Our letter to the public and the city asking that the Confederate monuments be taken down and for people to stop having plantation weddings. UPDATES: On news coverage and co-signers UPDATE 2: Our letter has been published by the "Dallas Morning News" UPDATE3 Updated list of signatures added in

Michael Phillips is circulating this letter for signatures by various scholars. We expect to have 20 to 30 signatures. Phillips was interviewed today by WFAA Channel 8 and it is supposed to be in the news 10pm tonight CST.

This is a very recent column in the Dallas Morning News.

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/07/18/dallas-time-bring-old-confederate-monuments-mayor-looks-ready

UPDATE2:

Dallas Morning News has published our letter. We have about 100 co-signers.

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/08/04/dallas-confederate-memorials-scream-white-supremacy

UPDATE on Coverage:

http://www.wbap.com/2017/07/20/historian-wants-dallas-to-remove-confederate-memorial/

Evidently our mayor Rawlings has written a letter to the Communities Foundation of Texas "beseeching" the North Texas non-profit to let one of its partners Dallas Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation take up the topic of Confederate monuments.

Memo to Mayo Rawlings, you don't need this group to take up the topic of Confederate monuments, you need a crane to take up a Confederate monument instead.

The column reports that the Dallas Truth people "don't want to be pushed into a corner right out of the gate, either." Don't worry Dallas Truth people, we can do this for you.

The Dallas Truth people say that they "want to create a framework and build community trust first." And they don't "want to be rushed into something."

Sounds like it is a group that will want to talk a lot and I suspect with them monuments will not be going anywhere fast. I think their process will be a lot of sentimental feel good talk and the monuments will end up remaining with contextualization.


This is the letter.

To the people of Dallas, Members of the Dallas City Council, and Trustees of the Dallas School Board from the Committee of Scholars:

As Kathryn Allamong Jacob masterfully explains in her book, “Testament to Union: Civil War Monuments in Washington, D.C”:

“Mundane as they may appear, ubiquitous as they may be, public monuments constitute serious cultural authority. They are important precisely because, by their mere presence and their obvious expense, they impose a memory of an event or individual on the public landscape that orders our lives. These monuments confer a legitimacy upon the memory they embody. Their size and costliness testify to its importance. And by imprinting one memory, they erase others.”

Furthermore, monuments have authority because of their prominent placement in public locations, often near prestigious institutions or government buildings.  Their location implies that the community endorses the ideals the monuments represent.  Jacob explains that “public monuments help shape collective memory. They weave an intricate web of remembrance in which certain threads are highlighted, or validated, while others are dropped or disappear.”

This effort to shape the public’s understanding of the past is a method of shaping the values of the present. If someone is supposedly a hero fighting for a cause, then the cause that person fought for must have been heroic as well.  A monument to a movement or nation or event inherently defines that movement, nation, or event as being glorious. Monuments monumentally endorse a set of values.

Monuments in public spaces represent what the city, county, state or nation seeks to represent as its core beliefs. Monuments work to shape identity. Shaping identities and influencing values is a strategy to influence, if not control, the future.

Every Confederate monument standing today loudly proclaims that, whatever might be said about civil rights and racial equality in contemporary political discourse, that the enduring values of this place, this city, and this people is white supremacy.

Discussion of Confederate monuments has focused on what offense they might give to African Americans, but it is overlooked that they poison others with their message of white supremacy. It is not surprising that white nationalist Richard Spencer grew up in Dallas and marches in defense of Confederate monuments, for he grew up in the shadow of such edifices.

Every Confederate monument proclaims that African American lives, their suffering, and the crimes committed against them really don’t matter.  For if African American lives mattered these monuments would be gone. These monuments instruct the public, including judges, police officers, and jurors that fair treatment under the law for African Americans represents an avoidable inconvenience. The plaque at the Lew Sterrett Justice Center honoring Robert E. Lee in the hallway to the Dallas County Central Jury Room instructs those jurors that African American freedom is expendable.

These monuments also instruct African American youth, that despite all the claims that might be made in the schools, that their hopes and their dreams are not treasured by society. British journalist of Barbadian descent, Gary Younge, in his book, “No Place Like Home: A Black Briton’s Journey Through the American South,” describes his feelings while walking amidst a series of one hundred-year-old statues depicting Confederate leaders on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia:

I turned around to walk back up Monument Avenue, feeling angry and confused… I had spent about an hour walking along a road in which four men who fought to enslave me… have been honoured and exalted. I resented the fact that on the way to work every day, black people have to look at that. Imagine how black children must feel when they learn that the people who have been raised and praised up the road are the same ones who tried to keep their great-great-grandparents in chains.

