00:00:14.770 - 00:00:33.120

You know, one of the nice things about Zoom, Dr. Byrd, is if we were having an in-person meeting, and the two of us were flying in at the last minute with papers going everywhere, everyone would know that.

00:00:33.120 - 00:00:42.210

Yeah. And Zoom, I'm not saying that did happen. That that may have happened, it may not have happened. I did not just arrive in the Zoom room,

00:00:42.210 - 00:00:51.560

with papers flying everywhere. They don't know because until the webinar starts, they can't see what's happening. So that's gonna, you know,

00:00:51.560 - 00:01:07.560

the people are talking about the adjustment to going back to in-person and learning to socialize again. But people are also gonna have to learn to see how the sausage is made with the two of us rushing around.

00:01:10.770 - 00:01:21.430

Why? I don't, I mean, are you intimating that there will be a live in-person component to the "Doc Talks" in the fall?

00:01:21.430 - 00:01:30.250

Well, that's a good point. That's a good point. I'm just talking more in general about Zoom meetings versus in-person meetings,

00:01:30.250 - 00:01:46.120

that I kind of like the, there's a curtain that's lifted with a webinar. And before that, we can be running around backstage. Yeah. Hypothetically.

00:01:46.120 - 00:01:52.830

I'm not saying that didn't happen, hypothetically- I wasn't, I wasn't, not today. But in all seriousness,

00:01:52.830 - 00:02:06.930

we wanna thank our Zoom audience for being here. Sorry to get started just a minute or two late. We're glad that you're joining us. We do this every Friday with the "Doc Talks" Webinar

00:02:08.080 - 00:02:17.430

to discuss research that's ongoing with the "Task Force on Slavery, Segregation and Racial Injustice." I don't wanna forget to direct people

00:02:17.430 - 00:02:33.650

to our website taskforce.rice.edu, especially, because there is a fantastic event coming up, hosted by the Task Force next Wednesday at 6:00 p.m. Do you wanna plug that, Dr. Byrd?

00:02:35.920 - 00:02:42.490

Yes. Do wanna talk more about it? So on Wednesday at 6:00 p.m., I had to make sure I was on.

00:02:42.490 - 00:02:58.090

Wednesday at 6:00 p.m., Professor Frank Guridy and Professor Towanna Steptoe, will be talking about "Segregated Houston, Black Life Beyond the Hedges."

00:02:58.090 - 00:03:11.240

It's the first in a series of talks that will continue into the fall that the Task Force will be sponsoring on African-American life in Houston and beyond,

00:03:11.240 - 00:03:27.770

and the ways in which black culture and society shaped life at Rice. Professor Steptoe will be speaking on the topic of "Listening to Communities of Color".

00:03:27.770 - 00:03:47.940

And she'll be spending a good deal of time talking about music and the production of culture in some of the black neighborhoods around Houston. Professor Guridy will be using sport

00:03:47.940 - 00:04:03.250

as a lens and the Astrodome in particular as a lens for viewing the opportunities and the problems around desegregation in Houston. And just some hints,

00:04:03.250 - 00:04:17.030

if you're interested in Muhammad Ali, I would show up. And I also have a feeling though, I'm not certain about this with Professor Steptoe, but if you're also interested

00:04:17.030 - 00:04:32.630

in Zydeco Music, she has a fascinating and compelling thesis around Houston and Zydeco. Will we see Lightnin' Hopkins again, possibly too? We might, we might.

00:04:32.630 - 00:04:44.120

I'm just really excited about this event on Wednesday and this series moving forward. So put that on your calendar. If you're in the audience,

00:04:44.120 - 00:04:56.440

we hope that you can attend you're in for a real treat on Wednesday at 6:00 p.m. In the meantime, we have a "Doc Talk" to get to, so why don't we dive right in?

00:04:56.440 - 00:05:15.000

And we drew straws to determine who would go first and it looks like it's me. So Dr. Byrd, recently, I've been really in the weeds of working on the 19th century part of our charge,

00:05:16.410 - 00:05:27.960

working on research related to the history of slavery and its entanglement with the history of the founders of the Rice Institute. But while we've been doing that work,

00:05:27.960 - 00:05:40.660

the folks in the Woodson Research Center, have continued doing a wonderful job of digitizing many documents from the university's history and putting those on the web

00:05:40.660 - 00:05:55.680

so that everyone can see them. And so, I decided today to take a little bit of a break from the work that I've been focused on in the 19th century to point out some of the sources

00:05:55.680 - 00:06:07.460

that have recently been related to the Rice University Charter Trial. So this was the trial in the 1960s that the university entered

00:06:07.460 - 00:06:20.600

in order to change the original charter and the restrictions around race and the charging of tuition from 1891. We had a great webinar, I'm sure you recall from the fall

00:06:20.600 - 00:06:35.260

that detailed some of the legal arguments in that case, and you can find a video to that on our website. But Woodson has been been scanning some more documents, related to this trial and putting them up.

