My DU colleague Thomas Russell, who used to teach at the University of Texas Law school, has a written a paper, available on SSRN, which urges the University of Texas Law School to rename Simkins Hall, a law and graduate male student dormitory named for William Stewart Simkins. Simkins taught equity, contracts, procedure, and related topics at UT for three decades in the early 20th century. He was also a founder of the Ku Klux Klan in Florida, and every year at UT he gave a formal speech extolling the Klan.
Most of Russell’s paper concentrates on Simkins’ career at UT, as well as the 1954 decision (five weeks after Brown v. Board was announced) to name the dormitory after him. I was curious to learn more about Simkins had actually done with the Florida Klan, so I read Michael Newtown’s book The Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Florida.
The Florida KKK organized in 1867-68. Simkins later described himself at the Klan leader in Taylor, Madison, and Jefferson counties. These three contiguous counties are part of the eastern panhandle, east of Tallahassee. As far as the record shows, Simkins never claimed that any Klan actions in those counties had been carried out contrary to his orders, or that he regretted anything the Klan did in those counties. Accordingly, it is plausible to hold Simkins personally responsible Klan activity there.
Federal troops were withdrawn from Florida in July 4, 1868. From July 8 through 14, five blacks were murdered by “white regulators.” In mid-July through October 1868, the Madison County KKK murdered seven more blacks, including Randall Coleman, a leading Republican.
In Taylor County, “masked night riders paraded with KKK flags and threatened farmers who refused to join the Klan.”
Florida’s Governor Reed had purchased two thousand muskets for the state militia. On the night of November 5, 1868, while the train carrying the muskets had stopped at the Greenville station in Madison County, Klan raiders removed all two thousand muskets–destroying some, and keeping the rest. Simkins later bragged that “Every telegraph operator, brakeman, engineer and conductor on the road was a Ku Klux.”
The Jefferson County Klan coerced white farmers into refusing to sell land to freedmen, or to taking the money, and then having the Klan drive the freedmen off his new freehold.
According to Newton, Madison County was the second-worst county in Florida for Klan violence, with 25 murders from 1868-71. The victims were always members of the Republican party.
On the night before the November 7, 1870, election, “armed riders invaded” the town of Madison, “harassing black voters.” On election day in Monticello, Jefferson County, “Georgia Klansmen joined the local mob and hundreds of shots were fired in a rioutous demonstration of white solidarity,” intended to frighten blacks against voting.
The election results left the state government weakly in reconstructionist hands. The store belonging to Madison County Sheriff Montgomery was burned on December 17.
Congress passed a new, stronger Enforcement Act in April 1871, and in November, a congressional subcommittee held four days of hearings in Tallahassee about Klan crimes. Even so, another Republican’s store was torched on November 6, 1871. However, President Grant’s October declaration of martial law in nine South Carolina counties had a chilling effect on the Klan, and by 1873, Florida Klan supporters were denying that there have had been a Klan in Florida, or were claiming that if there had been one, it was no longer active.
Simkins himself happened to leave Florida for Texas in either 1871 or 1873. (Sources conflict.) He particpated in two 1894 U.S. Supreme Court cases, Reagan v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. and Reagan v. Mercantile Trust Co. He supported the Texas Attorney General’s argument that the judiciary had no power to review the reasonableness of railroad rates which had been established by the Texas Railroad Commission. The Supreme Court, in an unanimous opinion by Justice Brewer, disagreed.
That Simkins was an advocate of the unreviewable power of unreasonable government economic regulation should be no surprise. As David Bernstein explains in his book Only One Place of Redress: African-Americans, Labor Regulations, and the Courts from Reconstruction to the New Deal, the caste system of Jim Crow was founded on government power to prevent black and white people from freely choosing to engage in economic relations.
Last Friday, the University of Texas announced the formation of a special working group which will issue a report on the Simkins naming controversy by the end of June.
Simkins should have been denied admission to the Florida bar in 1870, based on his admitted role in the theft of firearms from the militia of the state of Florida, and his role in organizing and leading a terrorist organization which appears responsible for numerous homicides and many other violent felonies. In 1870, the Florida Supreme Court did not know of the evidence regarding Simkins’ terrorist crime spree in 1868-70, but the 2010 working group will have more information.