Confederate monuments are ongoing source of alienation. We should not be surprised that when alienation is taught, in the schools, in political debates, and in public spaces that young people receive the message and become alienated themselves.

The city has a massive Confederate War Memorial near the Dallas Convention Center.  This work features statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Albert Sidney Johnston, as well as the Confederacy’s only president, Jefferson Davis.  The figures surround a statue of a Confederate soldier atop a 60-foot pillar. One inscription on the monument pays tribute to “the genius and valor of Confederate seamen.” 

We have a Robert E. Lee Park in Oak Lawn that features an equestrian statue of the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia near a replica of a slavery-era plantation home.  Meanwhile, multiple sculptures referencing the Confederacy and the Great Seal of the Confederate States of America can be found at Fair Park.  A Confederate flag hangs at Fair Park’s Great Hall, which also includes a massive medallion on one wall incorporating a female figure representing the Confederacy.  A mural featuring portraits of Confederate generals John Bell Hood, Albert Sidney Johnston, and Dick Dowling adorns another wall.

Although the name of Robert E. Lee Elementary School will be changed, there are numerous other Dallas schools named after prominent Confederate military officers and political leaders:  William Cabell, William H. Gaston, John Ireland, Sidney Lanier, Stonewall Jackson, Albert Sidney Johnston, John H. Reagan, and Oran M. Roberts. 

Some of the individuals honored have no direct relationship to Dallas history while some figured prominently in Dallas’ past, but all willingly, and often enthusiastically, participated in a treasonous war fought to preserve chattel slavery, that caused the deaths of 750,000 Americans and the maiming of tens of thousands more, and attempted to tear the nation asunder. The time has come for these tributes to the Confederacy to come down and for public buildings that bear the names of those whose fame is primarily tied to their service to a slave republic to assume a new identity.

Most loathsome of Dallas’s monuments, and perhaps singularly loathsome of Confederate monuments everywhere is the one-third replica of Robert E. Lee’s plantation home, Arlington House, in Lee Park.  Weddings frequently take place there.  Plantations were sites of the rape, beating, and torture of slaves.  The faux plantation features a portrait of Robert E. Lee, a white supremacist who fought for slavery and white supremacy.  The participants in such weddings demonstrate by their actions that they consider the horrors of slavery a triviality. They befoul their marriages and bequeath to any heirs a legacy of racial callousness and indifference to evil.

These monuments have stood mostly unchallenged for decades because the American history textbooks used in public schools are in themselves largely, metaphorically, Confederate monuments, which obscure, if not erase history, diminish the value of African American lives, and train generations of Americans to not comprehend the horrors of human bondage as practiced in the United States.

The Robert E. Lee so elaborately honored at Lee Park and elsewhere in Dallas was a harsh slave master.  Wesley Norris, who suffered the misfortune of being owned by Lee, recounted that he endured a beating after he attempted to escape in 1859.  When Norris was captured, Lee said he would teach Norris “a lesson he would never forget.” Norris offered the following account of what happened next:

[H]e then ordered us to the barn, where, in his presence, we were tied firmly to posts by a Mr. Gwin, our overseer, who was ordered by Gen. Lee to strip us to the waist and give us fifty lashes each, excepting my sister, who received but twenty; we were accordingly stripped to the skin by the overseer, who, however, had sufficient humanity to decline whipping us; accordingly Dick Williams, a county constable, was called in, who gave us the number of lashes ordered; Gen. Lee, in the meantime, stood by, and frequently enjoined Williams to lay it on well, an injunction which he did not fail to heed; not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done.

During the Civil War Lee stated that slavery represented the most appropriate relationship between whites and African Americans since African Americans were an inferior race.  After the Civil War, Lee campaigned against granting African Americans civil rights.  He stated in testimony to the Reconstruction Committee of Congress that Virginia would be better off if it got rid of African Americans.

