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The president of the University of Texas at Austin has ordered the immediate removal of statues of Robert E. Lee and three other Confederate-era figures — Albert Sidney Johnston, John Reagan and James Stephen Hogg — from a main area of campus.

President Greg Fenves announced the statues' fate Sunday night, and the removals should be complete by mid-morning Monday. A university spokesman says the area has been blocked off.

Lee and Johnston were Confederate generals, Reagan was a Confederate postmaster and Hogg was the first native-born governor of Texas and the son of a Confederate general.


The debate over public memorials for Confederate-era figures catapulted into 

 when a car rammed into people protesting a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va.


 to the university community, Fenves connected the events with the decision to remove the statues now:


The statues of Lee, Johnston and Reagan will be added to the collection at the university's Dolph Briscoe Center for American History for "scholarly study," Fenves wrote. The Hogg statue will be considered for relocation elsewhere on campus.

In 2015, the university removed a statue of Confederacy President Jefferson Davis.

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Doreen McCallister

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President Greg Fenves ordered the immediate removal of statues of Robert E. Lee and three other Confederate figures from a main area of campus. The removals should be complete by midmorning Monday.

Confederate statues are coming down at the University of Texas

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