Blackface and rebel flags flourished during his tenure. Should UT Arlington move his bust?
Students at UT Arlington are continuing their efforts to remove the bust of former president E.H. Hereford, who led the university when campus minstrel shows were common, the school mascot was changed to Rebels and “Dixie” became the unofficial school song.
The bust is on the first floor in the University Center, also named after Hereford.
On Tuesday a Student Government committee rejected a resolution to remove it from public view. Following the decision, the proposal moves to the Student Senate, which determine during its Oct. 3 meeting whether to send the resolution to the Board of Regents for approval.
A representative from the Student Government did not respond to requests for comment.
This was the fourth time a resolution about the removal of the bust has appeared before the Student Government since 2018. First presented by the Progressive Student Union, the resolution asks for Hereford’s bust to be placed in Special Collections at the Central Library and proposes any communication or reference to the E.H. Hereford University Center’s building to be referred to as the University Center or UC.
Nearly 30 students from the Progressive Student Union, NAACP and Black Student Union gathered Tuesday to witness the decision by the Student Government.
UTA’s NAACP Vice President Donald Bentley III says anyone who holds up Confederacy ideals should not have a bust or school building named after them.
“Your history may not involve any relations with the Confederacy,” Bentley III said. “But me as an African-American man, the Confederacy is a large part of my history against some of the repercussions and pains that African-Americans face today because of that period of time. I would urge students to just understand why we fight. It’s because this affects our grandparents, our great grandparents, our great-great grandparents, and it still affects us today.”
E.H. Hereford was president from 1949 until his death in 1958, when the school was named Arlington State College. He helped change the campus from an agricultural school to a junior college and pushed it to become a four-year institution.
These historic changes, though, do not erase racist actions, according to the students seeking the change.
Mark Napieralski, an alum and the previous Progressive Student Union president, reviewed Hereford’s presidential papers, yearbook photos during his tenure and articles in the student newspaper. He found numerous examples of what he considered racist behavior by the former president.
In 1951, Hereford put students in charge to change the Arlington State College mascot. After a vote by students, the Blue Raiders became the Rebels. The following year the Confederate battle flag became the official banner of the college, and “Dixie” the unofficial school song. The flag appeared on the school newspaper, “The Shorthorn,” on athletics tickets, on band uniforms, and titles such as “Johnny Reb” and “Miss Dixie Belle” were given for school spirit.
There were minstrel shows, “Draw Johnny Rebel” contests, and the school newspaper featured cartoons of blackface and “pickaninny style” caricatures. The Kampus Kadet Klub was a registered student organization and nicknamed “Davis Hall Klansmen,” but there were no official ties to the Ku Klux Klan.
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These activities happened under Hereford who, according to Napieralski, endorsed them under his leadership. Napieralski says Hereford created an atmosphere where racism flourished.
“The very fact that at the end of the day, if you are in charge of a university and that university is allowing minstrel shows and Black face performances, Hereford doesn’t even need to say any racial slurs, right?” Napieralski said.
The Progressive Student Union does not want to erase history or see the bust destroyed. Instead, it asks that it be stored in the school’s special collections since it is part of the school’s history.
Jay Rodriguez, a senior and president of the Progressive Student Union, does not believe the Student Government or school should weigh Hereford’s good with the bad but make a clear-cut decision on removing the bust.
“A lot of us see it as a symbol of the Confederacy being upheld on our campus for no reason,” Rodriguez said. “We have a lot of Black students in the Progressive Student Union who are adamantly upset that this kind of symbol continues on and he gets to have this false history taught about him. The history that does get taught about Hereford is that he made our university a university and it’s like maybe he did do this one good thing, but this man was clearly a sympathizer of the Confederacy and the Klan.”
A UT Arlington spokesperson said the university is watching the resolution proceed through the Student Senate processes and respects the students’ prerogative to discuss and consider this issue.
This story was originally published September 25, 2023 at 1:36 PM.