This is the man families honor when they hold weddings at Lee Park at the replication of Arlington House.  Consciously or not, they celebrate their marriage by paying tribute to the slave past.  For this reason, the clergy should not agree to perform weddings at Arlington House.  Whatever the resolutions, position papers or published policies of denominations might be regarding race, whatever fine phrases these proclamations might say, religious leaders of prominent churches, temples, and other places of worship who perform marriages at the Arlington House replica in Dallas will be complicit in a Robert E. Lee plantation wedding. They will give their seal of approval to a ceremony that renders frivolous the oppression of African Americans in the slavery era, whitewashes history, and promotes a white supremacist worldview.

Organizations that meet at the replica plantation house show contempt for African Americans as well. When the owners of properties like The Claridge, 21 Turtle Creek, 3525 Turtle Creek, The Mayfair, The Vendôme, and The Wyndemere sponsor “Lighting Up Lee Park” we see how the upper classes of Dallas embrace a duplicate Robert E. Lee plantation, and adorn it to celebrate the birth of Christ. What does this say about the Dallas Christian community that this doesn’t raise a cry of disgust?

These monuments glorify violent insurrectionists who sought to tear the United States of America apart.  The implied endorsement of the Confederate cause these monuments represent is toxic to today’s politics.  Multiple polls, both national and statewide, have shown disturbingly high percentages of the Texas public supporting secession. In May 2016, the Texas state Republican Party platform committee at their convention in Dallas astonishingly voted down a secession resolution by only 16 to 14 with one abstention. It might be thought that such a resolution would not get a single vote or even be presented for a vote by a mainstream political organization. This past June, participants in the Texas Boys State government education program sponsored by the American Legion, during an exercise in which they portrayed members of the state Legislature, voted for the secession of Texas from the United States. The tributes to the Confederacy that pockmark the landscape are teaching the state’s next generation of leaders that treason is an honorable political option.

Sadly, Americans today need to be reminded why secession took place in 1861. The purpose of the Confederacy was clearly to preserve white racial dictatorship. Confederate Vice-President Alexander H. Stephens made this clear in his infamous “Cornerstone Speech” on March 21, 1861, when he said that the Confederate nation that he and the other leaders of the secession movement hoped to establish rested “upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”

In the “Declaration of Causes Which Impel Texas to Secede from the Federal Union,” Feb. 2, 1861, of the Texas secession convention repeatedly cited slavery as the reason for leaving the Union:

In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon the unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of the equality of all men, irrespective of race or color—a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of the Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and the negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.

            For years past this abolition organization has been actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union, and has rendered the federal congress the arena for spreading firebrands and hatred between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States.

            By consolidating their strength, they have placed the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in the federal congress, and rendered representation of no avail in protecting Southern rights against their exactions and encroachments.

            . . . They have, through the mails and hired emissaries, sent seditious pamphlets and papers among us to stir up servile insurrection and bring blood and carnage to our firesides.

             They have sent hired emissaries among us to burn our towns and distribute arms and poison to our slaves for the same purpose.

And;

That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding States.

To its shame, Dallas still honors the Confederacy, its institution of slavery, and Confederate leaders.  It is time for these memorials to come down.  Some will argue that the Confederate monuments are “history.”  There is a fundamental difference, however, between history and propaganda.  History does not have as its primary object glamorization.  History is about analysis, context, and explaining the origins of ideas, institutions, and events. Confederate memorials do none of these things.  We should not continue to honor the Confederacy even as there are people who played a critical and positive role in Dallas history who receive inadequate or no tribute such as:

·         The African American slaves and sharecroppers whose unpaid labor built the city’s and the county’s economy.

·         Carl Brannin, who fought for the rights of workers in Dallas.

·         Jessie Daniel Ames who, unlike Lee, actually lived in Dallas and led the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching.

·         A. Maceo Smith, who led voter registration and poll tax payment drives in Dallas and was the man most responsible for the creation of the “Hall of Negro Life,” the only acknowledgement of the African American contribution to Texas culture and history at the state’s Centennial Fair held here in 1936.

·         John Leslie Patton, a Dallas school principal who fought to bring a consciousness of African and African American history to black students in this city in the 1930s and 1940s.

·         John Mason Brewer, who taught in this city in the 1930s and preserved for the ages Texas’ African American folklore.

·         Juanita Craft, a leader of the Dallas NAACP who battled to end segregation at the State Fair at Fair Park.

·         W.J. Durham, a local NAACP attorney who fought to end discrimination against African Americans at Neiman Marcus and other Dallas department stores.

·         John W. “Preacher” Hays, who not only fought for Dallas workers but resisted racism within the white union movement.

