Originally Posted: October 31, 2017
Students, professors and neighbors gathered Monday night to participate in a panel discussion about Confederate school names in Dallas ISD at Southern Methodist University (SMU).
A crowd of around 100 gathered to hear four SMU professors discuss the historical context of the era in which these schools were named. Due to its proximity, most of the discussion and questions centered around Stonewall Jackson Elementary, whose new name will be submitted to the Dallas ISD trustees in February.
The professors discussed the efforts of the Confederate support groups such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Daughters of the Confederacy after the Civil War to create a new narrative about a war about states rights and of Northern aggression, rather than a fight to end slavery. Edward Countryman, a history professor, noted the explicit preservation of slavery in many of the southern states’ Ordinances of Secession. Texas’ Ordinance of Secession reads, “She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery — the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits — a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time.” READ MORE