Historic Or Horrific: 178 Confederate Monuments Are Found In Texas

HOUSTON, TX — Advocates seeking to eradicate any trace of the role the Confederacy played in Texas will have their work cut out for them if they hope to remove every monument dedicated to that cause.

In Texas alone, there are at least 178 monuments and spaces dedicated to the Confederacy, but plans are already underway in several metropolitan areas to have statues or plaques removed, or names of Confederate generals removed from street signs.

In Houston, Mayor Sylvester Turner is examining whether or not to remove the "Spirit of the Confederacy" monument in Sam Houston Park after being petitioned by the University of Houston’s Young Communist League, while leaders in Austin are in the process of changing the name of Robert E. Lee Street.

Watch: Why Confederate Monuments Exist In The First Place

Just days after the deadly riot in Charlottesville Va., the Dallas City Council announced they were considering the removal of statues honoring Confederate leaders in downtown, and San Antonio is doing much the same and considering the removal of downtown civil war monuments, one of which is in Travis Park.

In some cases, changing the names of schools or mascots that have been deemed racist has already happened in Houston.

In 2016, Houston ISD spent $1.2 million to rename schools that bore the names of Confederate leaders, and replaced them with those of local leaders.

Among those schools were Stonewall Jackslon Middle School that was renamed Yolanda Black Navarro Middle School; Sidney Lanier High School was renamed Bob Lanier High School, Richard Dowling Middle School was renamed Audrey H. Lawson Middle School, and Robert E. Lee High School was renamed Margaret Long Wisdom High School.

Still, many are fixated on the monuments, which in most cases have stood for more than a century in public parks and municipal sites, with the exception of the Confederate Memorial of the Wind monument in Orange, Texas, which has been underway since 2013 and is being built on private land.

However, there are still dozens more monuments in smaller communities in Texas that may never be removed.

One of those is in Tomball’s Spring Creek Park , northwest of Houston, where in 1966, archeologists discovered the remains of a Confederate Powder mill that was built in 1861 and believed to have exploded in 1864, killing several men at the site.

The monument there indicates that only three people were killed, but researchers and historians are still trying to unravel that mystery.

Although not part of the Confederate cause, slaves did play a role in making the Wilson Pottery Company famous.

The company, originally Guadalupe Pottery, was founded in 1857 by John Wilson, who taught his slaves the craft of pottery making.

In 1869, the emancipated slaves, formed H. Wilson and Co., the first African-American owned business in Texas.

Click the link and find all the monuments dedicated to the Confederacy are in Texas.

Images: Stuart Seeger via Flickr Commons

Send your news tips to bryan.kirk@patch.com