00:00:00.110 - 00:00:18.580

It was August. Hello, Dr. Byrd. Professor McDaniel, good afternoon. We're stuck inside.

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The weather outside is beautiful today. As long as I take my allergy meds though I can enjoy the spring weather, but the pollen does get to me.

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Well, I'm putting the stress on plural. I hope that was intentional, because yes, in Houston you need meds, allergy meds. Yes. Yes.

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When the pollen leaves a blanket on the ground, you know it's time to medicate. Absolutely. Well, welcome to everyone who's joining us today

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for our latest Doc Talk. We're excited to have you with us. We do this every Friday at noon central live, usually without a net to discuss some of the research

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that we're doing on the Task Force and talk through some documents that have recently been the focus of our attention and talk about some of the questions they raise

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and some of the questions they might help us answer. A reminder that you can also find recordings of past Doc Talks on our website at taskforce.Rice.edu/doctalks

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or subscribe to the podcast in Apple podcasts or Spotify. And we're looking forward to releasing more of those in the weeks to come. I hope that you were able to attend

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the outstanding webinar earlier this week that the Task Force hosted featuring student researchers from the Racial Geography Project led by Professor Lopez-Duran and Adrienne Rooney

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from the Art History Department. That was fantastic. Dr. Byrd? I missed it. Oh, wait a minute.

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I got the second one. I missed the first one. Oh, we had two. We've had two.

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Last week we had- I made the Racial Geography Project. That was fabulous. Yeah, they always impress

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and gave us a lot to think about. And then of course last week we had Professor Kelly talking about his research on slavery in Brazoria County. So do we wanna mention also an event

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that I know our audience will want to put on their calendar for April 14th? Do you wanna say a little bit about that one? Indeed, indeed.

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So April 14th, we begin what will be a series of webinars extending into next school year on Black Houston and the relationships between Black Houston and Rice University.

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And so on the 14th, Frank Guridy from Columbia University and Tyina Steptoe from the University of Arizona, two eminent historians of Texas and Houston, will be speaking to us on sport and society

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and Black Houston and on Black Houston neighborhoods. And so, that's going to be fantastic. So be sure to put that on your calendar and look for more information coming out

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by email and on the website. So today to get started with our documents, by mutual agreement, right, Dr. Byrd, you're going to go first today.

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I don't know how mutual this agreement was, but we've got a lot to do so I'm not gonna argue the point (chuckles) and I'll get started.

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So I'm going first, which I never do and don't like to do, but here we go. Dr. McDaniel, you inspired me last week by your acrobatics, by your improvisation.

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And so I'm not quite improvising today, but I am right in the middle of some work that I just stopped doing in order to do this Doc Talk. And so, that means I've been going through some stuff

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and now I'm about to talk about, okay? (laughs) This is like you talked about on our earlier webinar where we discussed the documentary "Windfalls," and you discussed going to the queue archives.

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And your favorite part of going to the archives, if I remember, was coming out to the coffee room in the middle of doing the research and talking to some of the other researchers there

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about what you just found. So it sounds like that's similar to what you're doing today. Exactly like that, except that you didn't have to be all that coherent down at lunchtime

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because you weren't being recorded on a webinar and usually people weren't listening. But here we go. And basically what I want to try to talk about today

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are a couple of things. And one of those things are some of the complications around the boundaries of community at a university and what happens as Rice begins

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to expand those boundaries of community. What are some of the opportunities that arise, but also what are some of the complications that arise? Methodologically, one of the things

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that I'm interested in talking about is also some of the perils of in situ analysis, right? What can happen when we begin to write biography or begin to do analysis right in the moment

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in a single document. So those are some of the larger issues that I'm going to talk about. And also do a presentist exercise that I know you'll love

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because you always are so eager to answer my presentist queries and my counterfactuals, which you are very deft at tending to whenever I ask them. So I have some of those toward the end.

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So I wanna go to 1971, and I wanna start in Homecoming in 1971 with an event that very much mirrors the series of talks that we're about to have underway with the Task Force.

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And hopefully you should just see my screen and hopefully just my screen and not the other junk. And so, in 1971, a very powerful program plan for Rice Homecoming

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and the theme is Rice and the city of Houston in the 1970s and it's gonna search out Rice's relationships to the role in its environment, including the areas of race, religion, violence,

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and the urban setting. So again, very much what we're gonna start doing with Black Houston. And there's a wonderful panel planned for Homecoming

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that's led by then-Assistant Professor Chandler Davidson, who we've met a few times over the course of these events and really deserves an extended treatment just on his work for and around racial justice at the university.

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And in 1971, we're at a time not too far from his arrival at the university. Dr. Davidson is an assistant professor at this moment. He's a sociologist.

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His degree is from Princeton. He's got a 1968 dissertation, if my memory is serving right because my notes aren't serving me at this moment on voting and Black politics in Houston.

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So he's someone who is particularly well qualified to talk about race and the city. It's the subject of his research, which will evolve in later years on minority voting rights

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and minority voter delusion... I was about to say delusion. That's not the word. Dilution is the word.

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Has a wonderful career at Rice doing a lot of work testifying in voting rights cases as well. But like I said, definitely Dr. Davidson deserves

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a Doc Talk of his own. On this day, he has organized a panel called Getting Ourselves Together: Rice and the Houston Black Community.

