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PHILIP COWEN: "Let the grass grow and let it cover the space where the symbol of inequity stood. It will grow over this past, not to erase it, but to end the the pain once and for all. Now we have a clear view of Putegnat Elementary, one of our Blue Ribbon schools. We no longer have to shield our children from the message expressed before the removal. We also don't have to explain why it was ever put there."

(EDITOR'S NOTE: BISD Trustee Philip Cowen is right. The removal of Confederate President Jefferson Davis was long overdue. The City Commission deserves a round of applause for its 7-0 vote, even half-witted Jessica Tetreau-Kalifa who didn't know there was a Civil War and nodding Joel Munguia who stayed awake long enough to mutter a response echoed the unanimous vote. More impressively, the municipality acted forthwith and donated the pile of rocks to the City of Harlingen, which will display the debris in that community's much-treasured KKK Museum. But the easy part has been accomplished. The time has come to look at ourselves in the mirror and clean house. Abel Pelon Moreno, an outspoken critic of Border City political shenanigans, wrote this retort to Cowen's Facebook post: "I have read extensively the history of Brownsville. If I were to let the citizens of Brownsville know the truth about Charles Stillman, they would storm down Washington Street and burn down his house. But since he is an Anglo-American, the unvarnished truth about him and his legacy in Brownsville are only spoken in dark library corners. How come there is not any protest over the atrocious crimes Stillman executed against Mexicans and in some cases against Native-Americans? Stillman committed blatant crimes in South Texas. Yet, everybody turns a blind eye." Cowen is a brave man when he castigates Davis, an outsider and easy target, but will he and the rest of the BISD trustees turn cowards when the district is forced to face is own racist past when among other eugenic misdeeds it chose to place Stillman on a pedestal by naming a school after him? He was a slaveholder, he was a racist, he stole millions of acres of land from Mexican families, he ignored the lynchings of Mexican-Americans, he betrayed his Yankee roots by abandoning the Union for the Confederacy, a decision that resulted in his becoming a multi-millionaire transporting cotton south and arms north, and he prevented the railroad from extending south to Brownsville from Corpus Christi in order to maintain a transportation monopoly with his steamship business. There are also stories of murders and rapes attributed to him. Nobody messed with Stillman and his partners Richard King and Miflin Kenedy. They were dangerous men whose rapacity was matched only by their treachery. At The Murphy Report we have sent the famed investigative duo, the Baker Boys, to Stillman Middle School to determine if there is a display dedicated to him and if the myth about him is perpetuated by the school district or if Stillman, the defector, is exposed. We are willing to bet the BISD's $550 million annual budget that the founder's fairy tale brushes aside the many transgressions he committed against humanity. As impossible as it may sound, Donald Trump is a altar boy compared to the malevolent Stillman. If Davis epitomized evil, then Stillman was the devil himself. We are in the middle of a bloodless revolution. Will the BISD turn a new page and tell the unbiased story or will Cowen and his colleagues force us to read the yellowing pages of a fabricated  history?)   

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