Of course the fact that a person is an unrepentant, retired, terrorist is not necessarily a bar to being a professor at a prestigious law school–not for William Stewart Simkins at Texas in the early 20th century, or for Bernardine Rae Dohrn at Northwestern in the early 21st century.
Readers who are interested in more on the Simkins controversy may enjoy the blogging thereon at The Faculty Lounge, which has been covering the story since Russell released his paper.
DG says:
Sickening
May 24, 2010, 4:11 pmwm13 says:
That is pretty disgraceful, that a Klan leader was a professor and has a dormitory named for him. But it highlights what I have noted before, the heavy copperhead presence throughout all of American academia from the Civil War through the 1950s. The plain fact is, the history of many universities is pretty ugly in this regard.
It’s curious how immediately the academy went from hating America for suppressing Southern nationhood to hating America for suppressing black people.
May 24, 2010, 4:15 pmMichelle Dulak Thomson says:
FYI, that’s “Bernardine” Dohrn, rather than “Bernadine.”
May 24, 2010, 4:16 pm[DK: Thanks. Just fixed it. Had it right in the text, but not the headline.]
Houston Lawyer says:
From what I recall of Simkins Hall, the residents made up their own polo shirts with a large embroidered cockroach where the polo player would otherwise be. That was the state of things 30 years ago.
All throughout the South, there are buildings, parks and statues named after various people who fought for the Confederacy. They are a part of history and I don’t think that any cause would be furthered by purging the region of such names.
Although Lincoln led the civil war that ended slavery, he was opposed to integration. Should his name be purged as well?
Bill Clinton supported DADT, so clearly we can’t name any buildings after him!
May 24, 2010, 4:19 pmSammy Finkelman says:
>> Simkins never claimed
But you say the whole Klan claimed at one point, it had never existed
>> by 1873, Florida Klan supporters were denying that there have had been a Klan in Florida, or were claiming that if there had been one, it was no longer active.
And Simkins evidentally felt comopelled to leave Florida sometime between 1871 and 1873.
I think what you mean is, he never said as far as anyone knows that anything the Klan had done was wrong. And probably only denied membership in the right circumstances.
>> In 1870, the Florida Supreme Court did not know of the evidence regarding Simkins’ terrorist crime spree in 1868–70, but the 2010 working group will have more information.
Well, teh question is here, was teh membership composed of a majority of Republicans or a majority of Democrats? If they were Republicans you can say they didn’t know – or perhaps, they knew about it, but they were trying to get Simkins et al to stay within the law and keep the peace (sort of like what is proposed today by some people in Afghanistan for members of the Taliban)
If they were Democrats I don’t think that would have caused them any problems.
Now the Klan or the people running it, actually had a philosophy. They knew this kind of terror could lead to a personal dictatorship, or a regime of robbery – they had absorbed some political theory – and their whole thought was to keep this under control. They said things like taht and I would bet that Simkins speeches at the University of Texas contained thoughts along these lines – that this was all just for the emergency -there is a danger of mob rule, but allowing equal rights would cause a collapse of everything dear to them and unfortuinately the U.S. constitution and northern rule would not allow them to do things legally etc etc .
May 24, 2010, 4:19 pmMark Field says:
Very true.
May 24, 2010, 4:20 pmTJ says:
Think it would be more productive to focus attention on live, practising terrorists than some dead guy who obviously can’t defend himself and apparently has no advocate to do it for him.
May 24, 2010, 4:22 pmChris says:
You guys have missed the point of the post: it’s a totally gratuitous insult to and attack upon Bernardine Dohrn. Unlike Simkins, Dohrn was neither a racist nor a murderer.
May 24, 2010, 4:29 pmKazinski says:
Fixed it for you.
May 24, 2010, 4:48 pmwm13 says:
There is a distinct difference between those who bear arms openly, in uniform, on behalf of an established (even if illegal) government, in compliance with the laws of war, and cowardly nightriders who murder civilians. It is emphatically not true that all Confederate supporters were subsequently Klan members or supporters.