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And it sounds like something that we would tend to, we would go if we were at Homecoming, we would attend if we were at Homecoming 1971. And we're very fortunate to have some reactions

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to this work from someone who did attend. And to do the things that I wanna do today, I wanna spend most of my time on this particular response that comes October 21st, 1971.

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And it's from Henry Lee Bartlett, H.L. Bartlett. And it's written to President Hackerman, Norman Hackerman, who's then the school president. It begins, "Rice is my school."

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We could start letters like that. Begins with a certain amount of, I think, passion and regard for the university. "I was on campus before the Rice Institute opened

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"asking for admission to the first class, "and for love of Rice, I am writing this letter." And then he goes on to say that he was actually turned down from attending Rice.

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He wasn't admitted into the first class. So he then went to the University of Texas Pharmacy School, returning in 1915 to be accepted. This is some type of career.

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If I had gone to Rice Pharmacy, I mean Texas Pharmacy School, you wouldn't see me back at Rice trying to be accepted. But from this letter it looks like he returns in 1915.

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He's rejected in 1911, returned in 1915 to be accepted. Doesn't actually graduate from Rice but still feels a part of it, and so that's why he attends the reunion.

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Let's see if we can get a little bit about H.L. Bartlett. And if we looked to the Houston Post in 1915, we can find him graduating from Pharmacy School. So we've got some backup there.

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If we go to the Houston Post from 1920, we see another announcement concerning him. And I should give him all of his due if I can get my Zoom working.

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I also want to say here that he's graduating with honors. But now I see that I've spoken too fast because he actually graduates from Medical School with honors, not from Pharmacy School.

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And so, the folks in South Houston congratulate him in 1920 when he graduates from Medical School. So now we kind of have his career. He graduates Pharmacy School in 1915,

00:12:43.650 - 00:12:57.350

heads to Rice for a little while, but then graduates Medical School in 1920. We're getting a bead on him. By the 1950s, Dr. Bartlett is doing some work

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for his alma mater, right? So in the mid 1950s, he funds or endows a chamber music series at Rice that he puts in the Shepherd School

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that the writers of the Thresher give him credit for. And we see through other parts of the Thresher and the Post his work in the classical music scene in Houston. Actually writes and publishes a book on Beethoven

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and makes a gift to Rice of hundreds of Beethoven recordings. And so, now back to this letter to Dr. Hackerman having established some background on Dr. Bartlett.

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I know we typically try not to read entire documents, but I'm gonna read too much of this document and then return to some of it. Dr. Bartlett has some pretty strong reactions

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to Dr. Davidson's panel during Homecoming. And he actually writes Hackerman saying, "Admittedly, I cannot fathom the real reason "or purpose of this conference meeting

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"headed by Dr. Chandler Davidson. "This experience together with the reported activity "of Clark Read, who's also a Rice professor "and is on the executive committee of the ACLU.

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"Admittedly, seeing Davidson and Clark Read, "and for Dr. Bartlett knowing the history "of the previous appearances on Rice's campus "of various notorious colored individuals make me wonder

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"if there may not be on the campus some organized effort "or affiliated group who seek to put the Negro on top. "If so, I protest that this is not the function "of the university.

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"And if it's not, if this isn't actually the intention "of conferences like this then I believe some step "should be initiated to circumvent the appearance "of any such purpose."

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As a professor, now I'm getting a little disturbed here, Prof, right? And I think back on my days as an assistant professor, I'm getting maybe even a little terrified,

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but we'll read on. He praises Dr. Davidson in a way for giving a rather complete history of the Black experience in the United States, though he takes issue

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with what he thinks is Dr. Davidson spending a little too much time on Black grievance or the things that have gone wrong for Black folks or have been done to them in this country.

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Also on the platform were Dr. Alan Grob, someone who we will likely meet more later. Reverend William Lawson, who is a pastor in Houston and a pillar of the Houston community.

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A grove is named in his honor at Rice University. There's a lawyer and three Rice students there as well. He spends some time on one Rice student. And I want to also spend some time

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on his description of him. He says the following of one of the students. "One of whom was the senior John Birotte, "who appeared in his ragged and dirty-looking field clothes

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"and remained covered throughout the meeting." Covered, Dr. McDaniel. I feel like as someone who does 19th century history, I feel like you will know what that means

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without some explanation. Did he not take his hat off? Is that what we're talking about here? This is a major problem.

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This is a major problem for Dr. Bartlett in 1971. "Assuming he was not under treatment for some scalp disease "that required his head to be covered, "his appearance, if not his challenging attitude,

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"was an affront to all others present." So there's a lot that Bartlett didn't like about Birotte's mannerisms, and also the way he talked. "On the whole, I cannot remember in my lifetime

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"that I ever felt so deranged and humiliated and ashamed "that a member of the Rice faculty should present "such a person on his presiding panel "in a meeting of alumni.

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"If the temerity was unconscious, "all the more reason for this memo on it." He likes Reverend Lawson a little better. "Reverend Lawson, a colored minister on the panel,

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"was lucid, temperate, and admirable, and I thought, "in all he said. "I'm not sure that I heard all, "but I would concede much that he argued

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"for just the appearance of his integrity." That's one way to analyze what someone is saying to you, I guess. But he goes on to speak in greater detail

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about his worry about the actual purpose of the panel, and that is putting the Negro on top. He's afraid... You see, I timed myself

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but just give me about five or six more minutes, I'll finish up. He's worried here that the purpose of the panel is really Black supremacy.

