F. A. Mood Obelisk
The Mood Obelisk was constructed in the late 19th century, and serves as a reminder of Southwestern’s founder, Francis Asbury Mood. The monument does not occupy a significant place in current student collective memory, and as such, the ethical questions brought about by Mood’s complicated role in the university’s history and memory remain largely unresolved.
Francis Asbury Mood, whom this monument commemorates, lived from 1830-1884, and is remembered mainly as the founder of Southwestern University. Mood was born in South Carolina just before Texas became a Republic. Throughout his life, Mood served as a traveling Methodist preacher in the Southern part of the United States. He volunteered for the role of Chaplain in the Confederacy, where he served in the early part of the Civil War alongside the eventual founders of Baylor University. He was appointed to the presidency of Soule University in 1868, and was instrumental in the construction of Southwestern as a combination of the four Methodist root colleges – Rutersville, McKenzie, Wesleyan, and Soule – into one university located in Georgetown in the 1870s.
Mood traveled between the “root colleges” and the various Texas Methodist conventions to establish the university in Georgetown, created the name “South Western” for the institution, and ushered it through its formative years until his death in 1884 in Waco, Texas. Funeral services were held at the first iteration of the University Chapel on campus and Mood was buried on campus.
A Mood Monumental Association was created to build the obelisk in his memory. The monument was constructed shortly after his death, circa 1890s, to mark his resting place, and although his remains have since been moved to a gravesite in the International Order of Odd Fellows (I.O.O.F.) Cemetery adjacent to campus, the Mood Obelisk remains as a testament to the centrality of F. A. Mood’s legacy to the collective memory of Southwestern.
However, Mood’s legacy is complicated. Mood’s numerous contributions to the University helped to create the Southwestern that we know today: the four root colleges had been declining for many years, and would not have survived without his intervention. Thus, his role in combining the colleges and creating a unified institution cannot be overlooked. However, his connection to the Confederacy and his documented attitudes towards people of color raise ethical questions about the overall legacy he has bequeathed to the university and whether he should be remembered reverently on campus.
Although Mood himself never owned slaves, he is connected deeply to racial injustices in the South in the 19th Century. As a young man, his uncle was a Methodist Bishop who owned slaves and was a strong advocate for dividing the Methodist church in America in the antebellum years into the Northern Methodists and Southern Methodists because of polarized attitudes toward chattel slavery. Mood taught at a school for Black children, but was said to be “patronizing in his attitude toward blacks” throughout his life (Jones 81). He was a strong supporter of Secession, casting his vote in favor of South Carolina’s Secession in the first Secession declaration in December of 1860, and he willingly entered into the Confederacy as a chaplain (Jones 46).
This situates him as part of a struggle that centered on the question of humanity and justice, and on a side of history which denied an oppressed population these fundamental rights. More important, his efforts to create Southwestern were influenced by these attitudes, and are an integral part of the institution’s foundation that has not been reconciled, even today.
The Mood Monument has occupied several different spaces on campus and was moved multiple times before it was placed in its current location beside Mood-Bridwell Hall. For many years, the monument was the site of several events related to commencement, such as Vesper Prayers or a Founder’s Service for graduating seniors, and publicity for these events was posted regularly in the student newspaper, The Megaphone. However, these events happened near the end of a student’s time at Southwestern, which is one reason why the monument has not been remembered as a regular part of everyday life on campus. Moreover, these events fell out of practice in the 1960s, and the Mood monument featured in later Megaphone articles mainly as an oddity for jokes and potential traditions but not as a site of performed collective memory.
Currently, there are no events or traditions that involve the Mood monument, so it mainly is experienced as an impediment to travel between the Mood-Bridwell and Cullen Buildings. This lack of communal knowledge about the monument, and about Mood himself, seems to suggest that the foundation and structure of Southwestern as an institution is largely overlooked. But it also shows that Southwestern as a collective has not spent time grappling with the difficult ethical questions presented by Mood as an individual or this monument as a celebration of his legacy.