May 24, 2010, 4:49 pmbuford puser says:
Nor of course is being an “unrepentant, retired terrorist” any bar to being Prime Minister of a country some here are at great pains to defend, so maybe the most obvious reading, as noted by Chris above, that this is just twisting a news story into a hook for a gratuitous, though certainly a bit labored, slur at Bernardine Dohrn, isn’t correct.
May 24, 2010, 4:58 pmMaybe this is just what it purports to be.
Maybe.
Go Horns! says:
I hope the University does not rename the dorm because if it gets renamed there is going to be a lot of renaming and removal happening on the campus. For example, there is a statue of Jefferson Davis in a place of prominence on the campus.
I would prefer a letter to the incoming residents explaining the history surrounding Simpkins and a prominent plaque near the entrance of the building reminding everyone of what he did and how the University learned of it.
Disclosure: I was lucky enough to go to UT twice and my dad lived in Simpkins when he was at UT.
May 24, 2010, 5:01 pmArthur Kirkland says:
It is the South’s shame that it persistently declines to take out its trash (and, in some cases, celebrates it). The cause to be served by removing Simkins’ name from a public school building seems obvious and important. This doesn’t appear to be a basically decent guy who got caught in a bad spot and wound up on the wrong side. This appears to be a disgusting man who deserved — and deserves — no honor.
Why does this constitute a “controversy?” Is anyone advocating retention of the name “Simkins Hall?”
May 24, 2010, 5:01 pmbuford puser says:
Kazinski: Who did Dohrn murder? The only people who died in Weatherman bombings were their own members, in the Greenwich Village townhouse bomb factory incident.
May 24, 2010, 5:25 pmMatt says:
Quoted For Truth.
The Klan was a terrorist organization. The Confederate Army was made up of southern men from all walks of life and various races (including people of African descent, both slave and free). To assume that everyone involved was fighting for slavery is to project the present onto the past. To contrast, every single person who joined the Klan did so to support Jim Crow.
May 24, 2010, 5:52 pmMatt says:
Dohrn was complicit in murder. When you belong to a terrorist organization, that’s how it works. I don’t care if it’s Hezbollah, Irgun, or WU.
May 24, 2010, 6:00 pmbuford puser says:
Matt: How was Dohrn “complicit in murder” if the group she was in didn’t kill anyone?
May 24, 2010, 6:17 pmKazinski says:
Dohrn was part of the conspiracy in the bombing attack that resulted in the Greenwich townhouse explosion and fatality. The fact that it was one of her co-conspirators that died, doesn’t absolve her of the murder.
And there is also this:
May 24, 2010, 6:30 pmJohn D says:
Okay, okay, I see the point being made.
If Northwestern decides to name a student residence or any other campus building after Dohrn, they should rename the building fifty-six years later. Got it.
Clearly, unless it’s established that she was far worse than Simkins, there should be no problem with naming a campus building after her.
Is there, in point of fact, a move to name a building on the Northwestern (or indeed any other) campus after Dohrn? Are Dorhn’s past activities a reason to keep Simkin’s name on the UT dorm?
May 24, 2010, 6:30 pmJR says:
I’m still waiting for the State of Georgia to remove the statue of Thomas E. Watson from the Capitol grounds. Or, at the very least, change the plaque on it to something other than “Honor’s Path He Trod.” And while naming prominent buildings for history’s jackasses is a bad idea, constructing memorials in their likenesses strikes me as an even worse one, since there’s no way to deny that the purpose of a statue is to glorify and preserve the memory of the subject.
May 24, 2010, 7:01 pmLN says:
Dohrn was part of the conspiracy in the bombing attack that resulted in the Greenwich townhouse explosion and fatality. The fact that it was one of her co-conspirators that died, doesn’t absolve her of the murder.
Wait, Dohrn murdered three terrorists? How many terrorists have you killed?
May 24, 2010, 7:12 pmChristopher Cooke says:
I think David Kopel is guilty of positing a false equivalency: Dohrn did not do anything nearly as bad as Simkins. The need to suggest that Dohrn is the same as Simkins is ridiculous and demeans the thousands of people killed by the KKK.
And, frankly, it is ridiculous to leave public buildings named after avowed racists and murderers. I am not talking about projecting 21st century standards onto 19th century figures. I think Matt nails the issue here:
May 24, 2010, 7:55 pmwe can say that many people who fought for the Confederacy were honorable persons. But people who joined the KKK in the aftermath of the Civil War were no better than people who joined the Nazi party and worked at Auschwitz and other death camps.
pst314 says:
“Dohrn did not do anything nearly as bad as Simkins.”