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And he's worried that people are arguing for the admission of Negroes on a proportional basis. I guess he means here proportional to their place in the population

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or proportional in their place in the applicant pool. I'm not sure. But whatever it is, he's upset about that. He's also upset that folks have asked

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for Black faculty on the panel. "Some came to the conclusion that there should be "Negro members of the Rice faculty "because there were now Negro students there

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"who would need to consult with members of their own race, "which as I see it would be a step in resegregation. "Rice was founded for the advancement "of knowledge of individuals,

00:19:57.220 - 00:20:12.970

"found to be qualified to receive its offered training." This next line is underlined in blue because it's one of the most important to me now. "I protest that in its reorganization to admit Negroes,

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"it does not follow that its function should include "advancement of Negroes in a political or social way." He's worried that the university has changed since its admission of Blacks.

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He says earlier on, and I didn't read it, that he understands that admission of Blacks to Rice is a settled question. And he's not against it.

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He's not sure that he agrees with it, but it's a settled question of law and he will not argue it. But whether this admission of Blacks should also include the advancement of Negroes in a political or social way

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is something that he does not believe. And toward the end, he argues that something needs to be done about Dr. Davidson, right, a talking to, something that needs to happen.

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And so, that's the letter. This letter's gonna show up in a class of mine where I have three hours. (chuckles) So now I want to...

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Oh-oh, I see from your face you might be ready to say something, Dr. Okay, so now I wanna ask a couple of questions of the letter that I want folks to puzzle over

00:21:44.280 - 00:21:57.260

in the audience, if they will. One: What does Bartlett mean by the advancement of the Negroes in a political or social way? I think it's clear on its face

00:21:57.260 - 00:22:17.080

what political advancement means. It's not clear to me what he means by, "In a social way." And so, I'd look forward to hearing in the chat what folks think about that.

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And I also, there's one more thing I want to do here that it looks like I've gotten out of order. And so, unfortunately you have to watch me scan all of this in order to find it.

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And there we go, I think, in order to find it 'cause I also wanna offer this bit of context from the Thresher from 1957. So this is two years after Bartlett has endowed

00:22:49.790 - 00:23:02.760

his set of concerts. And we see that when the Thresher is introducing the 1957 concerts, on the same page it has material concerning a recent poll

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of the Rice community on integration where it shows a favoring of bus integration, that's public transportation, a favoring of the integration of public schools,

00:23:15.200 - 00:23:30.710

but also a favoring of integration of the Rice Institute. And I just wanna put those two things together because these moving contexts are important. And now that's...

00:23:32.540 - 00:23:49.220

So what does advancement of the Negro in a social way mean? Why is Bartlett so ashamed, right? That language of his strikes me as deserving of more attention.

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And then this last question I have is a question based on an exercise that I learned from Kendall Vining, who's the current president of the Student Association.

00:24:03.550 - 00:24:20.990

In a diversity seminar that we're piloting, Ms. Vining ran an exercise where when given a hypothetical situation at Rice she asked the question, what should Rice's official response be?

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And what should the personal response of Rice students be? This isn't hypothetical because we know this happened. But I wanna ask now, what should Rice's response be to Bartlett's letter?

00:24:37.150 - 00:24:57.160

What should Dr. Hackerman, President Hackerman, I'm sorry, what should his response be? That's the question I'm gonna offer to you at first, Dr. McDaniel, and just see what you do.

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Can I say what it shouldn't be? See, I'm dying- Yes! Yes. (laughs) Well, I certainly don't think President Hackerman should call Dr. Davidson into his office for a talking to.

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I like that. I think that would be that would be a terrible thing to do. Nothing for my audience so far, Prof. They don't like counterfactuals

00:25:27.190 - 00:25:41.710

or presentist questions either, which is good because we have Hackerman's response. So we can tend to it. And I'll just tell you.

00:25:41.710 - 00:25:54.400

I won't take up the screen anymore. But the president writes him and says it's always great to hear from an interested alumnus, and he read his letter with interest

00:25:54.400 - 00:26:10.370

and he appreciates his point of views. Always a good, right, a good boilerplate start. And then he asked just one question. The whole response is four lines long.

00:26:10.370 - 00:26:23.070

"I'm wondering if you have any objection "to my sending your letter to the Alumni Association Group "who scheduled the events?" That's it. That's the whole thing.

00:26:27.410 - 00:26:40.030

No more direct challenging of the premises of the letter then. No, though we should rush to say that Hackerman is definitely or has been in the habit

00:26:40.970 - 00:26:53.650

in the past and has been definitely been the habit in the 1970s through letters that we cannot show and do not have time to show that he has challenged some of those premises in the past,

00:26:53.650 - 00:27:15.080

especially around favoritism around admission. And he has made the argument that the university is better post-integration than it was a segregated university. So he doesn't challenge it in this first response.

00:27:16.720 - 00:27:31.160

But I wouldn't say that that means that he wouldn't, right? I think he probably would challenge it. I think it's, you know, going back to the question you posed at the beginning about the boundaries

00:27:31.160 - 00:27:43.100

of the Rice community and understandings of, you know, who's a part of the Rice community, who considers themselves part of Rice community. You know, I think it's interesting that even though

00:27:43.100 - 00:27:59.060

the writer of the letter did not graduate from Rice, by virtue of his attending Rice and having made donations of a significant kind to the advancement of Rice considers himself a member of the Rice community.