·         Pancho Medrano, a crusader for Latino/a, African American, and workers’ rights.

·         Rabbi Levi Olan, an often-lonely voice for civil rights in Dallas in the late 1940s and the 1950s.

·         Adelfa Callejo, who in 1961 became the first Latina to graduate from Southern Methodist University’s law school, who led protests against the murder of 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez by a Dallas police officer in 1973, who resisted selective and racist deportations of undocumented workers, and fought to democratize Dallas politics through single-member city council districts.

Confederate monuments, if left to stand, will proclaim a sad truth about Dallas to the world, that these accurately reflect the values of modern Dallas however much it might be denied.

The residents of Dallas have to decide who they want to be. Do they want to be the residents of an American city with democratic values that promote civil rights and racial equality, or do they want to be residents of a Confederate city with plantation values, with the values of a hierarchical society of inequality?

The residents of Dallas have to decide whether they want to leave the metaphysical plantation of the past and enter a brighter American future or to be forever prisoners of it.

In short, who do we want to be and what future do we wish to choose: American and democratic, or Confederate and anti-democratic?

Other cities have chosen the American future. The Charlottesville, Va. City Council voted to sell its Robert E. Lee statue. And this spring, the city of New Orleans made international headlines when it removed four racist monuments.  Three were statues of Jefferson Davis, Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard, and Robert E. Lee. The fourth was the so-called Liberty Place Monument, which glorified the assault by the White League, a Reconstruction-era racist organization that assaulted New Orleans’ bi-racial police force and temporarily overthrew a Republican governor accused of ushering in an era of “negro domination.”

As Mayor Landrieu said after the removal of the Lee statue in his city, “To literally put the Confederacy on a pedestal in our most prominent places of honor is an inaccurate recitation of our full past. It is an affront to our present, and it is a bad prescription for our future . . . The Confederacy was on the wrong side of history and humanity. It sought to tear apart our nation and subjugate our fellow Americans to slavery. This is the history we should never forget and one that we should never again put on a pedestal to be revered.”

More and more cities are choosing to give up the Confederacy. We can do this also, if we are willing to confront the reality of what these Dallas Confederate monuments do.

We ask the citizens of Dallas not to hold weddings or wedding receptions at Robert E. Lee Park or any other location that celebrates or attempts to honor the Confederacy and that guests not attend any such functions.

We ask the religious leaders not to perform weddings at Robert E. Lee Park or any other locations that celebrate the Confederacy, nor perform weddings which will later be celebrated at such places.

We ask businesses to not provide goods or services for plantation weddings at Robert E. Lee Park or any other locations that celebrate the Confederacy.

We ask that organizations not have events at Robert E. Lee Park or any other location that celebrates the Confederacy and we ask the citizens of Dallas not to attend any events at the Robert E. Lee Park or any other locations that honor the Confederate slave republic.

We ask that the city of Dallas to remove all Confederate monuments to storage or a museum. We ask that the city of Dallas to eliminate Confederate place names such as Robert E. Lee Park and Confederate Drive. We ask the city of Dallas to not celebrate or promote the Confederacy with sculpture and art work at Fair Park.

We ask the Dallas Independent School District rename all schools named after Confederate leaders: William Cabell, William H. Gaston, John Ireland, Sidney Lanier, Stonewall Jackson, Albert Sidney Johnston, John H. Reagan, and Oran M. Roberts and to not give the schools dual names under the pretext of historical preservation.

We ask the city of Dallas, the Dallas Independent School District, Dallas cultural institutions, and the people of Dallas to choose a path to a multiracial democratic American society and away from the dark past of white supremacy.

Signed,

Dr. Michael Phillips

Collin College Department of History

Plano, Texas

Author of White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001

Edward Sebesta

Dallas, Texas

Editor of Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction and The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader.

For the full list see the online version. This is the last list I have received.

