The Cooke County Courthouse is a historic

courthouse A courthouse or court house is a structure which houses judicial functions for a governmental entity such as a state, region, province, county, prefecture, regency, or similar governmental unit. A courthouse is home to one or more courtrooms, ...

in Gainesville,

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

. It is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

History

The courthouse was designed by Lang & Witchell, and was constructed in 1912. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991, and designated a Texas Historic Landmark in 1988.

Confederate monument

On the lawn of the courthouse stands a monolith topped by a 1911 statue of a Confederate soldier. The inscription at the base of the statue reads, “no nation rose so white and fair none fell so pure of crime” in reference to the Southern cause. In 2020, in the wake of the

murder of George Floyd On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black American man, was murdered in Minneapolis by Derek Chauvin, a 44-year-old White police officer. Floyd had been arrested after a store clerk reported that he made a purchase using a c ...

and the

removal of Confederate statues There are more than 160 Confederate monuments and memorials to the Confederate States of America (CSA; the Confederacy) and associated figures that have been Decolonization of public space, removed from public spaces in the United States, all b ...

across the United States, Cooke County Commissioners voted to retain the statue outside the courthouse. Protesters advocating against the statue were later sentenced to prison time for "obstructing a highway". The protesters petitioned their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, who in 2024 declined to review the case.

References

1912 establishments in Texas National Register of Historic Places in Cooke County, Texas County courthouses in Texas Courthouses on the National Register of Historic Places in Texas Government buildings completed in 1912 {{CookeCountyTX-NRHP-stub

History

Confederate monument

See also

References