Rufus C. Burleson Statue
Note: The condition of the Burleson statue was assessed prior to its relocation in 2023, and external experts determined it needed significant repair and refurbishment. The statue is not cast in solid bronze, but is rather comprised of bronze plates cast around a steel frame, and the Central Texas weather had taken its toll on the piece, which was originally installed in 1905. Today, the statue is enclosed in glass to protect it from any further degradation or decay, as recommended by the external experts and given its artistic significance at more than 115 years old.
Rufus Columbus Burleson served as president of Baylor University from 1851 to 1861 in Independence and from 1886 to 1897 in Waco. He also was president of Waco University from 1861 to 1886.
A native of Alabama, Burleson provided transformational leadership for Baylor during the institution’s early years. He enhanced and enlarged the curriculum, along with the establishment of rules for decorum and behavior, and upgraded the facilities by raising funds to purchase equipment, buy property and construct new buildings. During his decades as a prominent educator in Texas, Burleson also made important contributions to the Baptist denomination during the early history of Baptists in the State of Texas.
Elected president of three state Baptist bodies in Texas, Burleson was a driving force behind the creation of the Baptist General Convention of Texas and the merger of Baylor and Waco University. As president of Baylor he was able to keep the institution open through several crisis points in its early history. Both the town of Burleson and Burleson College (1895-1930) were named for him.
Although Burleson deserves recognition for his leadership as Baylor’s president and for his contributions to the Baptist denomination during the early history of Baptists in the State of Texas, he arguably stands as the most controversial of all of Baylor’s early leaders due to his attitudes and behaviors with regard to slavery and the Confederate Army’s role in the American Civil War. In 1860, Burleson owned one slave. When the Civil War began in 1861, Burleson encouraged nearly 50 Baylor students to volunteer and fight. He enlisted as a private in Colonel Joseph W. Speight’s Fifteenth Texas Infantry Regiment in 1862 and assumed an appointment as chaplain in 1863.
After the Civil War, Burleson was a prominent promoter of the “Lost Cause,” the concept of a divinely white Southern future that honored the memory of antebellum whiteness and Confederate heroes. He once stated that enslaved people should not have been freed until “they were christianized and prepared for citizenship, or to return home to Africa and colonize and christianize ‘the Dark Continent.’ The African race would thereby have been a blessing to both continents.” When Burleson secured a large gift on behalf of the Baptist Home Mission Society to found Bishop College, a Black Baptist college in East Texas, in 1881, he stated the institution would “educate the colored man and get him wise enough and good enough to go back to Africa and civilize the country, for there won’t be room enough for him in this country.”
Burleson died in 1901 in Waco.
The statue honoring Baylor president Rufus C. Burleson was dedicated on June 7, 1905, coinciding with Commencement exercises, in the area that would later become known as Burleson Quadrangle. It was the work of sculptor Pompeo Coppini of San Antonio, who would later create the Judge Baylor statue in Founders Mall. The Burleson statue, consisting of a bronze statue and a base of one block of pink granite and three blocks of blue granite, cost $4,000, which was raised by a group of Baylor alumni.
In 2023, the statue of Burleson was moved to the courtyard behind Burleson Hall, a building named in honor of his wife, to coincide with the renaming of The Quadrangle.