Five stories that have North Texas talking: Protests broke out after the unveiling of an African-American memorial at the Capitol Saturday; Uber wants to return to Austin; a Plano painter’s insatiable curiosity led him to a bright future; and more.
Texas Christian University’s Caylin Moore is officially a 2017 Rhodes Scholar. TCU Chancellor Victor Boschini announced the news Saturday night, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports. Of about 200 finalists in the U.S., the safety for the Horned Frogs football team, is one of 32 men and women who received the scholarship.
As KERA News reported last spring, Moore went from living in poverty with his single mother and two siblings in Carson, California to becoming a safety at a top 10 college football program. In between, he was a quarterback at Marist College in New York, a Fulbright scholar, and a janitor when a football injury put him on the bench.
Considering where he grew up, his future seemed to be predetermined. “Prison, dead, on the street selling drugs,” he told KERA News. Moore credits football, faith and his mother for his life taking an unexpected direction. With his latest accomplishment, Moore will study next fall at Oxford University in England and complete his graduate studies in public policy and business administration, according to the Star-Telegram. [KERA News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram]
- After the new Texas African-American History Memorial was unveiled Saturday morning on Capitol grounds, a pair of dueling protests broke out. About two dozen protesters calling themselves “White Lives Matter” were met by several hundred counter-protesters, supporting Black Lives Matter, The Associated Press reports. Austin police and state troopers dressed in riot gear and some mounted on horseback intervened to keep the groups separated when things got heated. AP reports eight people were arrested — half of them for assault. Read more coverage from The Texas Tribune and KUT. [AP, KUT, Texas Tribune]
Watch live video from Texas Tribune reporter, Matthew Watkins below:
- Gone since May, Uber wants to get back together with Austin. In December, Austin passed an ordinance to require fingerprint background checks on drivers. Uber and Lyft didn’t want to comply. They gathered signatures to force a public vote and spent nearly $9 million on a failed campaign. Austinites voted against them, so they halted services. The Texas Tribune reports that since then, Uber associates have been on “listening tours” to address community concerns. The company wants to return, but, the city’s rules would still stand. [Texas Tribune]
- A San Antonio federal judge told a room full of immigrants to “go to another country” if they didn’t approve of Donald Trump. Judge John Primomo said this to hundreds of immigrants at the end of a naturalization ceremony last Thursday, the Dallas Morning News reports. Primomo says he meant for his comments to be unifying, not political, and that he didn’t vote for Trump. Primomo himself is the son of immigrants from Italy and Germany, according to a profile of the judge published two years ago in theSan Antonio Express-News. [The Dallas Morning News]
- Riley Holloway, a 27-year-old, self-taught multimedia artist, paints the people he knows. His most recent solo exhibition at Fort Works Art was titled “The People I've Come to Know,” which featured portraits of his mother, his wife, Dallas rapper Topic and other people from his life, Art&Seek reports.Holloway has spent time in Italy studying portrait painting. He served as artist-in-residence at The Fairmont Dallas. And he's showing work at SCOPE during Miami Art Week this November. He’s also the subject of the most recent Artist Spotlight. [Art&Seek]