00:28:00.490 - 00:28:11.580

And, you know, also has some strong opinions about how other members of the Rice community, namely current students and faculty, should comport themselves

00:28:11.580 - 00:28:24.960

and what their priorities should be. The other thing that struck me about it is that the distance in time between the writer's attendance at Rice

00:28:25.600 - 00:28:35.110

and the writing of this letter. When did you say he was at Rice? 19... 19... Well, he showed up in 1911 at first, but then again in 1915.

00:28:37.080 - 00:28:50.780

And then he's writing in 1971. Yeah. And I think what that encourages us to think about is the proximity of the past to the present.

00:28:52.400 - 00:29:06.090

And, you know, the fact that sometimes maybe when we're focusing on a timeline of events for an institution like Rice and we see some of the milestones,

00:29:06.090 - 00:29:17.360

you know, here's when it was chartered, here's when it opened, here's when changed from Institute to the university, here's when the charter trial occurred,

00:29:17.360 - 00:29:27.000

here's when the first Black students were admitted on campus. And there's maybe a tendency as we march across that timeline to lose sight of the fact

00:29:27.000 - 00:29:38.500

that there are members of the community from those earlier moments on the timeline still very much around, still very much present- Absolutely, yeah.

00:29:38.500 - 00:29:55.130

And still shaping the community and in ways that have been shaped by their own experience when they were more directly a part of the institution. And shaped by the questions

00:29:55.130 - 00:30:15.520

that predominated in their prime, right? And so, maybe Bartlett is very much attuned to Rice in the 1970s, but we have a clear indication that the questions that predominated in the mid 1950s

00:30:15.520 - 00:30:33.550

when he was beginning to truly get involved in the workings of the university. If you give me one minute, Dr. McDaniel, I just want to just briefly say how Bartlett responds

00:30:33.770 - 00:30:49.070

to Hackerman's letter. And I think this is important for us for talking about how to manage these relationships between the community. But Bartlett writes back.

00:30:49.070 - 00:31:06.390

He thanks Hackerman for his note, and he says, you know, maybe don't send my letter to the Alumni Association. Now that I've considered your question

00:31:06.390 - 00:31:23.250

and I've gone back and read the letter and I see that I was critical of a Rice faculty member, I'm not sure what the effect of that criticism would have. And you know what, I see that I was just really angry

00:31:24.840 - 00:31:34.110

when I wrote that. Like, he's not taking anything back, but he's noticing that he says, "I was really angry when I wrote that letter."

00:31:34.110 - 00:31:47.830

And he also mentions... I'm paraphrasing, so y'all head to the archives. So mentions, you know, I don't wanna get into any legal trouble. (laughs)

00:31:48.910 - 00:32:07.810

I mean, there may be some untoward things in there and, you know, I was trying to get it to you in a hurry. And in any event, will you correct these three errors that I also saw in the letter?

00:32:07.810 - 00:32:21.630

Could you have your secretary correct these three errors? And I just raise that to say that, you know, that he's also in process, right? He knows some of what he thinks,

00:32:21.630 - 00:32:32.750

but he actually doesn't know all of what he thinks. And I feel that way all the time, right? He was writing without a net. (chuckles) He was writing without a net.

00:32:32.750 - 00:32:44.730

And perhaps there was some room for reconsideration. Maybe. And I'm not sure. I think he's leaving that open. I still don't get why there's so much passion

00:32:44.730 - 00:32:59.080

and energy in that letter. The comparison between Lawson and Birotte deserves more attention. And the focus on the student is troubling in the extreme,

00:32:59.120 - 00:33:13.330

the way he writes about a student at the university. And we also didn't answer what it means, why is he so upset about the advancement of the Negro in a social way?

00:33:13.330 - 00:33:27.440

No one in audience, Dr. McDaniel, has interpreted that part for us yet, but now I'm out of time. And I'm really excited about what you're bringing to us today.

00:33:27.440 - 00:33:36.070

Perhaps our audience can continue to mull over that question. And we wanna remind you that you can leave a question either in the chat or using the Q and A button

00:33:36.070 - 00:33:47.430

at the bottom, and we'll be sure to make some time to address those questions at the end of the webinar. Thanks, Dr. Byrd for that. I'm interested to see what develops

00:33:47.430 - 00:34:02.920

from your ongoing research about this source. The document I brought today also provides an opportunity for reconsideration of a kind, or going back to some of the earlier documents

00:34:02.920 - 00:34:14.810

that we've talked about on this webinar. You may remember I think our second Doc Talk not long ago in the fall we had some students come on and share some of the research that they had done

00:34:14.810 - 00:34:24.300

in the past. And one of the students who came was Andrew Mouse who had written a paper working with me in an independent study about William Marsh Rice

00:34:24.300 - 00:34:40.030

and his connection to the history of slavery. And so the document that Andrew shared with us on that day was a page from a ledger from 1858 to 1859 that detailed some of the transactions,

00:34:40.030 - 00:34:51.630

business transactions, of William Marsh Rice. I feel like, you know, we can later cut in some sort of sound effects that show we're going back in time

00:34:51.630 - 00:35:05.310

and we can hear what Andrew said on that original episode, but he called our attention to the fact that at the bottom of this ledger there was some writing that caught him,

00:35:07.460 - 00:35:21.870

took his breath away in the archive and sort of brought up his attention as he was reading through this, you know, 800-page book. He saw this phrase and had to stop

00:35:21.870 - 00:35:38.170

because here in March of 1859 there's a reference to, and I'm quoting the ledger here, "Negro property." And so, Andrew talked a little bit about what that entry means.