Betsy Friauf

Independent Scholar and Baylor University Charlton Oral History Research Grantee

Plano, Texas

Ed Gray

Master of Liberal Studies,

Doctoral Candidate, and

Co-Chair of the Human Rights Cluster

Southern Methodist University

Dallas, Texas

Mrs. Ashley Austin-Hill
Joy Tabernacle African Methodist Episcopal Church
Dallas, Texas

Imam Abdul Rahman Bashir
Religious Director
Islamic Association of Allen
Allen, Texas

Imam Nadim Bashir
Head of Religious Affairs
East Plano Islamic Center
Plano, Texas

Dr. Candace Bledsoe

Professor, Liberal Studies Graduate Department

Director, Action Research Center

Southern Methodist University

Dallas, Texas

Elena Bonifay
Chief Operating Officer
The Dallas Weekly
Dallas Texas

Rev. James B. Briggs

Senior Pastor, Daybreak Metropolitan Church

Addison, Texas

Rev. Gerald Britt

Vice President, External Affairs

CitySquare

Dallas, Texas

Author, “Civic Sermons: Ideas for a Different Civic Culture.”

Rev. William Carlisle
Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church
Greenville, Texas

The Reverend Dr. Neil G. Cazares-Thomas

Senior Pastor, Cathedral of Hope United Church of Christ

Dallas, Texas

Author of Daring to Speak Love’s Name 

Dr. R. Adrian Clarke

M.D.,

Dallas, Texas

Dr. Ed Countryman

University Distinguished Professor, Department of History

Southern Methodist University

Dallas, Texas

Author of Enjoy the Same Liberty: Black Americans and the Revolutionary Era. 

Dr. David Cullen

Professor of History

Russellville, Arkansas

Co-Editor of The Texas Left: The Radical Roots of Lone Star Liberalism and The Texas Right: The Radical Roots of Lone Star Conservatism.

Rev. Beth Dana
Minister of Congregational Life
First Unitarian Church of Dallas
Dallas, Texas

Rev. Rebecca David-Hensley

Member, North Texas Conference

United Methodist Church

Dallas, Texas

Dr. Crista J. DeLuzio

Associate Professor and Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor, Department of History

Southern Methodist University

Dallas, Texas

Co-Editor of On the Borders of Power and Love: Families and Kinship in the Intercultural American Southwest.

Dr. Darryl Dickson-Carr

Chair and Professor, Department of English

Southern Methodist University

Dallas, Texas

Author, The Columbian Guide to Contemporary African American Fiction

Dr. W. Marvin Dulaney

Associate Professor Emeritus, Department of History

University of Texas at Arlington

Arlington, Texas

Author of Black Police in America.

Dr. Jeffrey A. Engel

Professor, Department of History

Director, Center for Presidential History

Southern Methodist University

Dallas, Texas

Author of Into the Desert: Reflections on the Gulf War

Sandra Farlow
Community Unitarian Universalist Church
Plano, Texas

Rev. Wendy Fenn
Retired Associate Minister for Congregational Life, Presbyterian Church USA
Dallas, Texas

Rabbi Steve Fisch

Congregation Beth El Binah

Dallas, Texas

Dr. Neil Foley

Professor, and Robert and Nancy Dedman Chair in History

Co-Director, Center for Southwest Studies

Southern Methodist University

Dallas, Texas

Author of The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture

Rev. Eric Folkerth

Pastor, Northaven United Methodist Church

Dallas, Texas

Dr. Dennis Foster

Professor and Daisy Dean Frensley Chair, Department of English

Southern Methodist University

Dallas, Texas

Author, “The Fatal West: W.S. Burroughs’s Perverse Destiny,” in Perversion and the Social Relation.

Cantor Vicky Glikin

Temple Emanu-El

Dallas, Texas

Rev. Jonathan Grace
Church at the Square, City Square
Dallas, Texas

Tom Greem
Retired First Assistant Attorney General of Texas
State of Texas
Sulphur Springs, Texas

Tom Greem
Retired First Assistant Attorney General of Texas
State of Texas
Sulphur Springs, Texas

Dr. Michael Gregg

Pastor, Royal Lane Baptist Church

Dallas, Texas

Rabbi David Gruber
Interfaith Wedding Rabbi
Frisco, Texas

Dr. Rick Halperin

Director of the Embrey Human Rights Program,

Southern Methodist University

Dallas, Texas

Dr. Kenneth M. Hamilton

Associate Professor and Director of Ethnic Studies, Department of History

Southern Methodist University

Dallas, Texas

Author of Booker T. Washington in American Memory.

Dr. Hanan Hammad

Associate Professor, Department of History

Texas Christian University

Fort Worth, Texas

Author of Industrial Sexuality, Urbanization, and Social Transformation in Egypt.