00:06:35.260 - 00:06:50.400

So I wanna just point out to our audience that if you're interested in this trial, you can go to this website that I'll throw in the chat here, and learn more about the arguments that the university made.

00:06:51.160 - 00:07:02.900

The arguments that were made by two alumni who entered the suit to argue that the charter should not be changed. Another group of alumni that intervened

00:07:02.900 - 00:07:10.930

to argue against those two alumni there. It's a very complicated lawsuit, but you can track some of those changes by looking at these primary sources

00:07:10.930 - 00:07:28.670

that are gradually being made available. But the one that I wanted to talk about today, let me see if I can scroll down and find it, or actually I already had it, I already had it over here.

00:07:28.670 - 00:07:40.460

Here it is. So this is one that's recently been uploaded, and it's called "A message of Importance to All Rice Alumni,"

00:07:40.460 - 00:07:58.970

related to the Rice University Charter Trial. And you can see that it's a printed pamphlet. And on the first page with texts from this, there's a letter from the then President of the Association

00:07:58.970 - 00:08:13.400

of Rice Alumni, Charles W. Hamilton, who in this sort of typed script note, it says, "Dear Rice Alumnus." And then he appends this letter reporting

00:08:13.400 - 00:08:22.540

on the the charter trial. He says, "The Association of Rice Alumni, has followed the lead of the trustees in reference to the suit seeking court construction

00:08:22.540 - 00:08:36.950

of the indenture by which Rice University was created, I.e., to allow the case to be tried in the courts, not by bulletins, press conferences or street talk. The time appears to have come, however,

00:08:36.950 - 00:08:48.100

to clarify certain things about the case." Now, I find just even that opening paragraph, very interesting as a historian, because it sort of suggests to me that

00:08:48.100 - 00:09:03.070

as this suit was unfolding, that there was a lot of talk happening among Rice Alumni about the trial. You know, today it probably wouldn't be on both bulletins

00:09:03.070 - 00:09:13.750

or press conferences. Maybe the parallel today, if this was happening, would be social media or Facebook or meetings of alumni in various places.

00:09:13.750 - 00:09:26.280

But I think, we can gather from this opening paragraph that alumni were very interested in the outcome of this charter trial, but the Association of Rice Alumni sort of took a policy

00:09:26.280 - 00:09:39.690

of not joining the fray. And according to the president here, decided to let the lawyers do the talking and let the judge and the jury make the decisions,

00:09:39.690 - 00:09:52.430

before commenting publicly on it. But, we can also conclude from this opening paragraph that in all of that street talk that was happening, there had been some confusions that had arisen,

00:09:52.430 - 00:10:03.210

that the President of the Alumni Association wanted to correct and clarify. And so if we scroll down, we can we can learn a little bit more about

00:10:03.210 - 00:10:16.310

what some of those confusions were. One of them appears to be that some alumni thought the suit was going to break Mr. Rice's will, William Marsh Rice's will.

00:10:17.420 - 00:10:35.070

And that was one of the arguments that Koffee and Milips, the two alumni who joined the suit to argue against the university's position, you know, said that, "They didn't have a principal objection

00:10:35.070 - 00:10:45.610

to what the university was doing, but they did have a concern about the principal that wills ought to be respected. And that if a person in their state put some conditions

00:10:45.610 - 00:10:56.480

in their will, that, you know, those testaments had to be respected." And so here at Charles W. Hamilton clarifies that this suit is actually not

00:10:56.480 - 00:11:08.020

about Mr. Rice's will at all. "Mr. Rice's will was not involved, and was not even introduced in evidence. The suit was brought as the law of Texas contemplates,

00:11:08.020 - 00:11:16.580

to invoke the court's construction of the indenture authorizing the creation of Rice University." What's going on there?

00:11:16.580 - 00:11:31.850

Well, basically, the lawyers and Hamilton are saying that, "It's the charter of the Rice Institute that's really at issue here, not William Marsh Rice's personal will."

00:11:31.850 - 00:11:51.120

And the charter was joined by more than just one person. It was made up of, it incorporated the institute and it appointed trustees beyond William Marsh Rice to implement the purposes of the charter.

00:11:51.120 - 00:12:00.370

So those are some things, I wanna get down to a later page in the pamphlet, but those are some things that jump out at me right away and caught my attention about this document.

00:12:00.370 - 00:12:13.960

It sort of raises a question for me of what was being said, kind of behind the scenes. What were the arguments that made the president of the Association of Rice Alumni feel

00:12:13.960 - 00:12:23.850

that he needed to speak out to correct some of these misconceptions? Is there anything else that you noticed, Dr. Byrd, or that this raises question about for you?

