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University of Texas Longhorn band won't play "The Eyes of Texas"

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WVUALLEN

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University of Texas Longhorn band won't play "The Eyes of Texas" this weekend after some members say they're unwilling

The Longhorn Band will not play the “The Eyes of Texas” at this Saturday’s football game between the University of Texas at Austin and Baylor University after a survey of members revealed several students are refusing to play the traditional alma mater song, according to The Daily Texan.

www.texastribune.org

University of Texas Longhorn band won't play "The Eyes of Texas" this weekend after some members say they're unwilling

The Longhorn Band will not play the “The Eyes of Texas” at this Saturday’s football game between the University of Texas at Austin and Baylor University after a survey of members revealed several students are refusing to play the traditional alma mater song, according to The Daily Texan.
www.texastribune.org www.texastribune.org

Student athletes asked UT-Austin to drop the school song during this summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, among other demands, threatening to forgo participation in recruiting and donor events. The university responded with plans to boost Black student enrollment and recruitment, but it kept the song and pledged to educate visitors and students on its history and context.

“Together, we have the power to define what the Eyes of Texas expect of us, what they demand of us, and what standard they hold us to now,” Hartzell said in the statement in July. “‘The Eyes of Texas’ should not only unite us, but hold all of us accountable to our institution’s core values. But we first must own the history. Only then can we reimagine its future.”

Removing “The Eyes of Texas” song was not the student’s only demand this past summer. Student-athletes and other groups also insisted UT remove a statue of James Hogg, a prominent segregationist, rename some campus buildings named after Texans who held racist views, and donate 0.5% of the athletic department’s earnings to the Black Lives Matter movement.

The university said it would add plaques to statues to educate visitors about the Littlefield Fountain, the statue of Hogg, and pedestals on which multiple statues stood until 2017. They also pledged to erect statues honoring Black figures in UT-Austin’s history and rename two campus structures, including the Robert L. Moore Building which was named after a UT mathematician who refused to teach Black students.
 
The Bell Tolls for Thee said:
Not familiar at all with the song. So what is the issue? Is it racist? Written by a racist?
Click to expand...
I don't believe the song is racist. I believe the wokeness is due to the song originally being debuted during a minstrel show back in the 1900's, and during minstrel shows, some wore blackface. Texas is woke.
 
Here's why Texas Longhorn athletes say the 'Eyes of Texas' song has racist undertones

UT Professor Dr. Edmond Gordan explains the nodes of racism aren’t in the ‘The Eyes of Texas’ lyrics but in the song’s past.

www.khou.com

Here's why Texas Longhorn athletes say the 'Eyes of Texas' song has racist undertones

UT Professor Dr. Edmond Gordan explains the nodes of racism aren’t in the ‘The Eyes of Texas’ lyrics but in the song’s past.
www.khou.com www.khou.com

HOUSTON — "The Eyes of Texas," a University of Texas song meant to inspire school pride, is facing renewed criticism after student-athletes requested it be replaced due to its racial undertones.

The song, which was written in 1903, is played before and after every UT sporting event. It’s a melody all UT athletes are required to sing and has become a time-honored tradition.



Here are the lyrics:

The Eyes of Texas are upon you,

All the livelong day.

The Eyes of Texas are upon you,

You cannot get away.

Do not think you can escape them

At night or early in the morn --

The Eyes of Texas are upon you

'Til Gabriel blows his horn.

Few would say those lyrics are racist, but UT Professor Dr. Edmond Gordan explained the nodes of racism won't be found in the "The Eyes of Texas" lyrics but in the song’s past.

Gordan said "The Eyes of Texas" was originally a satirical song once performed at minstrel shows, which are comedic variety shows featuring white performers in blackface.

The Texas Cowboys school spirit association was a key social group on the UT campus for decades. In the past, Gordan said members would put on blackface and perform a sort of a minstrel show each year for their schoolmates.

Gordan said the "The Eyes of Texas" is a satirical rendition of Confederate commander Robert E. Lee’s saying “the eyes of the south are upon you,” which was made popular on the UT campus by former university president William Lambdin Prather.

