The final battle, on March 6, is remembered in myth and legend as Davy CrockettвЂ™s last stand, when he swung his rifle, Old Betsy, atop the walls of the Alamo after running out of bullets. Led by William Barrett Travis, the soldiers chose to fight to the death, knowing they would not receive reinforcements from General Sam Houston. Texian fighters occupied the fort during a 13-day battle with the Mexican Army. The Alamo is recognized popularly as the site of the 1836 battle between Texas separatists, known as Texians, and soldiers from Mexico, which ruled the land. This painting hovers over the chamber that passed SB4, TexasвЂ™s вЂњshow me your papersвЂќ law, which empowers law enforcement officers to ask anyone they detain about their immigration status. William Travis can be seen at the center of the mural-sized painting, as the dark, nameless, and faceless Mexicans swarm the Alamo. The same racialized depictions of Mexican hordes can be found inside the Senate Chamber of the Texas Capitol, where Henry Arthur McArdleвЂ™s painting вЂњ Dawn at the AlamoвЂќ hangs. According to Martyrs of the Alamo, the Texian uprising was prompted by the imprisonment of an Anglo American who shot a Mexican lieutenant who had made an unwelcome advance towards an Anglo woman. Much like Birth of a Nation, the film depicts the Texians in the Alamo as saviors of white womanhood. GriffithвЂ™s production company even made a film about the story, called Martyrs of the Alamo. The story of the Alamo has a rich popular history in dime-store novels and Western films. In fact, the state is poised to pour millions of dollars into the Alamo, in the name of a project to renovate and reconfigure the monumentвЂ™s grounds and its surrounding streets.

State officials have removed a plaque from the Texas Capitol placed by the Children of the Confederacy, which falsely states, вЂњTeach the truths of historyвЂ¦one of the most important of which is, that the war between the states was not a rebellion nor was its underlying cause to sustain slavery.вЂќ (The debate over where to house the plaque continues to provoke passionate arguments regarding its importance.) Most recently, in November of 2018, the Texas State Board of Education revised the state curriculum to include language that acknowledged the вЂњcentral roleвЂќ of slavery in the Civil War.ДЄmid all this scrutiny, one monument has been immune, seemingly too sacred for discussion among the pols and many in the public: the Alamo.

The following year, Dowling Street-which was named in memory of a local Confederate war hero and bisected the mostly African American Third Ward-was renamed Emancipation Street.

Confederate flags flying over statehouses have come down, after the 2015 shooting at a church in Charleston South Carolina.Two years ago, the Houston Independent School District stripped public schools of their Confederate names. In 2017, the city of New Orleans began removing Confederate statues from its central public spaces. Civic markers, from street and school names to public monuments commemorating such figures as Jefferson Davis and Robert E. The United States is experiencing a reckoning with its racist history.

Images of the battle of the alamo