00:12:23.850 - 00:12:41.410

Well, one of the questions that comes to my mind is the distinction between what people say their believe, right? Or what they are willing to argue

00:12:41.410 - 00:13:00.060

and what they believe are also what the moment demands, but also what it means to believe a thing. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think, and I wanna get back to that later.

00:13:00.060 - 00:13:16.680

And I think that this opening letter, speaking of belief, it uses that word multiple times in the rest of the letter. There's kind of a high-minded appeal here to the alumni who are receiving this message that once they actually look

00:13:16.680 - 00:13:26.740

at the documents related to the charter trial, it will clear up all of these problems. And Hamilton says, "Believing that you, as an alumnus of Rice University,

00:13:26.740 - 00:13:40.060

maintain a keen interest in this case. They've decided to publish in this pamphlet, the text of the appellate court's opinion as well as the charter,

00:13:41.010 - 00:13:50.860

which includes the pertinent indenture, and the provisions of Mr. Rice's will, which refer in any way to the Rice Institute. I earnestly commend these documents to your attention."

00:13:51.700 - 00:14:00.700

So he was basically using the same strategy we're using here. Dr. Byrd, he was doing "Doc Talk," he decided to lay out all of these documents.

00:14:00.700 - 00:14:10.950

And he says, "I believe you'll find that the court's opinion is thoughtful, thorough, and convincing." The only alteration that they've made to the text

00:14:10.950 - 00:14:27.350

is that selected passages have been italicized for particular emphasis because of their contribution to a clearer understanding of the opinion. So I'm gonna scroll down to a page of this pamphlet

00:14:27.350 - 00:14:38.060

that caught my eye. But again, if you wanna go to the website, you can download this particular document and you can read it for yourself.

00:14:38.060 - 00:14:56.960

A lot of the text of the appellate court's decision, as we saw in our webinar last semester, sides with the university in arguing that the trustees of the university had the power to implement

00:14:57.300 - 00:15:12.480

the provisions of the charter with some flexibility. The primary purpose of the charter argued the university was to create a first rate university. And so the lawyers for Rice had made the argument

00:15:12.480 - 00:15:27.870

that at this moment, it was not possible to realize the primary purpose of the charter without dropping the racial exclusion

00:15:27.870 - 00:15:41.460

and the provision that tuition had to be free. And so a lot of this text is the court explaining why they agree with that argument. But if we scroll down to page 18,

00:15:44.870 - 00:15:59.080

we find some some statements that fall closer into sort of our bailiwick then into that of the lawyers, because they start making arguments about history, and claims about the history

00:15:59.080 - 00:16:11.130

of the formation of the Rice Institute. They quote some letters that had been found in the university's archive, talking about the intentions of William Marsh Rice.

00:16:12.030 - 00:16:21.540

And they stress, as they would, given the legal arguments involved, that the purpose of William Marsh Rice was to create a great institution.

00:16:21.540 - 00:16:38.040

That that's what mattered most to him. He didn't really give specifics about that. He sort of left open to interpretation by the trustees, how they would implement the creation

00:16:38.040 - 00:16:48.150

of that great institution, but he didn't give a lot of specifics according to the lawyers in this case. And they cite Captain Baker

00:16:48.150 - 00:17:00.850

as the head of the Board of Trustees in 1907 inviting Edgar Odell Lovett to come be the president, and saying to him that the board had been given a very free hand

00:17:00.850 - 00:17:12.460

to determine what shape the institute would take. And they intended to give the president the same flexibility. But I want to zero in on page 18.

00:17:14.110 - 00:17:24.350

I think it's page 18, let me find here. A-ha. And it's one of these italicized sections. Remember that Hamilton said they were gonna italicize certain sections

00:17:24.350 - 00:17:32.700

for special emphasis in the pamphlet. And at the very bottom of page 18, here's one of those passages. It says, "While a reasonable construction

00:17:32.700 - 00:17:50.370

of the trust instruments requires the conclusion that the donor intended to benefit the white inhabitants of the City of Houston and State of Texas primarily, reason compels the further conclusion

00:17:50.370 - 00:18:08.590

that the instruction, benefits and enjoyments of the institute were not intended to benefit them solely." And then they go on to make an argument that this interpretation makes sense

00:18:08.590 - 00:18:21.010

because, "Expanded knowledge in the field of science in the nature of things cannot be excluded from a segment of our society." So they're sort of suggesting that even though Rice

00:18:21.010 - 00:18:33.850

in the charter had said this was gonna be for the white inhabitants of Houston in the State of Texas, reading it another way means that the work that would be done at that institute would benefit everyone

00:18:34.800 - 00:18:49.300

in society rather than only a portion of society. And they go on to say at the end of this paragraph, "We cannot say that the donor had a fixed purpose to establish a university