She wanted to.
May 24, 2010, 8:18 pmautist says:
Has the Brink’s robbery, in which two police officers and an armored car guard were murdered, gone down the memory hole?
May 24, 2010, 8:37 pmAnti Federal Interventionist says:
Political correctness run amuck. UT is about to cave to political activists whose mission is to erase Southern Heritage from its public institutions. It’s not a surprise the campaign is led by a liberal, ambulance chasing law professor who also teaches at Berkeley.
May 24, 2010, 8:44 pmChristopher Cooke says:
“erase Southern Heritage from its public institutions”
Why not enact a monument to slavery then? Wasn’t that part of the Southern Heritage?
Or, how about, in Auschwitz, enacting a monument to Josef Mengele?
Just where is the dividing line between monuments to “southern heritage” and monuments to racist pigs? Why is not Simkins a racist pig? Why should tax dollars commemorate him? Did he repent later in life?
May 24, 2010, 8:57 pmAnti Federal Interventionist says:
Christopher Cooke:
You are imposing 21st century values on a 19th century man. He believed what he thought was right for the time, and the building name has historic value for the school. The school for decades has apparently had no problem with the name, so why the sudden change? Because some outside activists want to impose their ahistoric values on UT? So what of his past? He apparently contributed enough to a school that he should be honored as such. Why aren’t you offended at those institutions named for the “robber barons”, who made this country an industrial power?
May 24, 2010, 9:08 pmChristopher Cooke says:
the robber barons didn’t set out to annihilate black people and/or keep them enslaved.
I am not imposing 21st century values (which was my comment) on someone in the 19th century. Many people in the 19th century thought that the KKK, and in particular, its leaders, were despicable scum. Indeed, the Civil Rights Act of 1871 was passed because of the KKK’s reign of terror. Commemorating a KKK leader is no better than commemorating Adolf Hitler.
May 24, 2010, 9:22 pmgrog says:
Kopel is really reaching here, more than he usually does (I guess every group blog needs one). Any sane, reasonable person would look at the comparison and giggle a bit.
Did Dohrn do something specific to anger Kopel, or is this just random, strangely directed agressiveness at ideological enemies again?
May 24, 2010, 9:28 pmMark Field says:
Dohrn and Ayres had already turned themselves in 10 months before that robbery took place.
May 24, 2010, 9:29 pmwm13 says:
Obviously, a person of integrity and objectivity would recognize that the Weathermen, including Bernardine Dohrn, were morally and politically just as depraved and evil as the Ku Klux Klan, but happily they were much less effective. I don’t expect too many of the regular commenters to join me in this judgment.
May 24, 2010, 9:53 pmDave N. says:
I agree with you. Bernardine Dohrn is a loathsome human being (as is her husband), and if she had had her way, there would have been suffering worse than anything William Simkins imagined.
That said, Simkins was a despicable human being as well and the Klan is and was an odious organization and a stain on our nation’s history. If UT wants to change the name of the dorm, that’s fine by me.
May 24, 2010, 10:00 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Which might be objectionable if the Southern heritage at issue didn’t suck, and had not been vanquished by the South’s betters.
May 24, 2010, 11:23 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Next building to be endowed by Anti Federal Interventionist:
Hitler Hall.
To be followed by the Pol Pot Pavilion, the Somoza Square, the Pinochet Portico, and the Duvalier Dormitory.
May 24, 2010, 11:30 pmneurodoc says:
Robert Fassnacht? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterling_Hall_bombing Or wasn’t he a notch on the Weathermen’s belt? And clearly their intent was murderous.
May 25, 2010, 12:23 amneurodoc says:
Nobody accused them of participation in that particular crime. It was a WU one, though, and Ayres and Dohrn were instrumental in the formation of that terrorist organization.
May 25, 2010, 12:35 amautist says:
You’re moving the goalposts. I was not responding to the claim that Dohrn had never killed anyone personally, but to the claim that the weathermen had never done so, which is a lie.
