Review markers at the Texas Capitol

For modern-day inspiration, add the South Carolina legislature’s triumph of thoughtful decision-making on the Confederate battle flag to the soaring example of pure-souled forgiveness shown by families of the dead in Charleston’s tragic, race-inspired June 17 church shooting.

The state House voted 94-20 early Thursday to remove the flag from the Capitol grounds in Columbia. It is scheduled to come down Friday morning.

South Carolina raised the banner over its Capitol more than 50 years ago to protest civil rights. Yet it was the odium of that same symbolism, spotlighted by accused church shooter Dylann Roof’s affinity for the flag and racial hate, that inspired its removal.

It will be sent to a museum, where its place in America’s past can be properly recognized.

If only other scars of the past could be dealt with quickly and thoughtfully.

Texas, too, should address the Confederate symbolism at its Capitol.

Five state lawmakers this week sent a letter to Gov. Greg Abbott asking for a task force to review the appropriateness of more than a dozen Capitol markers that overtly refer to the Confederacy.

A plaque in a first-floor corridor honors the Children of the Confederacy and says the Civil War “was not a rebellion, nor was its underlying cause to sustain slavery.”

A monument to the Confederate war dead, a prominent fixture on the Capitol’s south grounds, notes that the “people of the South, animated by the spirit of 1776, to preserve their rights, withdrew from the federal compact in 1861.”

It cannot be ignored that one of the “rights” central to that war was the ability of one person to own another in slavery.

Appropriateness is the key word. These markers were erected in different times — the Confederate war dead monument in 1903 — and some, like the battle flag in South Carolina, were responses to events of their day.

They should be examined for appropriateness today. Some may be appropriate, some may not and some perhaps should be altered or balanced with other monuments to other people, of different races or gender, and to the rich history of Texas.

This story was originally published July 9, 2015 at 5:56 PM with the headline "Review markers at the Texas Capitol."