00:35:38.170 - 00:35:48.250

Obviously, the banality of it struck him, the fact that in this ledger page that's talking about cotton and cash and the exchange of merchandise

00:35:48.250 - 00:36:00.330

there's suddenly this reference without any other comment to the exchange of a human being as property, enslaved property. And so, we talked on that particular episode

00:36:00.330 - 00:36:13.300

about what this ledger could tell us and what it couldn't tell us. Andrew noted that it's not possible from this to tell what the name of the person involved

00:36:13.300 - 00:36:23.980

in this transaction was. We don't even know whether this is referring only to one person or multiple people. We have over here to the right a dollar amount

00:36:23.980 - 00:36:40.940

of $1,450 attached to this property. And he also sort of speculated about what it might mean that this appeared on the right side of this ledger because in this ledger book, at the top of each page

00:36:40.940 - 00:36:52.290

you have the person that William Marsh Rice had an account with, in this case S.S. Ward of Marlin, Texas, and on the left would list all of the debts,

00:36:54.700 - 00:37:07.760

if we want to put it that way, that Ward owed to Rice. So, if Ward purchased merchandise from Rice's store then that merchandise would be listed here on the left along with its price.

00:37:07.760 - 00:37:17.720

And then whenever Ward would pay William Marsh Rice, for example if he paid cash, that would be listed on the right. So you can kind of see here at the top

00:37:17.720 - 00:37:30.150

Ward had clearly bought some merchandise worth $481. And on the right, he had paid some cash, several different cash payments here, that would pay down his balance on the account

00:37:30.150 - 00:37:44.220

with William Marsh Rice. And so, one possibility that Andrew raised in that webinar that I think is still a possibility here is that Ward was indebted to William Marsh Rice,

00:37:44.220 - 00:37:57.090

and so in order to pay down his balance, William Marsh Rice was taking possession of enslaved people that legally had been owned by Ward. So I wanted to go back to that ledger

00:37:57.090 - 00:38:10.750

to give you some context for a different page in the ledger that I wanted to talk about today that might shed some light on those two questions. And in order to explain that

00:38:10.750 - 00:38:19.540

I wanna show you another document. I'm breaking the rule, just like you did, in showing more than one document. But on Wednesday when the Racial Geography Project students

00:38:19.540 - 00:38:32.530

presented in our webinar, one of the things they called our attention to was a fugitive slave advertisement that was placed in a Houston newspaper in January 1860.

00:38:34.250 - 00:38:41.820

I believe it was 1860. May have been 1861. I'd have to... I think it was 1861 actually. Yeah, because it's referring here to an event

00:38:41.820 - 00:38:56.460

that took place in December of 1860. And as you can see here on the screen, this advertisement is offering a $50 reward if someone can help to identify and capture-

00:38:56.460 - 00:39:06.770

It's not showing on my screen, Prof. Oh-oh. Let me start. Let me start over here. Let me see.

00:39:08.060 - 00:39:21.710

Let me try this. Can you see it now? Is it there? Okay. (chuckles)

00:39:21.710 - 00:39:37.610

So we see here an advertisement from January 1861 and it's offering a $50 reward. And it says that a man named Tom, about 25 years of age, had escaped.

00:39:38.450 - 00:39:59.130

And it tells us a little bit about his history. It says that Tom, "Was formerly owned by Dr. James M. Cox "of Fort Graham, Texas, and was sold by him "about two years ago to William M. Rice of Houston."

00:40:00.170 - 00:40:15.330

So this is a significant document because, you know, it demonstrates that even though we do know, as Andrew said, that William Marsh Rice on occasion accepted enslaved property as collateral for loans that he extended,

00:40:15.330 - 00:40:27.500

and then when he sought to collect on debts, he sometimes then took possession of enslaved people. This ad is saying something different. This ad is one of the cases, pieces of evidence we have

00:40:27.500 - 00:40:45.360

that William Marsh Rice actively purchased enslaved people on occasion because the ad says that James Cox had sold Tom two years before in 1859 to William Marsh Rice. Now, I wanna come back to the ledger

00:40:45.360 - 00:40:58.520

that we were talking about because these ledgers are, as I said, unwieldy. They're, you know, hundreds of pages long. This particular ledger it has 787 pages in it,

00:40:59.470 - 00:41:12.360

and there's no index to the ledger. And so, one of the projects that we're actually working on right now with the Woodson Research Center is figuring out a way to transcribe the names that are at the top

00:41:12.360 - 00:41:23.920

of all of these pages so that we can have a searchable index of who William Marsh Rice did business with. That would make it a lot easier to, if we found an ad like the one I just showed you

00:41:23.920 - 00:41:33.730

and it mentioned James Cox, we could go to the ledger and see was there any page where William Marsh Rice was doing business with James Cox. We don't have that yet.

00:41:33.730 - 00:41:46.390

And so, what I'm about to share instead I realized through serendipity because I was going through the ledger looking for something else when I came upon this page.

00:41:46.390 - 00:42:00.280

Let jump ahead here. Tell me that you're seeing the ledger again. Okay. So here we have on page 335 of this ledger. At the top you can see that this page shows the account

00:42:00.280 - 00:42:17.060

between William Marsh Rice and James M. Cox of Fort Graham. Does that ring any bells? He's in the ad! He was in the ad and that's what rang a bell for me

00:42:17.060 - 00:42:33.640

is that the ad, you recall, said that James M. Cox from Fort Graham had sold Tom to William Marsh Rice two years before this ad was placed, right? So the ad was placed January 1861

00:42:34.770 - 00:42:50.560

and it says that Tom was sold two years before, so that would be early 1859. And what we see here on the right side of this ledger page, lo and behold is a reference again, just like on page 88

00:42:50.630 - 00:43:09.180

to, "Negro property." And says on April 1st, 1859 that Rice had received this property and applied it to the balance of the account between him and James M. Cox.