May 25, 2010, 12:55 amLN says:
A Ku Klux Klan leader became a law professor at the University of Texas. Every year he would give a speech extolling the virtues of the Klan. A quarter-century after his death the university named a dorm after him. Nearly 60 years later Kopel has a colleague who wants Texas to re-name the dorm. This story is too complicated for most Volokh Conspiracy readers to understand, so Kopel assists them by describing Simkins as the “Bernardine Dorhn of the Early 20th Century.” Now we can focus on the issue at hand, which is whether Kopel’s analogy makes any sense. One commenter points that Dohrn was not a racist or a murderer. Another commenter says that Dohrn was a murderer. Another commenter points out that Dorhn never killed anyone.
autist shrewdly observes that Dohrn’s organization was involved in a murder 10 months after she turned herself in, and then to top it all off accuses Mark Field of moving the goalposts. I love this blog.
May 25, 2010, 1:24 amArthur Kirkland says:
To try to defuse some of the political stink generated by the initial post, let’s try to reach a consensus on three people whose names no sane or moral person would permit on a campus building consequent to a record of abetting wrongful violence:
William Simkins
Bernardine Dohrn
Oliver North
If this is not an all-or-none group, the explanation should be interesting.
May 25, 2010, 1:31 amVisitor Again says:
When you use the terrorist label so loosely–Bernardine Dohrn and Osama bin Laden, both terrorists–it loses its meaning. If Dohrn had been a true terrorist, she would have spent more than a few weeks in jail. She and the Weather Underground talked a good game, but that’s about it, however the far right now wants to rewrite history. Yes, I know, terrorism technically includes threats against property as well as persons, but what Dohrn actually did in no ways fits what most people consider a terrorist to be. The sex offender label is similarly misused to corral people who’ve committed peccadilloes as well as those who’ve committed serious offenses.
When you use these terms so loosely, you lose the ability to distinguish between those who pose a serious threat and those who pose none, you lose the ability to confront the real threat. For that reason, this kind of indiscriminate use of such labels is thoroughly irresponsible. I also think it’s entirely unfair and unethical, but I’ll leave that for another day.
May 25, 2010, 2:16 amneurodoc says:
Simkins and Dohrn both established themselves as leaders in terrorist organizations responsible for the murders of fellow citizens before they went on to be admitted to the bar and become law school professors at respected schools. Oliver North did none of these things, so of what relevance is he here?
And what “political stink” do you seek to defuse? You joined this thread to pronounce Simkins a “disgusting man,” and by way of ridiculing the notion of honoring such an individual by naming a university building after him, you suggested a “Hitler Hall…To be followed by the Pol Pot Pavilion, the Somoza Square, the Pinochet Portico, and the Duvalier Dormitory.” Are you now trying to draw attention away from Dohrn with your out of nowhere Oliver North version of Eris’ Apple of Discord?
May 25, 2010, 7:06 amneurodoc says:
We’ll just say that’s risible argument and leave it there.
May 25, 2010, 7:08 amDudeman says:
How Dorn and Simkins are similar:
1. Both are law professors
May 25, 2010, 9:43 am2. Both lead terrorist organizations
3. Both are Democrats
Mark Field says:
If that’s what you meant, it wasn’t clear to me at all. The two posters who questioned the analogy to Dohrn, Chris and buford poser, specifically said “she” didn’t kill anyone. buford poser then added that “the group she was in” didn’t kill anyone.
Your response seemed to me to reference Dohrn specifically, given the context. Even if you meant the Brinks robbery to refer to “the group she was in”, that didn’t seem apt because she was no longer in that group when the robbery took place.
None of this is defend Dohrn in any way. I was simply correcting what I interpreted as a factual mistake.
May 25, 2010, 10:19 amAndrew J. Lazarus says:
I don’t have much problem with this.
May 25, 2010, 10:54 amRoy says:
Having lived in Simkins, (though I was an undergrad when I lived there). I think the best course would be to tear it down and build a new dorm for the law school.