00:18:49.300 - 00:19:00.620

to which students would be admitted free, and from which Negroes would be excluded. It is equally clear, however, that the establishment of such an institution

00:19:00.620 - 00:19:12.210

was within the discretionary power of the trustees. Nevertheless, to consider the instrument in light of the conditions prevailing at the time it was executed, the fact of segregation

00:19:12.210 - 00:19:22.570

of the races cannot be ignored. In 1891 in the State of Texas, the segregation of races in public educational institutions was required by law,

00:19:22.570 - 00:19:31.440

and such segregation was the invariable custom in private institutions. As a practical matter at that time, a school was either a school for white children

00:19:31.440 - 00:19:42.400

or one for Negro children. Bearing in mind the expressed intent to instruct the white inhabitants of Texas, the trustees, when they established an educational institution

00:19:42.400 - 00:19:55.600

to which students were to be admitted, understood that Negro students were to be excluded without specific instructions to that effect." End quote.

00:19:58.180 - 00:20:10.910

What do you make of those paragraphs? I mean, there's clearly one that President Hamilton wanted to emphasize by italicizing the start of that paragraph. Well, it makes my head hurt just a little,

00:20:14.250 - 00:20:33.290

but it's also an argument that I don't mind following, even though... I think one way that I think about what I think about it is to, for a moment, imagine the trustees

00:20:33.630 - 00:20:56.210

taking the leeway that the lawyers argue that they had in the moment. And when I do that, when I imagine the trustees saying, "We know this is the practice in Texas.

00:20:56.210 - 00:21:18.210

But for this university to be great, we're going to have to apportion off a part of the endowment for the creation of some type of sister institute," right? Or, "We're going to have to admit non-white inhabitants

00:21:19.680 - 00:21:34.150

of the State of Texas under these special circumstances or in these particular schools or instances." And that seems, so I have two responses to that.

00:21:34.150 - 00:21:52.040

In one way, it seems far-fetched for these trustees, for these particular trustees. But then in the other sense, it isn't out of question

00:21:52.040 - 00:22:10.890

that people of their means could not have imagined that situation because examples of that existed in the time. That's a great point, and there's a way in which the lawyers arguing in the 1960s

00:22:10.890 - 00:22:19.470

that the trustees could change the charter, required them to say that, "The trustees had always had the power to change the charter."

00:22:19.470 - 00:22:35.910

That there was actually nothing about the indenture that required them, according to this line of argument, to exclude black students. That was just the choice that they had made.

00:22:37.030 - 00:22:48.480

And even without specific instruction, according to this page. So I do think that's kind of an interesting message that comes out of this decision.

00:22:49.870 - 00:23:04.300

I also think though, as a historian, you know, it raises some questions for me, there's a very lawyerly way of making this argument that interprets the sentence about white inhabitants,

00:23:04.300 - 00:23:19.280

for example, in a very semantically precise way, that because it said, "To benefit the white inhabitants," that the lawyers could say, "Well, therefore, that didn't necessarily mean that it was only open

00:23:19.280 - 00:23:30.080

to white inhabitants." That's just the construction that the trustees gave it. You know, as a historian, I think when you see that line in Texas in 1891,

00:23:31.990 - 00:23:51.330

it was very clear what that meant, right, in 1891. So the idea to me that there was not a specific instruction in the charter that black students were to be excluded, as a historian, it kind of strains credulity.

00:23:52.360 - 00:24:05.290

That was a pretty clear and specific instruction. But, you know, nonetheless, the fact that the lawyers are making this argument, the other question it raises for me is,

00:24:05.290 - 00:24:20.230

what does somebody who's receiving this message to Rice Alumni make of this argument? If you were an alumni and you got this pamphlet in the 1960s from Charles W. Hamilton,

00:24:20.230 - 00:24:33.510

the President of the Association of Rice Alumni, how do you think it might have shaped your understanding of what was going on, and maybe even your understanding of the history involved?

00:24:35.020 - 00:24:44.650

It kind of raises the question for me of, how do people know what they know about the founding of the Rice Institute and what are the documents or the sources

00:24:44.650 - 00:24:53.320

that have been most influential in shaping their understanding of the history of the Rice Institute? And arguably, this would be one of them.

00:24:53.320 - 00:25:05.630

If you got a message to all Rice Alumni that kind of lays out with italicized passages the history of the charter, this might have a pretty high level of influence

00:25:05.630 - 00:25:16.380

over the things that become settled fact about the history for you, you know, if you receive this pamphlet. They would also hold, right?

00:25:16.380 - 00:25:32.440

This is one of the things that the president of the ARA, a point he's making early in his introduction, is that we are a broad-minded and an intelligent community. This is why I'm laying these documents before you.