00:43:09.180 - 00:43:22.030

And you can see over on the right the dollar amount here, which is significant. Remember that on page 88, we saw $1,450 here. It's listed as $1,600 on the ledger,

00:43:23.400 - 00:43:37.410

this particular property exchange. That raises some questions for me. And maybe you can guess what those questions are, Dr. Byrd. I can never guess what those questions are.

00:43:39.890 - 00:43:56.810

Well, I mean maybe this seems too obvious, but one of my questions is are we looking here at evidence about the sale of Tom by James Cox to William Marsh Rice? The timing it lines up that James Cox had sold Tom

00:43:57.480 - 00:44:12.280

to William Marsh Rice around this time. And here we have an entry that doesn't mention Tom by name. That's one of the silences in this particular document. But that lines up in all of these other ways

00:44:12.280 - 00:44:25.650

with what the ad is saying. And so this may be a rare- Yeah, I had blown past that question, Prof. I'm sorry. Which just shows that I was being incautious. (chuckles)

00:44:25.650 - 00:44:37.400

Well, I mean, presumably it could be referring to yet another transaction between James Cox and William Marsh Rice. But I think there's a lot of evidence to suggest

00:44:37.400 - 00:44:54.530

that maybe this is the transaction that we're looking at. And that makes this really significant because, you know, as Andrew noted, normally in a ledger like this if we see an entry for enslaved people as property

00:44:54.530 - 00:45:02.120

we don't know anything about them. We don't know their age. We don't know their name. We don't know, you know, their previous history.

00:45:02.120 - 00:45:20.470

This is a rare case we might have to connect these two dots. The ad about Tom from 1861 with this record, I think, of the transaction between James Cox and William Marsh Rice. So if you had blown past that,

00:45:20.470 - 00:45:32.470

what were the questions then that it raises for you? No, I thought we were done, man. When I saw this, I thought case closed. (clapping) I've got more questions though.

00:45:33.470 - 00:45:45.750

I'm gonna do one of the things that you've taught me to do and that's answer a different question. Okay, okay. Go for it. And I'm gonna say one of the things that I find beautiful

00:45:46.950 - 00:46:06.600

and inspiring about this is that it illustrates the way... Right, so one of the starts of doing the history of African, doing African-American history or the history of other silenced groups is we always begin

00:46:07.690 - 00:46:28.380

with the kind of assumption of the silence, right? And I think what this work shows and what almost every historian of Afro-America begins with is this work isn't unknowable, right?

00:46:28.380 - 00:46:44.790

There's actually enormous amounts of evidence, evidence abounds. It's just fragmented and disconnected in ways that it might not have been in the time, right?

00:46:47.630 - 00:46:58.690

So in William Marsh Rice's brain, right, all of this may exist all right next to each other, right? Yeah. That's Tom. Or to a clerk or what have you.

00:46:58.690 - 00:47:10.870

And I think what you're illustrating is the power of a different kind of assumption, but also a power of a methodology that you called serendipity

00:47:10.870 - 00:47:27.540

but that I'm not buying a serendipity. And at the same time eluding to a kind of power or a computational power that also could give us easier access to this material.

00:47:27.540 - 00:47:39.220

And I'm excited beyond words, as a historian, about that. Yeah, I mean, you can see why if these ledgers are 800 pages and these fragments are kind of buried here in page 335.

00:47:39.220 - 00:47:48.410

I mean, I say buried, but you're right, it's not really buried. It's right here, you know, on pen and paper that William Marsh Rice engaged

00:47:48.410 - 00:47:58.180

in these kinds of transactions. But maybe if we can make the ledgers a little bit more accessible and easier to search, more such discoveries might be possible.

00:47:58.180 - 00:48:11.140

And that kind of leads me to one question that I had going back to the page that we talked about on our second webinar. Is there anything that we might learn from that other page,

00:48:11.140 - 00:48:25.140

page 335, that we might want to now come back to page 88 with S.S. Ward and ask some different questions or draw some different conclusions about what's here on this page?

00:48:27.930 - 00:48:38.820

I have some guesses here, but I'm less... Like, I do feel more restrained in what I'm about to say now. That's okay. That's all right.

00:48:38.820 - 00:48:46.100

I feel like I should have more caution. We're at the cafe. We're talking about- Okay, we're at the cafe. Well, I'm just wondering...

00:48:46.100 - 00:48:59.170

So I'm not entirely sure what year... No, you know what, my timing's all wrong. I can't even say what I was gonna say. I was gonna try to connect these but I don't see it.

00:48:59.170 - 00:49:14.200

Well, I don't think that the two are connected, although they're around the same time, 1859. So, I mean, one thing we could point out is that the transaction we saw was April 1859,

00:49:14.480 - 00:49:29.260

and this is March 1859. So that helps us kind of connect two dots as well. That means in this spring of 1859, William Marsh Rice found himself in possession

00:49:29.260 - 00:49:43.310

of enslaved people that he had not possessed earlier. Tom, we know, in the case of, or we think we know in the case of page 335. But you know, one question it raises for me is

00:49:43.310 - 00:49:56.260

we had speculated that maybe this entry on page 88 was a case of William Marsh Rice receiving property in payment of a debt. That's what Andrew was saying.