Houston Lawyer, I actually had and wore that roach t-shirt. The place is a pit
May 25, 2010, 11:25 amChris Travers says:
I have mixed feelings about this actually. I think that there’s a tendency to think that if we forget about history we can move on. This isn’t really different from the sort of censorship advocated in Plato’s “Republic.” The ideal resolution to this controversy wouldn’t be to remove Simkins’ name from the dorm but to to clarify the dedication that this was an important man who commanded a terrorist organization which committed some horrible acts. Certainly he shouldn’t be honored, but the best thing to do is to actually dishonor him for what he did and ensure that it doesn’t become forgotten.
May 25, 2010, 12:05 pmChris Travers says:
All the more reason to keep the name and clarify the dedication….
May 25, 2010, 12:05 pmjack says:
I think Dudeman did a nice distilling job there.
Oh, sure, Dohrn supporters can argue that she wasn’t as bad a terrorist as Simpkins–or maybe that she wasn’t as successful, but it’s all splitting hairs. She wanted to be as bad–worse even. From some of her and her husband’s comments, it appears that she still might like to give it a go.
She may have been just a little more together than the pantybomber and the Times Square Terrorist, but her terrorist bonafides are well established.
It’s just a question of degree–sort of the way the issue itself is an issue of degree.
How can the same people who honor a former klansman as the ‘Conscience of the Senate’ be upset that their predecessors honored a former klansman by naming a hall after him? Clearly, you all have no problem with people who were members of the klan.
Is Byrd okay because he wasn’t as vile as Simpkins?
Democrats, and the left, want to get rid of these types of buildings and monuments now because they are tangible evidence of a history they want everyone to ignore and forget.
After all, if we forget it, they get to repeat it.
May 25, 2010, 1:21 pmKen Arromdee says:
Dohrn murdered three people. The fact that they were terrorists was pure luck; his intention was to murder non-terrorists.
May 25, 2010, 3:13 pmautist says:
I don’t see how you get any of this since I didn’t even mention Dohrm in my original comment. I was simply responding to the false claims that the weathermen had never killed anyone–Buford Puser made this false claim in italics for emphasis–or that the only people who they killed were other weathermen.
The rest of what you say may be true, but it’s irrelevant. I didn’t claim that Dohrn personally killed anyone, and neither did Kopel. Similarly, no one has claimed that Simkins personally killed anyone, just that he was a member of an organization that did so. Dohrn is exactly the same as Simkins in that respect.
May 25, 2010, 3:39 pmepeeist says:
I’d want to change the name of the building – perhaps with a historical plaque outside noting the building’s original name (no “whitewashing” history…) but because of Simkins’ behaviour and what he did (and apparently the local kkk while he was leader), not merely having been part of (and a leader within) the kkk. But I would link it to what he and his organization (under his leadership) did as illegal and objectionable even at that time, NOT to being part of the kkk, because as repulsive as I consider that organization to be, I don’t want to engage in historical revisionism and applying today’s standards (Thomas Jefferson had nonconsensual [she was a slave] sex with a minor [by our standards today], but is still worthy of respect for others things and was a product of his times as, arguably, were Confederate officials – Simkins doesn’t meet that criteria as others have pointed out). I’m trying to be evenhanded here, whatever my own opinions are I wholeheartedly agree there is a world of difference between having fought for the Confederacy vs. been a kkk thug.
Merely having been a kkk member (or even leader) is not the issue to me, but rather what he did contrary to law. Justice Hugo Black for instance was once a member of the kkk but was not a racist and was a good man (my stating he was a “good man” is quoting Justice Thurgood Marshall, who took his oath of office when he joined the court in Justice Black’s chambers).
May 25, 2010, 3:57 pmMark Field says:
I explained how I got it — the context in which it was made. You, of course, are the only person on earth who knows your subjective intent. I can only judge by outward appearances. That’s what I did.
May 25, 2010, 4:38 pmChristopher Cooke says:
Jack:
There is a difference between a former, reformed racist/KKK member, such as Byrd, who has renounced the KKK and his formerly racist views, and someone like Simkins, who never renounced it. We can all ask for redemption but we have to ask, after all. Even George Wallace –”segregation now, segregation forever”–renounced his prior ways.
Another reason to rename the hall and remove Simkins’ name from it is that the timing of the dedication suggestions that UT named it after Simkins in the 1954, as a rebuke to Supreme Court’s Brown v Board of Education, so it was speech designed specifically to commemorate segregation (perhaps I am wrong about this point).
