“The Eyes of Texas,” once sung at minstrel shows, plays at football games and other sports events at the University of Texas at Austin.
For generations, students at the University of Texas at Austin have stood up at sports games, raised their right hand to form the symbol of the storied Texas Longhorns and belted out “The Eyes of Texas,” a campus anthem.
Now, athletes including members of the university’s football team, which holds an exalted place in the campus culture, want the song gone.
Unbeknown to many students and alumni, the song can be traced back to Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general, and was performed at minstrel shows in the early 20th century.
On Friday, student-athletes referred to that troubled history when they called on the university to replace it with a song “without racists undertones.”
It was among a long list of requests made by the athletes, who said that if their demands were not met, they would no longer help the university recruit new players or participate in donor events.
“We aim 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,” the athletes wrote in a letter posted on Twitter by several players, including Brennan Eagles, a Longhorns wide receiver.
The department and university, they wrote, must take action “to make Texas more comfortable and inclusive for the black athletes and the black community that has so fervently supported this program.”
The song has become another symbol linked to the Confederacy to face intense scrutiny and demands for removal amid the nationwide protests after the death of George Floyd on May 25. The football team marched together in Austin this month, linking arms and taking a knee for eight minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time a Minneapolis police officer kept his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck as he cried out that he could not breathe.
Nearly one week after Mr. Floyd’s death, Chris Del Conte, the university athletics director, encouraged athletes and staff members in a statement to “speak up and become a part of the direct and difficult conversations that must take place in the days and weeks ahead.
