He hired San Antonio-based Italian-born sculptor Pompeo Coppini to design the monument, which was to include a number of statues of notable figures from the history of Texas and the American South.

[1] As part of the memorial project, in the 1920s Coppini sculpted bronze statues of Jefferson Davis and five other Texan and Confederate notables selected by Littlefield, which he intended to display around the fountain.

[1] Beginning in 2015 and accelerating in 2017, a national controversy grew over the prominent positions of monuments and memorials to the Confederacy in many public spaces across the United States, and particularly in the American South.

[2] In this context, the statues of Confederate notables along the university's South Mall that Coppini had designed for the Littlefield Fountain attracted increased public criticism.

In March 2015, UT's student government passed a resolution calling for the removal of Jefferson Davis from the South Mall.