Anyway, I largely agree with epeeist, especially in his example about Jefferson not being judged through revisionist lenses, but come on guys, the KKK was illegal and denounced when it was founded. We are not talking about applying revisionist standards to someone when a majority of Congress enacted laws against the KKK that Simkins helped to lead, when he was leading it in Florida.
May 25, 2010, 6:25 pmneurodoc says:
May 25, 2010, 7:02 pmNot the whole story to be sure, but here’s a partial reminder for
Chris and others who share his perspective of what Dohrn and Ayers represent:neurodoc says:
Where Byrd is concerned, the evidence of “redemption” isn’t undeniable.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/16/AR2006061601756.html
May 25, 2010, 7:57 pmArthur Kirkland says:
Oliver North — leader of a rogue, anti-American group that committed unspeakable acts of violence and depravity — bears as much relation to the discussion of Simkins as does Bernardine Dohrn. Adding Dohrn to the discussion put an unnecessary political slant to the discussion. North — responsible for more unjust, ideologically motivated death and suffering than Dohrn likely could have imagined — provides a counterbalance.
May 25, 2010, 8:03 pmArthur Kirkland says:
If UT attempted to make amends for its shameful conduct by renaming the building and placing a marker that described the history (naming, renaming), that could be a good start.
May 25, 2010, 8:07 pmElliot says:
And maybe name a post office after Cardinal Law…
May 25, 2010, 8:16 pmautist says:
In the future, just try reading what I wrote and not what someone else wrote.
May 26, 2010, 12:32 amMark Field says:
Your comment was meaningless outside of its context. The only way I could read it was in context.
May 26, 2010, 10:17 amneurodoc says:
You got your explanation for why there is no commonality among Simkins, Dohrn, and North. But, of course, you knew that and weren’t really ingenuous when you said you want “to try to defuse some of the political stink generated by the initial post,” were you? Will you try to be ingenuous, though, only for a moment, and tell us what you do think about Dohrn, the former terrorist (do you dispute the characterization of her as a terrorist?), now law school professor, who expressed such enthusiastic approval, “ironically” for political effect according to husband Bill, for the Tate-Bianca murders and murderers? You did link Simkins name with those of Hitler, Pol Pot, Somoza, Pinochet, and Duvalier, so with what “freedom fighters” would you symbolically link Dohrn? (If you would put Simkins together with Somoza, would you put Dohrn with Ortega and the Sandinistas, or do you think that would by unfair to the Nicaraguans?)
(Arthur, she isn’t full-time law school faculty, but she is a lawyer, so if you want to expand that list of terrorist/lawyers beyond Simkins and Dohrn, how about adding Lynne Stewart?)
And Arthur, believe whatever you will about my political thinking, but I will tell you that I distinctly remember back in 1994 fearing that North was sure to be elected to the Senate from VA. That should say something about both my abilities as a political handicapper and my view of North’s fitness for public office.
May 26, 2010, 11:54 amChrisTS says:
Christopher Cooke is correct: the dorm was named for Simkins shortly after Brown.
Simkins delighted in talking about how the masked faces, torches, and rearing horses of the Klan terrorizers affected the blacks (not his word, of course) cowering in their homes and about how he beat a boy with a barrel stave for ‘insulting’ a white woman.
Kopel’s referencing Dohrn is typically off-kilter, whatever one thinks of her. It is just irrelevant to the question of the name of the dorm at UT. They named it after a Klan leader to express their outrage over desegregation. No proud Southern heritage issue, here, unless one thinks of the Klan as part of that heritage.
May 27, 2010, 2:55 pmHow many Texans does it take to decide whether a university dormitory should be named for a Reconstruction-era Klansman? : Lawyers, Guns & Money says:
[...] heist that liberated a shipment of muskets intended for the Florida militia. And as David Kopel points out, Simkins directed the Klan in three of the most violent counties in the state during the late [...]
June 10, 2010, 3:14 amDeath and Taxes » University of Texas’ KKK Hero and Testing Remembrance says:
[...] grounds proved ripe for the group’s racist rhetoric, and Simkins regularly led local mobs against black neighbors. He seemed to control it all, and once bragged, “Every telegraph [...]
June 23, 2010, 7:01 pm