By Lee A. Daniels

The name of William Stewart Simkins, an early twentieth-century law professor once officially held in high esteem at the University of Texas at Austin, will now live on in shame.

The University’s Board of Regents unanimously voted Thursday to strip Stewart’s name from the small but legendary campus dormitory named for him because of his post-Civil War involvement in the Ku Klux Klan.

In addition, the name of his brother, Eldred J. Simkins, a former regent of the University of Texas system, will be removed from the small park next to the dormitory.

The dormitory and the park have been renamed Creekside Residence Hall and Creekside Park. William Powers, Jr., president of the state’s flagship public university, urged the Regents to accept the recommendation of the 21-member campus advisory committee he had appointed in the spring as the controversy about the Simkins brothers washed over the prestigious institution.

It had been provoked by a research paper on the Simkins brothers, and especially William Stewart Simkins, written by Thomas D. Russell, a legal historian at the University of Denver law school who once taught at the University of Texas law school. Russell told the Associated Press on Thursday that “I support 100 percent taking the name off. My goal in writing this paper was to help start a conversation about race and history and law. I will say in regard to that, I’ve succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.”

Lee A. Daniels is Director of Communications for the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., and Editor-in-Chief of TheDefendersOnline.