“Students, as students will do, decided to make fun of that and created a satirical song that have words that were appropriate to the University of Texas,” Gordon said in a recent interview. “Those are the words of the song, and they put it to the tune of a well-known song, which was ‘I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.’”

“I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” is another song with questionable origins.

Princeton students created the song in 1894 to insult black railroad and levee workers. The songs racist lyrics were removed as time went on. However, some historians argue "I’ve been Working on the Railroad" was a folk song created by either black or Irish labors long before then.

Removal of the song and a requirement that all athletes sing it at sporting events was outlined in a list of requests from current Longhorn athletes to make the school to make the school more inclusive.

The students also requested the renaming of campus buildings, replacing statues and the establishment of outreach program.

--------------------------------------------------------

I don't get it. What am I missing here.
 
First...good find Allen. Second the label "racist" means nothing anymore. Don't like somebody call them a racist. Don't like what they say call them a racist. Don't like a business or product call them a racist. The term is now the calling card for whiners...losers...and those who want to feel superior. ..like most progressives.
 
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This is pretty laughable.

The USA must truly be the greatest country ever if stuff like this is what people have to complain about and be offended by.

I can see a day when school and state songs like Take Me Home Country Roads, Rocky Top, & Sweet Home Alabama are protested for something, anything, maybe related to John Denver, Osbourne Brothers, or Skynard said/did.

And these universities are wondering why attendance at State University Sporting events is down (prepandemic)? They ain’t seen nothing yet!
 
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If I was the ADor President, I’d pull any scholarships for band members who refuse and tell them to go elsewhere. I’m sure the big time boosters will not be happy and you’ll start having the fans revolt. Also should pull any funding for the band to be at any athletic venues.
 
Song was racist when Texas was racist
The point that a lot of people have attempted to make.

Some just don't want to listen
They can define the song however they want now.

A lot of people regardless of color wanted to keep it. This was why it wasn't changed.

They have seen the difference and understand what racism is and what the effects of racism.is.
People who are in their 20's and 30's only have felt the effects of Jim Crow and Segregation.
They actually didn't live through it.



This is either here or there for WVU.
None of their business.
For the people in Texas to decide
 
WVUALLEN said:
Here's why Texas Longhorn athletes say the 'Eyes of Texas' song has racist undertones

UT Professor Dr. Edmond Gordan explains the nodes of racism aren’t in the ‘The Eyes of Texas’ lyrics but in the song’s past.

www.khou.com

Here's why Texas Longhorn athletes say the 'Eyes of Texas' song has racist undertones

UT Professor Dr. Edmond Gordan explains the nodes of racism aren’t in the ‘The Eyes of Texas’ lyrics but in the song’s past.
www.khou.com www.khou.com

HOUSTON — "The Eyes of Texas," a University of Texas song meant to inspire school pride, is facing renewed criticism after student-athletes requested it be replaced due to its racial undertones.

The song, which was written in 1903, is played before and after every UT sporting event. It’s a melody all UT athletes are required to sing and has become a time-honored tradition.



Here are the lyrics:

The Eyes of Texas are upon you,

All the livelong day.

The Eyes of Texas are upon you,

You cannot get away.

Do not think you can escape them

At night or early in the morn --

The Eyes of Texas are upon you

'Til Gabriel blows his horn.

Few would say those lyrics are racist, but UT Professor Dr. Edmond Gordan explained the nodes of racism won't be found in the "The Eyes of Texas" lyrics but in the song’s past.

Gordan said "The Eyes of Texas" was originally a satirical song once performed at minstrel shows, which are comedic variety shows featuring white performers in blackface.

The Texas Cowboys school spirit association was a key social group on the UT campus for decades. In the past, Gordan said members would put on blackface and perform a sort of a minstrel show each year for their schoolmates.

Gordan said the "The Eyes of Texas" is a satirical rendition of Confederate commander Robert E. Lee’s saying “the eyes of the south are upon you,” which was made popular on the UT campus by former university president William Lambdin Prather.

