Tulsa University trustees vote to remove name with KKK ties from college of law building

Completing a process one insider described as “challenging for all of us,” University of Tulsa trustees on Wednesday voted to remove the name of one of its most steadfast supporters from the College of Law building.

John Rogers, a prominent attorney who died in 1977, was a TU trustee for 40 years and the law school’s founding dean, but belonged to the Ku Klux Klan and another vigilante organization in the 1920s.

TU President Steadman Upham said those associations, although apparently brief, led to the decision to remove Rogers’ name from the campus building erected in his honor in the 1970s.