TEXAS HISTORY
By Ayden Runnels
Kate Rogers, the former president of the Alamo Trust which manages San Antonio’s historic site, sued Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham and the trust’s board Monday, weeks after she resigned under pressure from conservative officials.
Rogers filed the suit in federal court, seeking to reclaim her old job and asking for an unspecified amount of damages from Patrick, Buckingham and the board. In the suit, Rogers claims that Patrick and Buckingham “ignored” her First Amendment protections in urging the Alamo Trust to remove Rogers because of a 2023 dissertation asserting the importance of Indigenous people’s history at the Alamo. She also alleges her severance pay was revoked after a Texas Monthly story was published in which she discussed conservative backlash that began after an October social media post celebrating Indigenous People’s Day.
“The fighters at the Alamo courageously held off Santa Anna’s troops for thirteen days. But Lieutenant Governor Patrick and Commissioner Buckingham only needed eleven days to lay siege to the First Amendment,” the suit read.
The suit also names the nonprofit Remember the Alamo Foundation, Alamo Trust Board Chair Welcome Wilson Jr. and Esperanza “Hope” Andrade, the current Alamo Trust president and former Texas secretary of state, as defendants. The lawsuit was first reported by the San Antonio Express-News.
Patrick called for Rogers’ removal from the trust in October as he, Buckingham and others criticized the dissertation Rogers wrote while a doctoral candidate at the University of Southern California Rossier School of Education. Buckingham also chastised a post on social media platform X from the official Alamo account celebrating Indigenous People’s Day, writing that “Woke has no place at the Alamo.”
Patrick allegedly personally pressured Rogers to resign and publicly call her dissertation a “distraction” before hanging up because she would not agree to keep the call a secret, according to the suit.
Yet despite the criticisms, the lawsuit paints Rogers as a leader walking a tightrope between several groups wrestling to assert their preferred vision for the Alamo — including Patrick and Buckingham. The suit describes a “power struggle” between the two, and that Buckingham “objected to Lieutenant Governor Patrick’s heavy involvement” with the Alamo Trust. It claims Buckingham and her staff expressed approval of Rogers’ performance on multiple occasions.
Rogers and spokespeople for Patrick and the General Land Office did not respond to immediate requests for comment. The Alamo Trust declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.
The criticisms from Patrick and Buckingham were the latest episode in a long-standing disagreement over how the history of the Alamo should be told: between focusing on the Battle of the Alamo itself or with broader context, including the role of slavery and Indigenous people at the time.
Buckingham criticized a “land acknowledgement” plaque at the Alamo site in an October letter to the Alamo Trust, and Patrick’s letter also said the “main focus” of the site should be the historic battle. Rogers’ dissertation and other comments have reflected an interest in using a wider scope to tell the Alamo’s history.
“Our big goal … is to push visitors to think about things they hadn’t considered before because the story is more complicated than it has traditionally been told,” Rogers said in a 2023 USC Rossier School of Education article about her work as the Alamo Trust President.
Patrick has previously expressed a particular interest in the upkeep of the Alamo, whose passion for the site Rogers said was “sincere” in her Texas Monthly interview. A 2019 dispute between Patrick and former Land Commissioner George P. Bush was also sparked by a social media post — one that incorrectly claimed Bush intended to build a statue of former Mexican president Antonio López de Santa Anna outside the Alamo.
Disclosure: Texas Monthly has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