“Students, as students will do, decided to make fun of that and created a satirical song that have words that were appropriate to the University of Texas,” Gordon said in a recent interview. “Those are the words of the song, and they put it to the tune of a well-known song, which was ‘I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.’”

“I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” is another song with questionable origins.

Princeton students created the song in 1894 to insult black railroad and levee workers. The songs racist lyrics were removed as time went on. However, some historians argue "I’ve been Working on the Railroad" was a folk song created by either black or Irish labors long before then.

Removal of the song and a requirement that all athletes sing it at sporting events was outlined in a list of requests from current Longhorn athletes to make the school to make the school more inclusive.

The students also requested the renaming of campus buildings, replacing statues and the establishment of outreach program.

--------------------------------------------------------

I don't get it. What am I missing here.
Click to expand...

That the song came from Robert E. Lee's Eyes of the South.

It is a celebration of Jim Crow, lynchings and sundown towns.

But those things don't exist anymore.
 
3xWVUenginEER said:
I can see a day when school and state songs like Take Me Home Country Roads, Rocky Top, & Sweet Home Alabama are protested for something, anything, maybe related to John Denver, Osbourne Brothers, or Skynard said/did.
Click to expand...
"In Birmingham they love the Governor, boo, boo, boo!" Which in 1974 was George Wallace. But remember, Lynyrd Skynyrd was from Florida.

 
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Wow. Thought I was on a West Virginia message board. Didn't know I was on the Texas board. Some of you who celebrate the "Horns Down" are now in outrage over this.......
 
MountaineerWV said:
Ok....and when has a mascot been removed because of this characteristic?

EDIT: How do you know he is straight? And we had a woman serve as the mascot twice.
Click to expand...

Ok fine...the Mountaineer is a gay female.

Happy?

They are literally toppling statues of Abraham Lincoln...you really think a manly Mountaineer isnt going to get cancelled? Get real.
 
WVex-pat in GA said:
"In Birmingham they love the Governor, boo, boo, boo!" Which in 1974 was George Wallace. But remember, Lynyrd Skynyrd was from Florida.

View embedded media
Click to expand...
I find it funny that people (Not specifically you) interpret something from a song that is near 50 years old when I think all but 1 original member of the band died over 40 years ago. It’s like the fanatics that branded Kiss and AC/DC as satanic Worshipping rock bands due to their look (Pure marketing) and a song or a line in a song or two. All those bands worshipped was $$$$ and themselves getting laid.

Most of the stereotypes with Skynard comes from the fans and visuals of the band (long hair & bearded) concerts especially in the south with the stars and bars flying and the Dixie feel of revolt at the concert. I can still hear that song and Simple Man from my high school days when a case full of beer and a bonfire back on an abandoned strip mine was the best feeling of freedom and peace (before you turn 21). Well it was peaceful until someone got drunk and a fight started.

With all that said guarantee someone will have a problem with them and that song. It’s the I’m offended culture now which tells me how small the problems are in the USA for some people & as a whole if that’s what we’re focusing on.

Or maybe it proves people have Just lost their minds
 
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To trace the history of the tune, you must go back to the late 1860s, when William Prather was a law student at Washington College in Virginia (now called Washington and Lee University). Robert E. Lee was the university president and would frequently remind students that “the eyes of the South are upon you.” According to Dr. Edmund T. Gordon, a professor of African and African Diaspora Studies and Anthropology at UT, the saying was Lee’s way of reminding students to work hard and to uphold Southern traditions.

The saying stuck with Prather as he became a lawyer and then eventually a UT regent. By 1899, he was named president of the university and delivered an address to students on the first day of school. According to a 1926 Dallas Morning News column remembering her father, Prather’s daughter said the crowd roared when the president said: “I would like to paraphrase [Lee’s] utterance, and say to you, ‘Forward, young men and women of the University, the eyes of Texas are upon you!” From then on, it became Prather’s catchphrase. His daughter recalled one instance when students were waiting to hear the president speak. “Bet you a quarter he says ‘eyes of Texas’ before he gets through,” one student said to another. He won the quarter.