00:49:56.260 - 00:50:10.250

But that the ad on page 335 suggests a different interpretation of the ledger, which is that Rice might have purchased this property from S.S. Ward.

00:50:10.250 - 00:50:23.810

And maybe it seems like a slight difference but I think it's an important one. If the perception we have is that William Marsh Rice only came to possess enslaved people by virtue of people

00:50:24.140 - 00:50:37.380

he had lent money defaulting on their loans, that would lead us to sort of characterize his entanglement in the history of slavery in a particular way. But if we know from the description in the ad about Tom

00:50:37.380 - 00:50:54.880

that James Cox had sold Tom to William Marsh Rice, that this was a kind of active purchase on Rice's part, and it was recorded on the right side of this ledger in the same way that this transaction is recorded,

00:50:54.880 - 00:51:10.180

it raises the question for me of whether this is also a case of Rice purchasing at this moment in early 1859. And then that raises other questions. Well, why at this moment would he be purchasing more people

00:51:10.180 - 00:51:20.240

if in fact, that's what he was doing. Let me show you one other page from this ledger that I think can help us start to answer some of these questions or connect more dots.

00:51:21.170 - 00:51:38.200

And this is from towards the back of the book on page 680. Let me find it here. Hold on. I gotta make a little sidebar here. This is an interesting page to me

00:51:38.200 - 00:51:58.180

because it mentions Richard W. Dowling, aka Dick Dowling, whose statue in Hermann Park you might know was recently removed by the city of Houston. It also mentions Alfred Richardson, aka A.S. Richardson,

00:51:58.420 - 00:52:12.180

who would go on to become one of the trustees mentioned in the 1891 charter of the Rice Institute. Okay, but we're just moving past. Page 680. Where is it?

00:52:12.190 - 00:52:23.310

Ah-ha, here we go. 685. All right. And you can see at the bottom of this page... All of the other pages in this book,

00:52:23.310 - 00:52:36.510

or most of the other pages, have the name of a person at the top of the page for the account, but here you can see we've got the same two column to count but at the top it says, and I'm quoting here,

00:52:36.510 - 00:52:50.420

"Negro property." In other words what William Marsh Rice has done here is he has, or his clerk, is summarized all of the transactions having to do with enslaved people

00:52:53.070 - 00:53:01.290

in one part of this page. And so, it's a little hard to follow like what would the accounting, how would this accounting have worked?

00:53:01.290 - 00:53:15.400

I mean, I'm drawn first of all to the sum at the bottom: $13,300. But what it seems to be happening here is that if Rice was paying someone

00:53:15.620 - 00:53:27.790

or he was sort of giving up money from the firm to someone else, then that would go in the debitor column over here on the left. In other words, money's going from Rice's firm

00:53:29.140 - 00:53:43.760

to this account of "Negro property." And then on the right would be funds coming in, right, or property coming in that would help to balance the account.

00:53:44.640 - 00:53:55.160

It's a little bit counterintuitive get your head around because he's not talking about an account with a person, but it's a way for the clerk to sort of abstract all of the exchanges having to do

00:53:55.160 - 00:54:07.360

with this particular kind of property. And what lends my interpretation some strength is over here on the left, you'll see that in March and April of 1859

00:54:08.770 - 00:54:28.810

we see an entry for S.S. Ward, $1,450. And right after that an entry for James M. Cox, $1,600. In other words, those earlier transactions we saw on page 88 and page 335 are being entered here again

00:54:28.810 - 00:54:40.710

on the left side of the account. And that means that we could infer perhaps that these other transactions that are listed here, and there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,

00:54:42.270 - 00:54:56.350

eight lines here listed, that all of these are also acquisitions. That's a question that I would have. And again, we can see the timing here

00:54:56.350 - 00:55:09.130

that in the spring of 1859 the firm is doing a lot of acquiring of enslaved people. And then over here on the right, it kind of raises the question of, well,

00:55:09.130 - 00:55:24.040

then what are these lines here, 1859? So April 27th, this would have been after the two transactions we've been talking about, there's some reference to E. Knowles and sons, $2,750.

00:55:27.260 - 00:55:45.320

Does that suggest perhaps that William Marsh Rice's firm was conveying some of this property to someone else in the amount of $2,750? So, that's what I brought to talk about today.

00:55:45.320 - 00:55:59.150

I think I'm also a little bit in progress here, but what finding that connection between the advertisement about Tom and that page in the ledger with James Cox is a key

00:55:59.150 - 00:56:16.420

that unlocks a way of reading the other entries in this ledger and helps us a little bit better understand what Andrew and me, as his advisor almost a year ago, we're left to kind of only speculate about.

00:56:16.420 - 00:56:27.690

We can start to put together a better theory about what was going on in these pages. I have questions. I'm bursting with questions.

00:56:27.690 - 00:56:49.980

But so is the room, and so I'm gonna start with the room because I can talk to you right after. But I wanna start with Tiffany Rechsteiner asks, again, she's got a methodological question for you.