Dr. Carl Hasler

Professor of Philosophy

Independent Scholar

Dallas, Texas

Rev. Ben A. David Hebskey
Oak Lawn United Methodist Church
Dallas, Texas

Ms. Victoria Henderson
Public school teacher
Dallas, Texas

Rev. Ben Anderson David Hensley,

Associate Pastor of Worship and Discipleship

Oak Lawn United Methodist Church

Dallas, Texas

Dr. Constance Hilliard
Professor, Department of History
University of North Texas
Denton, Texas

Author of Straightening the Bell Curve.

Rev. Jeff Hood

Theologian

Dallas, Texas

Author of The Courage to be Queer.

Dr. Robert Hunt

Director of Global Theological Education

Director of the Center for Evangelism and Missional Church Studies

Perkins School of Theology

Southern Methodist University

Dallas, Texas

Author, Muslim Citizens of a Globalized World

Imam Yaser Birjas Issa
Valley Ranch Islamic Center
Irving, Texas

Dr. Mike Itashiki

Professor, Department of Sociology

Richland College

Dallas, Texas

Rev. Larry M. James

Chief Executive Office

CitySquare

Author of The Wealth of the Poor: How Valuing Every Neighbor Restores Hope in Our Cities 

Imam Abdul Nasir Jangda
Qalam Institute and Mansfield Islamic Center
Dallas, Texas

Elena Jeffus
Northpark Presbyterian Church
Dallas, Texas

Dr. Suzanne Jones

Professor, Department of Education and Developmental Education

Collin College

Frisco, Texas

Rabbi Nancy Kasten

Community Educator

Co-Chair, Faith Forward Dallas

Dallas, Texas

Dr. Max Krochmal

Associate Professor, Department of History

Director, Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies

Texas Christian University

Fort Worth, Texas

Author of Blue Texas: The Making of a Multiracial Democratic Coalition in the Civil Rights Era.

Judith Kubliski

Member, Community Unitarian Universalist Church

Plano, Texas.

Ms. Michelle Landry
Student, The University of Texas at Dallas
Dallas, Texas

Dr. John Richard Lundberg

Professor, Department of History

Tarrant County College

Fort Worth, Texas

Author of Granbury’s Texas Brigade: Diehard Western Confederates.

Rev. Dr. George A. Mason

Senior Pastor

Wilshire Baptist Church

Dallas, Texas

Rev. Dr. Henry L. Masters, Sr.

Retired Pastor, Hamilton Park, St. Paul and St. Luke Community

United Methodist Church

Dallas Texas

Author of Making Room in the Inn: Christmas Hospitality through an African American Experience.

Dr. Alexis McCrossen

Professor of History

Southern Methodist University

Dallas, Texas

Author of Making Modern Times: A History of Clocks, Watches, and Other Timekeepers in American Life.

Rev. Dr. Donta McGilvery

Founder, Dallas Improvement Associaiton

First Institutional Baptist Church

Phoenix, Arizona.

Dr. Andrew Milson

 Professor and Associate Chair, Department of History,

University of Texas at Arlington.

Arlington, Texas

Author of American Educational Thought: Essays from 1640-1940. 

Hafsa-Wania Mohammed
Student, University of Texas at Dallas

Richardson, Texas

Almas Muscatwalla
Community Volunteer
Faith Forward Dallas
Dallas, Texas

Rev. Heather Mustain

Minister of Missions, Wilshire Baptist Church

Dallas, Texas

Lilly Neubauer
Northaven United Methodist Church
Dallas, Texas

Dr. Beth Newman

Associate Professor, Department of English

Southern Methodist University

Dallas, Texas

Author of Subjects on Display: Psychoanalysis, Social Expectation, and Victorian Femininity 

Hillary Owen
Highland Park United Methodist Church
Dallas, Texas

Rabbi Andrew M. Paley
Senior Rabbi, Temple Shalom
Dallas, Texas

Dr. Chad Pearson

Professor, Department of History

Collin College

Plano, Texas

Author of Reform or Repression: Organizing America’s Anti-Union Movement

Jacqueline Marie Powers
Citizen
Dallas, Texas

The Rev. Patrick D. Price

Minister, 

Community Unitarian Universalist Church

Plano, Texas

Dr. Stephen Rabe

Ashbel Smith Professor, Department of History

University of Texas at Dallas

Richardson, Texas

Author of The Killing Zone: The United States Wages Cold War in Latin America.

