He's a classmate of mine and a noted Aggie historian. He sent this letter to the editor Thursday, sorry for the length.
- Adams/Ross letter
11 June 2010
Letter to the Editor
For the past few days I have noted the stories and conversation flying around about Sul Ross.
True to form, there is a tremendous amount of misinformation and hype about President Ross. His life
and career is one of the most researched and chronicled of Texans prior to 1900. I have spent over 40
years reviewing dozens of newspapers, archival documents, and publications on his life. Ross was an
honorable man. However, there were opinions about him when he was alive and there have been
barrels of ink used since 1900 to tell his story – some of which, to no one’s surprise – have been
politically motivated and revisionist in nature.
Ross was a household name by the time he was 19. Working on the Brazos Reservation near
Graham with his father Shapley Ross, he was enlisted in the rangers to help stem the tide of hostile
rouge Indians and disruptive white trouble makers, who attacked both new settlers in the region as well
as friendly Indians on the reservation. There were those who encroached on Indian lands and efforts
were made to stop them. The late 1850s was a very unsettled and violent period on the western frontier
of Texas.
Ross did indeed serve in the Confederate army, as did thousands of Texans including the entire
1883 inaugural faculty at the University of Texas. He returned home to Waco and received a full
presidential pardon. He was one of the most vocal supporters of local education for all. He worked with
a number of African American and Indian families as the region struggled to recover. Known for his
impartial fairness he was recruited to run for sheriff and arrested a growing gang of white-criminal
squatters that preyed on citizens across East Texas. He abhorred mob violence and was swift to
advocate harsh punishment for violators. To emphasis law and order he was the founder and catalyst in
1874 for the Sheriff’s Association of Texas, that still functions today.
His only other known memberships was as a Mason (the College Station lodge is named in his
honor) and a supporter of a veterans group that raised funding and assistance for the widowed and
orphaned families.
As a state senator he championed education, frontier improvements, and agricultural affairs. In
1886 he was elected governor by one of the largest percent vote totals of any governor in Texas. A
fiscal conservative he balanced the state budget yet insisted that education at all levels be funded. Texas
A&M and Prairie View Normal College would not be here today if it were not for Sul Ross! When
opponents in Austin attacked, he went direct to the legislature to prevent them from cutting off funding
to both schools.
He continued to lead the efforts to expand African American rural schools when radical
Democrats wanted to de-fund support of local black education and halted numerous attempts to attack
the funding for Prairie View, fighting and demanding the legislature to do the right thing.
He won – and provided additional funding and jobs after establishing one of the first
agricultural experiment stations at an African American college in the United States.
When African American Senator William Holland proposed the hospital for the “Deaf, Dumb
and Blind Colored Institute” (today MHMR), Ross supported the full funding. Against massive
opposition from the radical white Democrats he appointed Holland, a Union Army war veteran, as its
first director. When asked why, Ross simply noted, “He was the best man for the job.”
Concerned with the Texas criminal process he insisted on a review and upon receiving the
report he realized the inequity of justice and pardoned more African American sentences that all the
previous governors combined.
In 1890, at a time when he could have pursued other elected office or returned to his farm near
Waco, he was offered the presidency of the A&M College of Texas. The school was struggling to jell
into an institution, having faced low budgets, faculty turnover, poor water, and limited housing for
students. There were no traditions as we know them today and a bleak undeveloped campus. Known
statewide and very popular, it was said after he arrived parents sent their sons not to A&M but “to Sul
Ross.”
And it was not only sons that attended A&M, Ross routinely enrolled from 7-9 girls each year,
known as ‘special students’ (some wore cadet uniforms), and the credits they earned were transferable
to other colleges. Prior to his death in early 1898 he proposed a school for girls to be co-located with
A&M, the plan was supported by the Former Students (Cadets) Association and the local Bryan
merchants who were quickly excited by the potential benefits to the local economy.
Ross increased the age to enroll, required entrance exams, and instilled an atmosphere and
esprit de corps that rightly gives him claim as the founder of A&M traditions – with the advent in the
1890s of football, the Aggie Band, the Aggie ring, the Battalion newspaper, corps trips, march to the
Brazos, and much more that sealed the identity and image of what was to be known a few years later as
– the Fightin’ Texas Aggies and Aggieland.
One of his greatest accomplishments was the support of Prairie View. While opponents in
Austin yearly worked to kill funding, Ross made sure the only public school of high education for
African Americans would grow and prosper. Ross hired close personal friend, Professor Edward L.
Blackshear, the former director of African American schools in Austin when he was governor in the late
1880s, to become the ‘principal’ (president) of Prairie View.
Blackshear, the most prominent black educator and leader in Texas, testified to the “nobility of
his character and his genuine support of education for colored youths.”
In addition to Ross and his staff spending a great deal of time at Prairie View, including holding
periodic board meetings in Hempstead, Ross hosted Blackshear, his staff and students both at his
resident on the A&M campus but also at his home in Waco. To encourage the growth of black
education, he arranged special reduced train rates for the Black Baptist State Association to hold their
annual meetings in Bryan and a chance for him and Blackshear to urge the clergy to promote education
back home in their congregations.
Ross instilled a source of excellence and pride in higher education and expoused transcendent
values of equality and justice for all in Texas. It is for this reason that to honor him and his legacy of
selfless service as governor and his years of dedication to education for all Texans, the State of Texas
and the Legislature, not some outside organization, approved funding for an official State of Texas
statue in 1919, conspicuous in civilian dress, to honor President Sul Ross.
And thus, it is the totality of the man’s life for which the statue stands
