Campus Confederate Flags

Beginning in front of the San Jacinto dorm on San Jacinto Street, this segment explores the naming practices of this southwestern area of campus. From the flags that fly over the stadium to the references to the Battle of San Jacinto, the racial aspects of Texas’s War for Independence and the states’ political history are interpreted. The more recent history of racial segregation on the University’s campus is also explored through this part of campus, including the Darrell K. Royal Memorial Stadium.

Few realize that until 2017 the Confederate flag flew over the University of Texas and that the Great Seal of the Confederacy is still displayed on campus. The flags flew over Memorial Stadium and outside the Irwin Center. They were taken down a few weeks after the remaining Confederate statues were removed from UT’s South Mall August 20, 2017. The plaster cast of the Confederate seal can be found in the main hall of the Natural Sciences Library in the Main Building. Each of these Confederate representations was one of the six flags representing the six nations of which Texas has been a part – Spain, France, Mexico, Republic of Texas, Confederate States, and the United States.

Texas Centennial Celebration Poster, 1936, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History

The presence of the six flags of Texas on the UT Austin campus, along with such iconic fixtures of the University as Columbia in the Littlefield Fountain and the blended beaux arts-art deco architecture of the Main Building, represent the mid-twentieth century shift in Texan’s conceptualizations of their state from southern to western. The Six flags of Texas were popularized as a symbol of the state during the 1936 Centennial Celebration in which the state was making every effort to present itself positively to the rest of the nation. In the 1930’s the South was understood to be unenlightened and regressive, outside of American progress. This was, at in least in part, due to the prevalence of the Lost Cause ideology in the South (amply represented on UT’s campus), which was associated with slavery, defeat, military occupation, and poverty.[1]

Texas Centennial Celebration Poster, 1936, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History

The six flags were installed in the State of Texas Building at Fair Park in Dallas, the floor of the Capitol Rotunda, in the Main building here at UT, and on souvenirs, tickets, and programs created for the Centennial Celebration in Dallas. The six flags signify Texas’ nationalism and exceptionalism as the state became more Texan and less southern. They also evoke the very “American” process of Texas history – colonial domination and struggles for freedom ultimately leading to unification within the US nation. This history was posited as a stage in the westward march of the Anglo-American frontier and the expansion of American progress.

The six flags were part of a host of other Texan western iconography including cowboys, longhorns, cowboy boots, Stetson hats, spurs, six shooters that have come to represent Texas contemporarily as western rather than the plantation houses and cotton balls of the South. Ironically, in this sense the flying of the Confederate flag over UT Austin was part of an effort to distance the University and the State from the Confederacy rather than to celebrate it.

[1] Light Townsend Cummins, “The Rebranding of Texas During the 1936 Centennial,” in Major Problems in Texas History, ed. Sam W. Hynes and Cary D. Wintz (Boston, MA: Cengage Learning, 2017), 17.

So here we are. To our right is San Jac, or San Jacinto dorm, and San Jacinto street is right here in front of us.
As we stand here, I think you remember that I said that the Confederate flag used to fly at the University of Texas up until recently. It flew in at least two places that I’ve found.
One is right in front of us, above the stadium and above the scoreboard in the stadium. And if you look up, you can see the flagpoles on the scoreboard, and if it’s game day, you used to be able to see seven flags there, one of which was the Confederate flag.
There’s also a large Confederate flag that flew on the flagpoles around the Erwin Center, which is where the basketball team plays.
The Confederate flag is not the St. Andrew’s Cross that you’re used to. It was the Stars and Bars, which was the national flag of the Confederacy and one of the six flags over Texas, which are the Spanish flag, French flag, the Mexican flag, the flag of the Lone Star State, the Confederate flag, and then that of the United States of America, and so it flew as one of those.
Alright, we’re standing here in front of the San Jacinto dorm, and right here on a street named San Jacinto, and one of the questions is, why do we have places named after San Jacinto here? Of course it’s because San Jacinto is an important– plays an important role in Texas history as the Battle of San Jacinto, which is the culmination of the Texas War for Independence. And that sounds like a very important thing, and has no– One might think that it has no racial implications, but of course, one of the main reasons why the Anglo settlers in Texas wanted to be independent from Mexico was because the Mexican nation, once gaining its independence, decided to eliminate or abolish slavery, and much of the wealth of those early settlers was based on having enslaved folks, and so therefore they needed independence in order to be able to maintain slavery within the Lone Star State, and so it’s ironically a kind-of war of independence, a war of freedom– freedom to be able to be, or independence to be able to enslave or keep other folks from being free or independent.
As we walk along here, we’re also looking here at Darrell K Royal Stadium. Darrell K Royal Stadium is named after one of the most famous football coaches here at the University of Texas. He won three national championships. Darrell K Royal is also famous for his national championship team 1969 being the last national championship team– football championship team that was all white. This turned out to be a problem for Darrell K Royal because University of Texas had a reputation for not taking on black athletes, and, as it became clear in the years after his last national championship, which is 1970, in which he had one black player, the fate of national championship teams was often based on the numbers of African American athletes they could get on their rosters, and Darrell K Royal was not that successful at being able to recruit African Americans because of his reputation, although he did recruit Earl Campbell and was able to ride him to more fame although never had another national championship.
Darrell K Royal also was the athletic director at the University of Texas. Not only were his football teams all white, but so were his basketball teams, and when asked– one of his basketball coaches was asked why was there no black basketball players on his team, he famously said that there were no Negro boys who were good enough or tall enough to be able to play on the Texas team.
So we have a stadium named after Darrell K Royal, who has something of a checkered racial past. We also, from where we’re standing here, can see the site of one of the segregated barracks where the first African American men were placed when they were not allowed to stay in the regular dorms. This will be an important issue as we move to the old Simkins Hall and talk about this in relation to segregated residence halls.

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15. Texas Cowboy Pavilion

1933 architectural planning map of the University of Texas rendered by Paul Philippe Cret, with the location of Texas Cowboy Pavilion marked.