00:56:50.810 - 00:57:05.820

How do we avoid that bias toward the march of progress given that we know the end of the story? So this is about avoiding that interpretive trap. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

00:57:05.820 - 00:57:15.760

So kind of the question we were talking about earlier with looking at the timeline of all the events in Rice history. You know, I think she's put her finger

00:57:15.760 - 00:57:28.020

on why the work of of history is so challenging because when we know how things turned out, it's very difficult for that not to affect how we read what was happening at the time.

00:57:28.020 - 00:57:38.960

And so, this is the problem that you've been kind of jokingly referring to as presentism where we don't want to... We want as much as possible to try to interpret

00:57:38.960 - 00:57:49.960

the documents that we're finding within the context of their time. See if we can put ourselves in that moment to the extent that we can and figure out what's going on.

00:57:49.960 - 00:58:04.780

But I think another thing that her question refers to or reminds me of is the way that the past lingers on because the people linger on. You know, my teenage daughter was talking to me

00:58:04.780 - 00:58:15.640

the other day about how do we decide who gets called Generation Z, you know, and who gets called Generation X? Like, what determines when a generation is?

00:58:15.640 - 00:58:24.210

And we talked about the fact that, you know, I'm sure our colleagues in the social sciences would have some very sophisticated answers for that of, you know, what counts as a generation,

00:58:24.210 - 00:58:35.100

but as a historian I would say it's kind of arbitrary, right? We kind of decide who the greatest generation is or why do we refer to the World War II generation

00:58:35.100 - 00:58:41.230

or the post-war generation? What's that? It's a way though of- Why do they get to be the greatest?

00:58:43.020 - 00:58:57.010

So that doesn't leave much room for anyone else. But it spotlights that generations overlap. Generations overlap, you know? It's not as though one generation just goes away,

00:58:57.010 - 00:59:10.520

but, you know, generations stick around and their influence on the world remains and they bring with them, as you said, their experience from earlier in their lives.

00:59:10.520 - 00:59:24.010

And so, that's another way to avoid this kind of march of progress idea is to be aware of the way that generations co-exist. And generations co-exist, history overlaps, you know,

00:59:24.010 - 00:59:37.270

and the past and the present are always kind of interleaved. It's not as though we're just marching along a timeline and leaving the past behind. We're out of time,

00:59:37.270 - 00:59:46.630

but you you should answer one more question. Okay. Okay. And I would only add to your answer to say, I would just also add don't work alone.

00:59:46.630 - 01:00:03.050

That's another way to avoid a lot of pitfalls. So one more question about Rice's business practices. Do we know how directly W.M.R. was involved in his own business transactions?

01:00:03.050 - 01:00:16.290

One argument I've heard others make is that Rice's staff made transactions like this on his behalf, and he may not have known that he was involved/invested in slavery.

01:00:19.000 - 01:00:31.380

That's a good, you know, question, a critical question to be asking about the sources, you know, because when we see a source like this, we wanna resist the urge to leap to conclusions.

01:00:31.380 - 01:00:41.410

And so you know, that's a hypothesis we would want to consider. This isn't his handwriting in these ledgers. That's one answer to the question.

01:00:41.410 - 01:00:50.950

It is the handwriting of a clerk. But I think it does... How would we answer that question? How would we answer how involved William Marsh Rice was

01:00:50.950 - 01:01:02.030

in his everyday business transactions? Well, we could look to other sources. We could look at some of his correspondence, for example, that we have from later in his life.

01:01:02.030 - 01:01:12.080

You know, how involved was he in the operation of his business? Did he take a close interest? 'Cause you know, some wealthy people

01:01:12.080 - 01:01:24.190

like to just turn everything over to to a manager. And that's like, you know, Dr. Byrd, I handle all of his finances. But you know, others like to be very involved

01:01:24.190 - 01:01:34.600

in the daily nitty gritty of the business. And so, what kind of a person was William Marsh Rice? Well, we'd have to build that picture as well from looking at the sources

01:01:34.600 - 01:01:45.200

and seeing did he get really involved. I'll tell you, at the risk of a spoiler alert, I'll say my having read some of that correspondence makes me think he was more of the kind

01:01:45.200 - 01:01:58.360

who was very involved. He was more of a micromanager in his business dealings. And so, I don't think it's very reasonable to think that he wasn't aware

01:01:58.360 - 01:02:14.170

that these kinds of transactions were taking place. Oh boy, that was fun. Well, these were difficult documents at the same time to read and wrestle with.

01:02:14.170 - 01:02:26.650

I mean, it's easy, as Andrew was saying, to, you know, rush past the tragedies that are really contained in some of these sources just because of their banality.

01:02:26.650 - 01:02:40.560

But when you see people listed as property in this ledger without their names even being attached, when you see from the ad that these were people who often resisted that enslavement,

01:02:40.560 - 01:02:52.630

and in Tom's case had made an effort to seize his own freedom. And then when you see 100 years later how the legacies of that particular moment are still playing out

01:02:52.630 - 01:03:07.880

in letters like the one that you shared, you know, there's a lot to think about here, a lot of dots to connect and reflect on. What is exciting about it for me today

01:03:09.130 - 01:03:25.270

is our ability to recover, right? Our ability to recover these stories for the present, for now. And so, I leave today energized and confident

01:03:27.450 - 01:03:42.810

in the power of history and historians to do good work for people. Well, on that note, let's thank our audience for being here and encourage you to come back

01:03:42.810 - 01:03:52.360

and tell others about our weekly webinar, the Doc Talks every Friday at noon. And in the meantime, I hope that you all have a great weekend.

01:03:53.390 - 01:03:54.220

See you later.