00:25:32.440 - 00:25:43.590

Right. And no doubt, there would have been members of this community who would have remembered that when students raised the question

00:25:43.590 - 00:25:58.840

of the desegregation of the university, that the administration of the university, and it's hard to imagine them being any more terse, right? Right. Responded that this

00:25:58.840 - 00:26:14.780

is not a question for discussion. It was determined long ago. And our job is just to carry out those instructions. So some of them would have had to carry both of those things

00:26:15.000 - 00:26:24.400

in their head at once. Right, right. And which is the, I wonder kind of just as a general question,

00:26:24.400 - 00:26:39.260

which of those has become the more prevalent understanding of the history of the university, before the charter trial now? You know, is it that most people think,

00:26:39.260 - 00:26:54.830

it was always possible for the trustees to have integrated and they chose not to or the administration's position from before pits or that there was not, their hands were tied?

00:26:56.140 - 00:27:04.210

The charter was the charter. I'm kind of curious. I mean, that's one of the things about documents is that you can see what the arguments that were being made.

00:27:04.210 - 00:27:19.210

You can see what was put out there, but it raises a whole host of questions of how that document was received and assimilated by the audience into its existing beliefs and set of assumptions

00:27:19.830 - 00:27:30.180

about the history. It's only one of many fascinating documents from this latest cache of charter trial records that's there on the library's website.

00:27:30.180 - 00:27:40.330

So I encourage our audience to go poke around and see if you find anything else that's of interest that you would wanna highlight for us or think might be useful for the task force.

00:27:42.780 - 00:27:55.960

That was a good time, Professor McDaniel. I appreciate that. And I think as I continue, I may be stuck. My mind may be stuck in the perspective

00:27:55.960 - 00:28:18.940

of an alumnus getting this in the 1960s and still trying to puzzle through. For a student, well, I imagine for liberal and call them, for folks who were for the desegregation of the university,

00:28:18.970 - 00:28:35.140

I imagine that they would have quite welcomed, right, this understanding of the university's founding that roots this possibility deep in time, right? Right, right.

00:28:35.140 - 00:28:42.650

It was there from the beginning. It could have been set aside at any time. It wasn't integral to the founder's vision. Yeah. You know,

00:28:42.650 - 00:28:56.730

that it was just kind of, it was incidental in a way that white was included. I mean, that's the argument that the lawyers had to make in order to succeed in this particular suit.

00:28:57.980 - 00:29:07.410

But I can see why if you favored the suit, you're right, that would be an appealing interpretation of the history. But I think the consequences,

00:29:07.410 - 00:29:17.080

it does make it seem as though integration is as easy as simply setting aside that word. Yeah, yeah. And we know it wasn't. Right.

00:29:17.080 - 00:29:31.580

And it isn't. Right, right. Well, I'm gonna talk some today about intellectual life at the university which is, this could be dangerous for two professors

00:29:31.580 - 00:29:45.480

to sit and chat about this, two folks who went to university and decided, I think I'll spend more time here, right, and build a career here.

00:29:45.480 - 00:30:01.440

So what professors think or tend to think about what is integral to university life can lean in certain directions. And so, I'm gonna ask you this question

00:30:01.440 - 00:30:17.090

which isn't a question that everyone has an answer to. And so I want you to think back to your time in college and in graduate school, about the lectures you attended, right?

00:30:17.090 - 00:30:29.210

Not the parties you went to or the dates you went on or the pranks, but the lectures, the lectures you attended. I'm glad that you would assume I went on dates.

00:30:29.210 - 00:30:41.060

So that's, you know. (laughs) Well, every, I mean, later in college, after having attended so many lectures, there may have been dates.

00:30:41.900 - 00:30:58.640

That's how it was for me. What lectures do you most remember, particularly from your time as an undergraduate, and would you consider any of them really consequential

00:31:00.960 - 00:31:17.760

or to add a little hyperbole, life changing? Well, you know, when you first asked the question about undergrad or grad school, my mind went to a lot of transformative lectures or seminars

00:31:18.380 - 00:31:30.430

in graduate school. You know, I went to Johns Hopkins University which is the home of the oldest graduate program in history in the country.

00:31:30.430 - 00:31:43.500

And there was a lot of traditions surrounding that with a weekly seminar held in the department where speakers from other universities would come, not speakers, I mean, this was what was different

00:31:43.500 - 00:31:53.880

about it is that they would bring works in progress. They would bring papers that would be pre circulated in advance. And then most of the seminar time

00:31:53.880 - 00:32:07.700

was not them presenting the paper, but them being grilled with questions from the department. But those were transformative experiences for me, partly because graduate students were also encouraged

00:32:07.700 - 00:32:21.070

to ask questions and read the papers and to think about the practice of history as one that is contested and always evolving

00:32:21.070 - 00:32:29.560

and needs that kind of peer review, and needs that sort of collaborative discussion. My mind also went to, I don't know, if this counts as a lecture,

00:32:29.560 - 00:32:42.700

but in graduate school, getting to see Herbie Hancock, one of my jazz heroes coming to Baltimore. And I remember he was, you know, pretty much- Brought by Hopkins?