In 1902, a UT student named Lewis Johnson made it his personal mission to create a school song. He played tuba in the band, directed the school choir, and began something called Promenade Concerts, where the marching band would move through campus playing overtures and marches by John Philip Sousa. It bothered him that they played other schools’ songs, like “Fair Harvard.” He wanted a tune to call Texas’s own, but didn’t know how to write the lyrics.

He approached his classmate John L. Sinclair, the editor of the yearbook. Together, Johnson and Sinclair wrote a song titled “Jolly Students of Varsity,” but it wasn’t quite what they wanted, so they shelved the idea. Nearly a year later, Johnson was standing in line at the post office when Sinclair ran up to him and handed him a scrap of paper torn from a bundle of groceries. He’d had a flash of inspiration, he said. Scribbled on the paper, he had written a poem:


They watch above you all the day, the bright blue eyes of Texas. At midnight they’re with you all the way, the sleepless eyes of Texas. The eyes of Texas are upon you, all the livelong day. The eyes of Texas are upon you. They’re with you all the way. They watch you through the peaceful night. They watch you in the early dawn, when from the eastern skies the high light, tells that the night is gone. Sing me a song of Texas, and Texas’ myriad eyes. Countless as the bright stars, that fill the midnight skies. Vandyke brown, vermillion, sepia, Prussian blue, Ivory black and crimson lac, and eyes of every hue.
Click to expand...

The two students decided to tweak the lyrics to more explicitly pay homage to Prather’s catchphrase. Johnson suggested that they set the lyrics to the tune of “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” and they eyed an annual campus minstrel show on May 12, 1903, as the right time to debut it, since there would be a large audience, including President Prather. These minstrel shows, which went on until the sixties, were fund-raisers organized by students and featured white performers singing and dancing in blackface.

The “Varsity quartet,” with Johnson on tuba and Sinclair on banjo, performed after the school choir, in the middle of the show. According to Gordon, it’s likely that the men donned blackface onstage as they performed the song. Their performance was a hit, and the crowd demanded that they play the song again and again. The very next day, on one of Johnson’s Promenade Concerts, the band marched through campus playing the song while students sang along. That fall, during UT’s annual bout with Texas A&M, the Aggies were driving late in the fourth quarter when they took a timeout. A student started singing the words, and soon, hundreds of others at Clark Field were joining in. A tradition was born, and “The Eyes of Texas” eventually became ingrained into Longhorn student life.

The backlash surrounding ‘Eyes’ has grown considerably in the five days since the student athletes’ letter was published. Student government and the university’s Black Student Alliance voiced their support of the statement. And on Tuesday morning, a group of former Longhorn athletes, including Cat Osterman and Quan Cosby, tweeted a statement in solidarity with current athletes. “They’re not asking for new iPads, and we already have the best locker rooms in the country,” says Daron K. Roberts, the founder of UT’s Center for Sports Leadership and Innovation. “They’re asking for institutional changes that they think can have an impact on the racism that they see.”

Other people—including alumni—are resistant to the change, citing tradition. On message boards and comment sections, detractors say that the song’s meaning has changed over the years. John Burt, a receiver who graduated in 2019, told the school paper, “Whenever I sang ‘The Eyes of Texas,’ I was singing it because it’s the school song, and I was singing it purely out of school pride.”

In spite of the song’s damning origins, the Texas athletics department has yet to take a stance either way—and it’s unclear if it will be sung again come fall. Athletics director Chris Del Conte tweeted in response to the letter: “I am always willing to have meaningful conversations regarding any concerns our student athletes have. We will do the same in this situation and look forward to having those discussions.” (The athletics department declined to comment for this story.) In an email to students earlier this week, interim president Jay Hartzell wrote: “Working together, we will create a plan this summer to address these issues, do better for our students and help overcome racism,” although he never addressed the song by name.

If UT has proved anything over the years, it’s that change happens slowly and traditions have a stubborn grasp on the institution. Since around 2001, Gordon has been leading “racial geography” tours of the UT campus that highlight the school’s forgotten racist history. One subject of Gordon’s tour is George Washington Littlefield. Littlefield has long been known as one of UT’s earliest and most prolific donors, and all around campus, you can still see his influence: a cafe and residence hall are named after him, and two of the campus’s most prominent landmarks are the Littlefield Home and Littlefield Fountain.

