Photo courtesy WFAA
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – A top Texas Republican wants the accuracy of memorials around the state Capitol reviewed amid calls to remove Confederate monuments.
A spokesman for Texas House Speaker Joe Straus said Thursday that the powerful GOP leader will work with a Dallas lawmaker who this week singled out one Confederate plaque as “indefensible on historical grounds.”
The nearly 60-year-old plaque rejects that slavery was the “underlying cause” of the Civil War. It is one of nearly a dozen Confederate monuments and markers around the Texas Capitol.
Efforts around the U.S. to remove Confederate monuments have intensified in the wake of last weekend’s deadly confrontation at a white nationalist rally in Virginia.
Several Texas lawmakers requested a similar review of Confederate markers following the 2015 shooting of nine black churchgoers in South Carolina.