00:32:44.780 - 00:32:53.060

That I can't, no, I don't think so. I don't think so. Probably, should have been, but I think he was performing,

00:32:53.980 - 00:33:04.700

it was in the orchestra hall. But a Hopkins friend of mine had tickets, worked there in the box office and got me some really good tickets,

00:33:04.700 - 00:33:16.930

like, 10 rows back from the stage, and I didn't realize when I went to the concert that afterwards he was gonna be out in the lobby giving autographs.

00:33:17.370 - 00:33:29.910

And I hadn't brought something with me 'cause I didn't know this. So I ran through the snow uphill, both ways, I believe, to my car in the parking garage to get a CD or something

00:33:29.910 - 00:33:44.040

that I could find that he could sign and made it back and got to talk with him actually. Show and tell. Oh, that's pretty good.

00:33:44.040 - 00:33:55.870

Dr. Caleb, Herbie Hancock. But the best part is he told me that I have a cool name. (Dr. Byrd laughs) And you know, if Herbie tells you that your name is cool,

00:33:57.160 - 00:34:08.870

anyway, so that stands out in my mind. But as an undergrad, you know, a lot of the lectures were lectures from professors in classes and that I had professors come

00:34:08.870 - 00:34:24.640

to mind as people who really had an influence on me. But I do recall, I think it was in my first semester as an undergrad, Helmut Kohl came to speak on campus. I think most of our audience will recognize that name,

00:34:24.640 - 00:34:33.170

maybe, a lot of our students wouldn't, but of course here on the Rice University campus, we have next to the Baker Institute, a piece of the Berlin Wall

00:34:34.410 - 00:34:46.330

and Helmut Kohl was the Chancellor of West Germany at the time that the wall fell and then the Chancellor of the United Germany. So these were huge political events that were happening.

00:34:47.220 - 00:34:59.240

And I just remember going to that, being impressed that I could go to a lecture with someone of that kind of eminence and significance in world events coming to speak

00:34:59.240 - 00:35:22.110

and give his perspective on things. It's interesting that your most vivid memories of at least lecture life, right, on campus take place after you've made some decisions around

00:35:22.110 - 00:35:37.770

what you thought your life was gonna look like and in terms of a career. And so it's at Hopkins that the lecture or the seminar takes a greater significance.

00:35:37.770 - 00:35:57.300

And when I look back on my undergraduate career, it's mostly the same way, right? I remember thinking that attending a lecture and staying awake was a skill that one had to master, right?

00:35:58.000 - 00:36:15.800

Because some of my, like, I wanted to be a person who could go to lectures, right? (chuckles) But I had such a hard time staying awake in them sometimes, but I do remember one lecture, lecture in air quotes,

00:36:17.200 - 00:36:25.960

because it was a screening with the Q&A afterward, a heated Q&A, I might add. It happened my senior year,

00:36:25.960 - 00:36:45.110

Spike Lee came to Rice to screen, "Do the Right Thing," to pre-screen before it was out. And that was a phenomenal experience. I mean, I just spent a little time rereading bits of that

00:36:46.700 - 00:37:01.570

and was transported back, right? And I raised the question and folks in the audience, if you will, go ahead and populate the chat with lectures from your undergraduate life

00:37:01.570 - 00:37:22.380

or other parts of your education that you found significant because that's what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about a movement of black students on campus to shape intellectual life on the campus.

00:37:23.360 - 00:37:39.240

And some of the questions that this investigation raises is, who are lectures for on campus? I mean, where outside lectures, who are they for and what do they represent, right?

00:37:42.080 - 00:38:00.820

Are they important, right, and how? And so the document that I want to share with us today, and I mostly have one document, I promise. I mostly have one document, though we may look at a few.

00:38:00.820 - 00:38:11.030

Uh-oh. (exhales) Okay, it's my document there, for a minute only my recordings. I wanna share this document from January 17th, 1974.

00:38:13.370 - 00:38:33.210

And it's from Professor Frederick Racine who is a world renowned chemist, who spent the latter part of his career back at Rice, and also doing some administrative work at the university.

00:38:33.210 - 00:38:51.690

And in January 17th of 1974, he finds himself writing Gloria Guilford, who's the chairman of the Black Students Union. And he's replying to a letter that Miss Guilford gave him

00:38:53.250 - 00:39:07.840

on December 12th which is, it's a little late, right? He's making me feel better about some of my emails. So it's a little late.

