With Roots in Racism, ‘Eyes of Texas’ Should Be Banned. So Why Isn’t Texas Listening to Its Black Students?

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The University of Texas seems to have a growing problem on its hands when it comes to the school song, “The Eyes of Texas.” What began early in the summer as a renewed movement by Longhorn athletes to do away with the song has spread beyond athletics and, not surprisingly, has led to something of a power struggle between the athletics director and football coach Tom Herman.

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In mid-June, athletes at the school posted a thoughtful letter on social media accounts detailing a list of changes they wanted to see on campus, expressing a desire to “hold the athletic department and university to a higher standard by not only asking them to keep their promise of condemning racism on our campus, but to go beyond this by taking action to make Texas more comfortable and inclusive for the Black athletes and Black community that has so fervently supported this program.”

Among the list: changing the name of buildings on campus, such as Robert Lee Moore Hall, named for a mathematics professor so devoted to racism he refused to allow Black students in his classes even after UT was integrated (his name has since been removed); replacing and adding on-campus statues; and adding a permanent exhibit at the Longhorns Athletics Hall of Honor highlighting the achievements of Black athletes.

Those requests are mostly topical, which is why the university moved pretty quickly to meet them.

The last request on athletes’ list, though, has become a problem. It was to get rid of “The Eyes of Texas” and replace it with a song that doesn’t have the same racist undertones — or, at minimum, to lift the requirement that all athletes sing the song when it is played at sporting events.

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If you don’t know “The Eyes” and its origins, you’re not alone. A quick lesson: in 1899, University president William Prather, in an address to students at the opening of the school year, paraphrased words he’d heard Robert E. Lee say while Prather was a student at Washington College in Virginia.

“The eyes of the South are upon you,” Prather said. “Forward, young men and women of the University, the eyes of Texas are upon you!” {snip}

So that’s the first strike against it — the genesis of the song comes from Lee, the commander of the Confederate Army, a traitor and racist fighting for states who wanted to keep enslaving Africans they’d stolen from ancestral homelands.

A few years later, a UT student and band member named Lewis Johnson was bothered that his group mostly played other schools’ songs. Texas needed one, and Johnson decided to write it. {snip}

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Pleased at their effort, they decided to debut their song at the annual campus minstrel show in May 1903.

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So that’s strike two. And in this game, that’s enough to get the song out.

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Despite a reckoning with the racist foundations and persistently racist systems of this country in many corners, the university has said it won’t get rid of the song, and athletics director Chris Del Conte is siding with deep-pocketed boosters over football coach Tom Herman and the school’s Black athletes and teammates and classmates that support them.

In early June, Herman marched with his players, coaches and other staff from campus to the Texas capitol, where they and others kneeled for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time officer Derek Chauvin casually kneeled on Floyd’s neck, slowly killing him. {snip}

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For his part, Herman isn’t forcing players to participate when the song is played. Del Conte, however, wants players at minimum to stand for “The Eyes” as a show of respect and appreciation for the team’s fans.

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