Dr. Milan Reban

Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science

University of North Texas

Denton, Texas

Co-author of The Politics of Ethnicity in Eastern Europe.

Muhammed Rizwan
Bangladesh Muslim Center

Daniel Roby
Executive Director
Austin Street Center
Dallas, Texas

Rev. Karen Romestan
Dallas, Texas

Dr. Ariel Ron

Assistant Professor, Department of History

Southern Methodist University

Dallas, Texas

Author, “Henry Carey’s Rural Roots: ‘Scientific Agriculture’ and Economic Development in the Antebellum North,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought (June 2015).

Rev. Bill Rose

Pastor

South Dallas Community Church

Director of Mentoring, Champions of Hope

Dallas, Texas

Dr. Lisa Roy-Davis

Professor, Department of English

Collin College

Plano, Texas

Patrick Salvant
The Oak Cliff Media Company
Dallas, Texas

Dr. Marjorie Hamilton Scott
St Luke African Methodist Episcopal Church
Garland, Texas

Imam Khalid Shahid
Dallas Masjid Al Islam
Dallas, Texas

Rev. Kerry Smith

Pastor, Greenland Hills United Methodist Church

Dallas, Texas

Dr. Sherry Smith

University Distinguished Professor of History (Emerita)

Southern Methodist University.

Dallas Texas

Author of Hippies, Indians, and the Fight for Red Power

Lisa McCarthy Stewart
Director of Outreach and Missions
Highland Park United Methodist Church
Dallas, Texas

Dr. Sherry Stewart
Trietsch Memorial United Methodist Church
Highland Village, Texas

Rev. Joreaner Stimpson
Joy Tabernacle African Methodist Episcopal Church
Dallas, Texas

Imam Omar Suleiman

President of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research and

Resident Scholar at the Valley Ranch Islamic Center

Irving, Texas

Dr. William J. Stone Jr.

Associate Professor, Department of Communication, retired
University of Texas-Arlington 

Arlington, Texas

Dr. Robert Tinajero

Professor, Department of English

Director of the Race Relations Institute

Paul Quinn College

Dallas, Texas

Lupita Murillo Tinnen

Photographer, Educator, and Member,

LULAC Professional Leaders Council #22293

Oak Point, Texas

Author, “Immigrant Laborers,” Hypertext Magazine. 

Anand Upadhyaya
Student Support and Community Service
Dallas County Community College District
Balch Springs, Texas

Harbhajan Singh Virdee
Gurdwara Nishkam Seva
Irving, Texas

Dr. Keith Volanto

Professor, Department of History

Collin College

Plano, Texas

Author of Texas, Cotton, and the New Deal

Dr. Michael W. Waters

Founder and Senior Pastor, Joy Tabernacle A.M.E. Church,

Dallas, Texas,

Author of Stakes Is High: Race, Faith, and Hope for America

Dr. Steven Weisenburger

Mossiker Chair in Humanities and Professor, Department of English

Southern Methodist University

Dallas, Texas

Author of Fables of Subversion: Satire and the American Novel

Aaron White

Associate Minister

First Unitarian Church of Dallas

Dr.  Kyle Wilkison

Historian

Plano, Texas

Author of Yeoman, Sharecroppers, and Socialists: Plain Folk Protest in Texas, 1870-1914

Sandra Wilkinson
Marjorie von Wilkinson Stephens Foundation
Dallas, Texas
Sandra Wilkinson
Marjorie von Wilkinson Stephens Foundation
Dallas, Texas

Dr. Byrd Williams

Professor, Department of Photography

Collin College

Plano, Texas

Author of Proof: Photographs from Four Generations of a Texas Family.

Brian C. Wilson, M.A.

Adjunct Professor, Department of English

Tulsa Community College, Southeast Campus

Tulsa, Oklahoma

Dr. Steve Woodworth

Professor, Department of History

Texas Christian University

Fort Worth, Texas

Author of This Great Struggle: America’s Civil War.

Dr. Ben Wright

Assistant Professor of Historical Studies

University of Texas at Dallas

Richardson, Texas

Co-editor of The American Yawp and Apocalypse and the Millennium in the American Civil War Era.

Pamela Young
Community Leader and Activist
Faith In Texas and Mothers Against Police Brutality
Fort Worth, Texas

Dr. Elaine Zweig

Professor and Lead, Department of Child Development and Education

Collin College

Plano, Texas

Co-author of The Architecture of Educational Frameworks.