00:39:09.790 - 00:39:30.020

He begs her pardon for being so late to write her back. And then he goes into addressing a desire that she made in the letter on behalf of the black students. And basically, what had happened is Rossini chaired

00:39:30.020 - 00:39:45.790

what would later come to be known as the President's Lecture Series. And Miss Guilford, on behalf of the BSU, made a list of recommendations

00:39:45.790 - 00:40:04.680

for folks to be included in this most prestigious series of university lectures. And so Rossini, after his trip from back East, so did back East used to have the same connotation

00:40:04.680 - 00:40:13.750

as overseas, right? I've returned from my trip overseas where I had no access to typewriters or stamps or anything of that sort

00:40:16.200 - 00:40:29.460

East is Baton Rouge, right? I guess. I mean, well, what's wild is, I feel like Rossini begins his career in Pittsburgh, and I'm hoping that he was further east than there,

00:40:29.460 - 00:40:40.870

but he gets back to where he can communicate with Miss Guilford. And he goes into a history of the University Committee on public lectures.

00:40:40.870 - 00:40:58.310

Well, the first point he tries to make is that the University Committee first met on October 29th. And we began the work for the next season. And the point he's trying to make here is,

00:40:58.310 - 00:41:13.940

I didn't get your letter until December 12th. And I want you to know that by the time I got your letter, we were deep into the hard work of choosing people for the lecture series.

00:41:13.940 - 00:41:24.880

So in a not oblique enough way, but in a way that maybe he thought was oblique, he says, "As you see, the Chairman of the Committee needs to have suggestions

00:41:24.880 - 00:41:34.010

by about the middle of October, in order to prepare them for consideration by the entire committee." So I guess that's his way of saying next year,

00:41:34.010 - 00:41:43.210

get me this stuff earlier. But you'll see later that I'm not sure there was actually any need for him to include that sentence,

00:41:43.210 - 00:41:53.820

because it begins to raise the question. The question begins to be raised later is, what counts, what would count, what kind of people would count for consideration

00:41:53.820 - 00:42:11.370

by the university lecture committee? And he then goes on to give some of the criteria that the committee keeps in mind when it's doing this. One, it needs to be a high visibility.

00:42:11.370 - 00:42:21.990

The second one, I wanna outline, or I've highlighted here is that, "The lecturer should talk on a subject that is of interest to more than one segment

00:42:21.990 - 00:42:34.760

of the community of Rice University." I'm hoping that was one that existed long before Miss Guilford wrote her letter, have to do more research to figure out

00:42:34.760 - 00:42:45.460

if this, it's a university committee, so if it operates as university committees do today, it will have a charge that will lay out, hopefully, that would lay out these criteria.

00:42:45.460 - 00:42:55.610

And I hope this one's there because if it's not there, then we'll need to come back and reconsider this point too.

00:42:55.610 - 00:43:07.110

It goes on with some other points, but mainly trying to focus on the academic nature of these talks. And then he indicates that,

00:43:07.110 - 00:43:21.760

"I have gone over with President Hackerman your list. And we have concluded that none of them would fit into the series of university lectures as I have described them above.

00:43:21.760 - 00:43:34.790

But you should feel free to find other ways to bring them to the university." I should have pointed out that Professor Rossini also gave some examples of people

00:43:34.990 - 00:43:48.740

that they were inviting in the coming year as folks of the kind of stature and focus that the BSU should perhaps keep in mind when they produce a list in the future.

00:43:48.740 - 00:44:03.710

So there's Nancy Hanks. I've got a picture of them for you here. There's Nancy Hanks, Alvin Weinberg in nuclear energy. Fred Hoyle, who I think gives us the term big bang,

00:44:03.710 - 00:44:22.210

though I don't know that he meant it positively. Alan Whiting, who is a political science professor, but also someone in foreign affairs, J.H. Billington, who will be excited that Rossini put down

00:44:22.210 - 00:44:35.430

as an example of someone coming to speak from literature, which I like 'cause he was a historian. And I know we like to think ourselves as great pro-stylists as well.

00:44:35.430 - 00:44:46.480

Buckminster Fuller, who if you don't know that name, they take your Rice card away. Like you don't have to know who the person is, but you do have to know the word,

00:44:46.480 - 00:44:58.840

and he's a futurist, but an architect. And so those were the folks that Rossini gives an example of the folks who wants to hear from.

00:45:00.270 - 00:45:23.470

Guilford, I should say, was elected in 1973 with a spate of officers of all women who come into the BSU. And so the coming year, all of the officers are women, and they have a very ambitious program of putting the BSU

00:45:23.470 - 00:45:37.360

on as firm a standing as they can financially, but also programmatically across the university. Some of the interesting debates that Guilford will be involved in during the year

00:45:37.360 - 00:45:50.960

is debating over the coveted Xerox money that is produced at the library. And whether that money should go to the BSU to support the BSU or to (indistinct)

00:45:50.960 - 00:46:04.010

to support its operations. A debate with the college magisters also over finances with the BSU making the argument that the colleges should remit $15

00:46:04.010 - 00:46:15.980

out of the $20 student fee that each member of the college pays, should remit 15 of those dollars back to the BSU. But here during this part of her program,

00:46:15.980 - 00:46:30.620

she's laying in front Professor Rossini, the names of the folks here that the BSU would like the committee to consider.

