University of Texas announces decision to move Jefferson Davis statue

The University of Texas will move a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis away from the center of campus, but will keep statues of other Confederate figures in their usual places, school president Greg Fenves announced Thursday.

The century-old Davis statue had been the target of vandalism and has come under fire as a symbol of racism. State government and businesses around the country have removed Confederate symbols following the killing of nine black church members in Charleston, South Carolina this past June.

Fenves, who took over as the university's president in the same month as the shooting, appointed a task force to consider what to do with the Davis statue. Moving it to another part of campus was one of the panel’s recommendations presented to Fenves earlier this month.

The statue of the former Confederate president will ben placed in the school’s Dolph Briscoe Center for American History as part of an educational display. That will place it next door to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, a figurative monument to the Civil Rights Act passed in 1964.

The process of moving the statue will begin on Friday. It should reappear in its new spot by the end of 2017 after it gets refurbished.

Fenves said statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Albert Sidney Johnston, and Confederate Postmaster General John H. Reagan, will remain near the university's central clock tower.

Those men had "deep ties to Texas. Robert E. Lee's complicated legacy to Texas and the nation should not be reduced to his role in the Civil War," Fenves said. "While every historical figure leaves a mixed legacy, I believe Jefferson Davis is in a separate category, and that it is not in the university's best interest to continue commemorating him on our Main Mall."

Lee, while known mostly for his ties to his home state of Virginia, spent several years leading troops in Texas before the start of the Civil War.

Bertram Hayes-Davis, the great-great- grandson of Davis, had written Fenves during the discussions on what to do with the statue. He said Davis’ legacy should include his distinguished military career and service as a U.S. senator and Secretary of War before he was elected president of the Confederate States of America.

"I believe that academic institutions have the opportunity to create environments to teach history," said Hayes-Davis, who called moving the statue and not discarding it "appropriate and reasonable."

"I don't want anybody to walk by a statue and feel it is demeaning or threatening in their life," Hayes-Davis said.

A statue of President Woodrow Wilson will be moved as well to “preserve the symmetry” of the central campus.

The Davis statue has been a point of controversy for years on the Texas campus and the issue had been studied by previous school presidents. The student government adopted a resolution in March supporting the statue being removed entirely.

Vandals had spray-painted the Davis statue several times with slogans such as "Davis Must Fall" and "Emancipate UT." The Lee and Johnston statues also were spray-painted in June with "Black lives matter," a slogan that gained use after the fatal shooting a year ago of Michael Brown, a black, unarmed 18-year-old, by a white officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.