Kate Rogers didn’t know it at the time, but Oct. 13 would mark the beginning of the end of her four-year tenure leading the $550 million renovation of the Alamo.
On that day, two posts appeared on the X account of the famous San Antonio historic site. One celebrated Columbus Day. The other, which has since been deleted, celebrated Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a holiday recognized by President Joe Biden in 2021 that honors Indigenous populations in the United States.
It was the latter that caught the eye of powerful state Republicans.
The next morning, Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham (R) decried the post as “woke” and announced that her office, which oversees the Alamo, would be launching an investigation.
Rogers said she wasn’t involved with crafting the social media posts but offered to resign after being told during a board meeting of the Alamo Trust that “someone is going to have to pay.”
The nonprofit’s board instead voted to terminate the communications director.
Eight days later, Rogers received a call from Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R): He had received a copy of her 2023 PhD dissertation about how museums can influence how history is taught in schools.
“Personally, I would love to see the Alamo become a beacon for historical reconciliation and a place that brings people together versus tearing them apart, but politically that may not be possible at this time,” she wrote on Page 80.
According to Rogers, after reading that section aloud, Patrick asked her to resign as CEO of the Alamo Trust, which is overseeing the Alamo renovation project. She declined.
The next day, Patrick publicly called for her resignation, describing Rogers’s writing as “troubling” and “shocking.”
Hours later, Rogers complied.
Rogers’s ouster is just the latest battle to engulf the effort to build a museum at the 300-year-old former Spanish mission, the site of the most iconic battle of Texas independence. It echoes President Donald Trump’s war on “woke” ideas in American museums like those of the Smithsonian Institution, which he says overemphasize the negative aspects of U.S. history.
Earlier this week, Rogers sued Patrick, Buckingham, and the Alamo Trust and its leadership for wrongful termination. Forcing her to resign for what she wrote in her dissertation was a violation of her free speech rights, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court in the Western District of Texas. The Alamo Trust also revoked her severance offer after she spoke to Texas Monthly about her termination, the lawsuit alleges.
Patrick’s office did not immediately respond to a request for a comment. Buckingham’s office and the Alamo Trust said they were unable to comment on pending litigation.
Rogers, a registered Republican, said she had enjoyed navigating the political tightrope between local Democrats and state Republicans, who each are funding the Alamo project but have very different visions for the site’s future. In addition to restoring the church and convent, the project includes a new 100,000-square-foot visitor center and museum — decked with a 4D theater — and a new rooftop restaurant across the street.
For many in Texas, the Alamo is a sacred place where brave revolutionaries were slaughtered by the Mexican army in 1836 and a symbol of Texas pride. But some historians argue that a significant number of those fighting for independence were motivated by a desire to preserve slavery, which had been banned in most of Mexico but was still legal in most of the United States.
As head of the renovation project, Rogers said she tried to satisfy both Democrats who wanted the museum to tell a broader story about the political and racial dynamics that led to the battle and Republicans who wanted the renovation to focus on the 13-day siege.
Last year, that tension spilled into public view. A Black member of the museum planning committee announced that she was “serving under protest” after the committee voted to approve a controversial statue of an enslaved man named Joe, who traveled to the Alamo with the White man who enslaved him. Several Black members of the committee complained that the statue, which showed Joe carrying a musket, falsely gave the impression that he was there fighting for Texas independence on his own accord. In the end, the committee reversed itself and voted to approve a statue without the musket.
“I really believe strongly that all the work that was done while I was there paid homage to the defenders of the Alamo and held them up as the brave people that they were,” Rogers said. “We just tried to bring forward some of the stories of lesser known people who were also really important for the Alamo.”
That balancing act was becoming increasingly difficult, she said, as discussions of America’s racial history became more politically tense.
The Trump administration has ordered universities and government agencies to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs and cut funding to small archives and museumsacross the country dedicated to Black history. It has also ordered the removal of signs and exhibits related to slavery at multiple national parks.
“Whatever is happening in Washington absolutely has an impact on what happens at the local level,” Rogers said. “It’s just hard to see it sometimes. I think in this case, it’s quite apparent.”
Rogers, who spent two decades in the private sector in San Antonio before joining the Alamo Trust, said she saw working for the nonprofit as an opportunity to help redefine the city and state’s relationship with their most-visited landmark.
When Rogers learned Republicans were reviewing her dissertation for a doctorate at the University of Southern California, she decided to reread it. The 167-page paper focuses on how museums at significant historical sites, including Gettysburg, Monticello and Mount Vernon, support social studies instruction at schools across the country.
In a brief section describing her own biases and challenges as a researcher, she discussed her work at the Alamo and two new laws passed by the Republican-led legislature to curtail how slavery and other elements of history were taught in Texas classrooms. “I do not believe it is the role of politicians to determine what professional educators can or should teach,” she wrote.
Rogers said she initially didn’t remember what she wrote about leading the Alamo renovation project but understood why some would view it as controversial. “That whole section is two pages out of 167,” she said.
Patrick said in a letter to the Alamo Trust’s board that the views expressed in Rogers’s dissertation were “incompatible with the telling of the history of the battle of the Alamo.” The lieutenant governor and other state Republicans have emphasized the need to protect the Alamo renovation project from ideas like “critical race theory” — generally recognized as an academic framework that examines the role of race and racism in the crafting of American laws and social norms.
In 2023, Buckingham campaigned on promises to protect the image of the Alamo as a “Shrine of Texas Liberty,” against what she called a left-wing attempt to rewrite the state’s history. Trump endorsed her candidacy to be land commissioner. He said she would “protect the great legacy of Texas,” including by defending the Alamo, “which, like all other amazing institutions, is under siege.”
In her wrongful termination lawsuit, Rogers alleges that Buckingham’s office took great interest in the day-to-day operations at the Alamo, directing Rogers to give tours of the site to Buckingham’s family members and Trump Cabinet members. Her staff also asked to review all books being sold at the gift shop, according to the lawsuit.
Rogers said she doesn’t expect the Alamo Trust to make major changes to the plan she helped develop for the renovation, which has already broken ground. She raised $90 million in private funding for the project and was promoted from executive director of the Alamo Trust to president and CEO. “All the feedback that I had ever received from the board was always very positive,” she said. “I always felt very supported.”
Rogers is asking the court to order that she be reinstated at the Alamo Trust and paid damages.
The Alamo Trust did not respond to requests to interview members of the board or the new CEO, former Texas secretary of state Esperanza “Hope” Andrade, about the future of the Alamo renovation.
Rogers said she worries her ouster could shake visitors’ confidence in what they see when they enter the new Alamo or any museum.
“Woke is a label — it’s a political label that is just thrown around,” she said. “Sometimes I wonder what it even means. But history is history. There are the facts of what happened, and we should present those, because museums are still considered very credible institutions by the American public — typically a lot more credible than elected officials.”
The post Republican overseeing Alamo renovation ousted after ‘woke’ social media post appeared first on Washington Post.
