AUSTIN, Texas, May 20 (UPI) -- The University of Texas is considering renaming a dormitory honoring a founder of the Florida Ku Klux Klan who went on to become a professor at the law school.
Simkins Residence Hall, which opened 55 years ago, is named after William Stewart Simkins, the Austin American-Statesman reported. Simkins, who died in 1929, was once a notable figure on campus but had been forgotten until Tom Russell, a University of Denver law professor who formerly taught at UT, dredged up his KKK past in a scholarly article.
Russell found that Simkins, who served as a colonel in the Confederate Army, founded the Florida KKK with his brother Eldred. Eldred Simkins became a member of the university board of regents.
At UT, William Simkins was open about his past. Although he said he never killed anyone as a Klan member, he admitted beating up a black man and robbing a train of guns and ammunition belonging to the U.S. government. He talked of what the Klan achieved in an article in the alumni magazine.
"The immediate effect upon the Negro was wonderful, the flitting to and fro of masked horses and faces struck terror to the race," Simkins wrote.
The naming of the dorm while UT was fighting integration in the 1950s does not appear to have been a gesture of defiance, the newspaper said. The name was suggested by the law school dean, Page Keeton, whose daughter says was an advocate of civil rights.