In their letter, student athletes are calling for his name to be removed from Littlefield Hall because, as Gordon teaches, Littlefield was a slave owner who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. Late in his life, Littlefield poured money into making UT more Southern-centric and commissioned Italian sculptor Pompeo Coppini to design statues of Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, as well as his namesake fountain. The fountain’s inscription, which was removed in 2016, described how Confederates were “not dismayed by defeat nor discouraged by misrule [and] builded [sic] from the ruins of a devastating war a greater South.” Interestingly, when he was completing the project, Coppini recommended to Littlefield that the monuments should honor Americans fighting in World War I. When Littlefield refused, Coppini replied: “As time goes by, they will look to the Civil War as a blot on the pages of American history, and the Littlefield Memorial will be resented as keeping up the hatred between the Northern and Southern states.”


In recent weeks, Gordon’s tours of what he calls a “neo-Confederate university” have become so popular that the College of Liberal Arts made them available virtually. For his part, Gordon doesn’t currently have a position on whether or not the university should cease singing “The Eyes of Texas.” Either way, he says, the discussion is vital. “I just think people need to know what its roots are,” he says, “And then we should decide collectively what we want to do about that.”


Update 06/17: This article has been amended to reflect that “The Eyes of Texas” is UT’s alma mater and an unofficial fight song.

www.texasmonthly.com

The Damning History Behind UT’s ‘The Eyes of Texas’ Song

Student athletes wrote a letter urging officials to change the tune, which was first performed in a minstrel show.
www.texasmonthly.com www.texasmonthly.com
 
There are a lot of things people are talking about changing
Like the name Tar Heels for UNC and Tigers for LSU

Up to the respective states
 
Just more examples of how sports arent about sports anymore and merely a vehicle for left-wing politics...and people wonder why viewership and attendance are plummeting.

They can do whatever they want. But sports are just entertainment. If you make it insufferable, people will move on to something else.

If its not enjoyable, what's the point?
 
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Like I have explained before...

College Athletics in some states was used to push Neo Confederate ideas.

When the SIAA started by Vanderbilt its main goal was
"the development and purification of college athletics throughout the South"

All the main ACC schools there
All of the SEC expect for Missouri
Texas
Then schools like Tulane and Sewanee who was originally called the University of the South


Because of this you have things like this.

So when you say sports have become "left wing politics"

Politics always played a huge role in the development of College Athletics especially football.

It has been said that when the SEC plays in some people's minds they are reenacting the Civil War.

In their minds they are winning
 
Liberal?

I always talk about the individual on here.

No where close to being a liberal.


Some of you may be too young to remember. But I do because I have a lot of family from what is referred to as the Mid South.
But Ole Miss used to wave Confederate Flags at their games.

Ole Miss decided that this wasn't a great look for the University.

OM is probably the #1 school that the Neo Confederacy created.

These schools did this in the first place...

Statues have been removed all over..

University of Texas took down their Confederate statues. This had nothing to do with being a liberal...

It was they had their place. Not on campus but in the museum.
It is part of Texas history but not something to celebrate
 
TownesVanZandt said:
Liberal?

I always talk about the individual on here.

No where close to being a liberal.


Some of you may be too young to remember. But I do because I have a lot of family from what is referred to as the Mid South.
But Ole Miss used to wave Confederate Flags at their games.

Ole Miss decided that this wasn't a great look for the University.

OM is probably the #1 school that the Neo Confederacy created.

These schools did this in the first place...

Statues have been removed all over..

University of Texas took down their Confederate statues. This had nothing to do with being a liberal...

It was they had their place. Not on campus but in the museum.
It is part of Texas history but not something to celebrate
Click to expand...

Well MLK apparently watched and laughed at a
violent rape, and had several affairs and other seedy issues - should women go destroy art dedicated in his honor?

Or should we just accept that people are imperfect and complicated?

No one should endorse and promote violent gangs who destroy art and public property...what is wrong with you? Burn everything you disagree with or bothers you?
 
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