SULLY STATUE

Ever wonder why the statue was erected so many years after Ross died? If he was so significant to Texas A&M, why did we get the statue in 1919 and not twenty-one years earlier when Ross expired? Why wait? Was there something else that prompted the urgent creation of a statue around that time?

 

The Sully statue was built because there was a “race riot” in Houston.

 

It came to be known as the Houston Riot of 1917.

 

That year, Black soldiers were brought to Houston in preparation for service in WWI. These soldiers were housed in a temporary barracks in what is now Memorial Park. From the outset, the Black soldiers were disrespected and antagonized by White citizens and beaten and harassed by the local police force. One night, when their barracks were fired upon by local Whites, the soldiers broke into their armory to protect themselves and marched to the city jail to free one of their brethren who had been unjustly detained. Seventeen people were killed that night. When the smoke cleared, the Black soldiers were arrested and tried in a system without a chance for appeal. Nineteen Black soldiers were hanged and sixty-four were imprisoned for life. No Whites were ever tried.

White Houstonians were horrified that Blacks would arm themselves and fight back against injustice. They were also offended that Black soldiers would be trained to fight and earn the honor and respect of their country. So that same year, 1917, the United Daughters of the Confederacy—a racist group dedicated to rewriting Confederate treason and southern slavery as a noble enterprise—persuaded the Texas Legislature to put up $10,000 to commission the creation of a statue of Sully—the long-dead, Confederate Brigadier General who had been the leader of Texas’ all-White military academy, Texas A&M. That would surely remind the Blacks of their place in Texas, in the military, and on campus*. That’s why fundraising for the statue was commissioned in 1917 right after the Houston Riot, the space was dedicated in 1918, and the statue erected in 1919. Twenty-one years after Sul Ross had died. 

 

Why aren’t there more Black Texans to pay homage to? Why don’t we have a history of more elected Black people who represented Texas?

 

Because Governor Sul Ross executed a successful coup, expelled democratically-elected Black officials, and set up a system to keep them off of any ballot for any office in the state of Texas for 60 years. After the Civil War, with their newfound right to vote enshrined in the 15th Amendment, Black people began to work and serve in their communities as civil servants and elected officials. In some counties, more than 50% of the elected officials were Black. 

Until 1889, when some Whites in Fort Bend County, the Houston suburb where Sugar Land and Richmond sit, decided this was too much to bear. White supremacists fomented a race riot, then petitioned Governor Lawrence “Sul” Ross to redress the harm that was done to them by losing peaceful democratic elections to Black people. The governor, a former Confederate officer, stood firmly with the Whites. He ordered uniformed troops to enter the city of Richmond and forcibly take power from the city’s Black elected officials. Duly elected Black officials in Richmond were given 10 hours to leave town. Governor Ross arrived in Richmond to help select the newly appointed, all-White, officials of the town. This episode is given the name, The Jaybird-Woodpecker War. It wasn’t much of a war. Fewer than 10 people were killed in various skirmishes over a few years. But the political ramifications for Black Texans were devastating. Whites in Richmond (the “Jaybirds”) created an illegal requirement that, to hold an office or to be placed on the ballot, a candidate had to be a member of the Jaybird Association. The Jaybird Association was, of course, all-White. Black Texans were kept off of the ballot and out of the voting booth for generations. Texas would not have a Black representative in the State Legislature until 1966 when Curtis Graves (Houston) and Joe Lockridge (Dallas) won their campaigns. Texas would not have a Black representative in the US Congress until 1972 when Barbara Jordan from Houston began her political career. 

 

Questions

 

1. Why are monuments of famous people important?

2. What monuments have you seen that have inspired you? What feelings emerge for you when you see it? Do emotions have a place in considering history?

3. Are there other figures (women, people of color, etc.) that are important to TAMU and Texas history?

4. What do you call it when the road you walk on is named for those who imagined you under a noose? 

5. What do you call it when the roof over your head is named after people who would have wanted the bricks to crush you?

 

Interesting Facts

 

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