused to allow black students in his classroom. -
Theophilus S. Painter was president of UT when Heman Marion Sweatt applied to UT Law in 1946 and was denied admission solely on the grounds of race. Painter was the named defendant in Sweatt’s suit that ultimately desegregated UT.