Texas’ GOP Speaker Calls for Removal of Confederate Marker

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A powerful Texas Republican is calling for the removal of a Confederate marker in the state Capitol that rejects slavery as an underlying cause of the Civil War.

Republican House Speaker Joe Straus said Tuesday in a letter to state officials that the plaque is "blatantly inaccurate." He says Texans aren't "well-served by incorrect information about our history."

The plaque titled "Children of the Confederacy Creed" was installed in 1959. It's one of nearly a dozen Confederate monuments and markers around the Texas Capitol.

Straus becomes the most prominent Texas Republican to call for removing a Confederate marker. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has said doing so won't erase the past.

Last week in Dallas, a Robert E. Lee statute was removed at a park named for the Confederate general.