UT-Austin Athletes Seek To Shed Minstrel-Era Fight Song

AUSTIN, TX — A movement to change the traditional anthem tied to the University of Texas at Austin "Eyes of Texas" given its minstrel past is gaining steam as the country grapples with issues of disproportionate deaths of minorities at the hands of police.

A group of University of Texas football players were joined by other athletes in calling for an alternative fight song because of its racist past. In addition, athletes over the weekend added further demands of renaming several campus buildings memorializing people from the Jim Crow era along with donating a percentage of athletic department revenue to school organizations supporting the Black Lives Matter movement.

In their two-page, unsigned note posted on social media, football players have vowed to continue playing despite their grievances, but suggested they would not help recruit future players or participate in alumni events amid a status quo. The ambition of their cause is illustrated in the title chosen for their missive, titled "What starts here changes the world."

The university movement is an offshoot of national protests taking place in the wake of the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Floyd died after an officer kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes while he was detained face-down on the pavement, despite telling police repeatedly that he was unable to breathe.

“The recent events across the country regarding racial injustice have brought to light the systemic racism that has always been prevalent in our country as well as the racism that has historically plagued our campus,” the statement reads. “We aim to hold the athletic department and university to a higher standard by not only asking them to keep their promise of condemning racism on our campus, but to go beyond this by taking action to make Texas more comfortable and inclusive for the black athletes and the black community that has so fervently supported this program."

The players ask the school to address their concerns with measurable action by the start of the fall semester on Aug. 26. Last week, dozens of football players marched with coach Tom Herman from the campus stadium to the state Capitol in honor of Floyd, according to multiple media reports.

Given its status as one of the nation's wealthiest university athletic departments, the program should donate 0.5 percent of annual revenue — roughly more than $1 million based on prevailing estimates — to black-led student organizations and the Black Lives Matter movement, the athletes said in the statement.

The most obvious change to peripheral observers would be the shuttering of the song "The Eyes of Texas," which is ubiquitous at organized campus events and sung by team members after each game. An iteration of the song has ties to minstrel shows during which performers would sing it in blackface. Edmund T. Gordon, an associate professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at UT-Austin recently explored the song's history during his "Racial Geography Tour" posted on social media.

“I think people are amazed that the past isn’t really so much the past,” Gordon later told HookEm.com. “It’s right there in front of us, but we just don’t know.” He noted during the interview that former UT President William Lambdin Prather, who served from 1899-1905, began saying ‘The eyes of Texas are upon you’ as a sign off during on-campus speeches to illustrate how ingrained the song is to the school's history.

The university has not issued a formal response to the athlete's demands.

Efforts to replace the song are not new, as Texas Monthly reported. A group of Texas basketball players refused to sing it after learning of its history, the magazine reported, and the student government debated the song's merits two years ago. The magazine noted that neither initiative gained much attention, but the issue has been reignited in light of the current civil unrest over racial matters.

The song's ties to UT-Austin date to the late 1860s, when Prather — the former regent and university president — was a law student at Washington College in Virginia (since renamed Washington and Lee University, as Texas Monthly reported. Robert E. Lee, the university president at the time, had a penchant for reminding students that the "eyes of the South are upon you," in his call for the upholding of Southern traditions, the magazine found.

Prather appropriated the phrase but put a decidedly Texas spin to it, using it as clarion call to students during an address on the first day of school after becoming UT-Austin president in 1899. Texas Monthly cited a 1926 Dallas Morning News column in which Prather's daughter wrote about her father saying to students: “I would like to paraphrase [Lee’s] utterance, and say to you, ‘Forward, young men and women of the university, the eyes of Texas are upon you!”

The mantra and attendant song have been steeped in UT-Austin tradition ever since.