00:46:30.620 - 00:46:44.520

And so I'll just leave that there for a little while for the audience to take a look at. I liked this list, Dr. McDaniel, this is a good list.

00:46:48.770 - 00:47:05.480

I agree. It's national in scope, but also some important local people as well, folks who will definitely come to be known

00:47:05.480 - 00:47:19.890

as important scholars, if they are not known in the mid-1970s as yet, more people of a political or cultural bent that anything else.

00:47:19.890 - 00:47:36.590

When you think about the President's Lecture Series as it has evolved, which one of these folks, two questions, for you and the folks in the audience. Which, I'm sorry Dr. McDaniel,

00:47:36.590 - 00:47:46.650

I always ask you a one and that's not a right answer. I know I'm not gonna get an answer if I asked you for one, but if you give me a handful or two or three of these folks

00:47:46.650 - 00:48:07.150

who you think would be especially good candidates for the lecture series as it has evolved. Well, I noticed Reverend William Lawson's name who now has a grove here on campus named in his honor.

00:48:07.280 - 00:48:23.940

I think Jesse Jackson and Barbara Jordan, Julian Bond, would definitely be, I mean, those would be candidates for commencement speakers even, I think, today. I noticed Angela Davis' name,

00:48:23.940 - 00:48:35.330

you know, a very prominent scholar. And so, yeah, I see a lot on here that I think would fit in to the vision of the lecture series as it exists today.

00:48:36.500 - 00:48:48.240

There is not a year that goes by that I don't try and teach some Nikki Giovanni. It doesn't matter which course I am teaching, I will insert some Nikki Giovanni.

00:48:48.240 - 00:49:04.210

So I was very excited to see her at the top of the list. I'm sorry, the Q&A is lighting up, but I can't get to it,

00:49:04.210 - 00:49:17.520

but I wanna close down about three minutes and then I'll reopen it. So, some of the questions that this document raised from me is that,

00:49:19.920 - 00:49:40.230

given the distance between the ways that Rossini imagined what a university lecture of the highest stature should look like in the mid-1970s and the ways in which black students imagined it

00:49:40.230 - 00:49:55.120

in the mid-1970s, one of my questions is, if this is a game where someone's got to win or get more points, like whose vision has prevailed, right,

00:49:55.120 - 00:50:11.470

is one question that I have. And I think the vision presented by the BSU has gained significant in its stature over that time.

00:50:11.470 - 00:50:24.470

It's a more and more accepted position. And so one of the things I've begun to do is to see what is the history of some of these speakers at the university.

00:50:26.200 - 00:50:41.540

So, has Barbara Jordan been a major speaker at the university from 1974 to the present? Has Nikki Giovanni or Angela Davis, have they been invited as well?

00:50:41.540 - 00:50:55.310

Roy Innis, et cetera, et cetera. We do know that Reverend Lawson was featured in the document of last week. So it was not uncommon for him to find his way on campus.

00:50:56.590 - 00:51:08.260

Dick Gregory is gonna be someone, well, you've already looked at the list and you've already pegged most of the people of having a broad vision, right?

00:51:08.260 - 00:51:23.190

We call out names, they'll know who they are. And so Dick Gregory actually, though never invited by University Committee, actually, and spent some time invited

00:51:23.190 - 00:51:41.210

by the Rice Program Council and other folks on campus in some of the larger venues on campus, so he was not unknown on campus. Barbara Jordan's history at the university

00:51:41.210 - 00:52:00.590

actually begins with her first foray into politics after losing her first election, first statewide election in Texas. She actually had been invited in 1963 to speak on campus

00:52:01.670 - 00:52:21.600

by the young Democrats and had come later in 1965 to address a larger group on campus. James Foreman isn't mentioned in the letter

00:52:21.630 - 00:52:35.750

that came from Miss Guilford, but in the story about James Foreman speaking in the Will Rice Commons, Julian Bond is given,

00:52:35.750 - 00:52:48.980

not quite props, but is made an example of. One of the things that I find interesting in the way the thresher treats SNCC and Foreman and Bond is the change

00:52:48.980 - 00:53:06.880

in the treatment over time. So we see when he's first mentioned, the story speaks more to kind of the radicalism and the socialist tinge around SNCC,

00:53:08.770 - 00:53:31.120

whereas when Bond actually arise on campus much later, he's taken on more as a kind of conservative tinge as well. Angela Davis does show up at the university much later in the year 2000.

00:53:34.810 - 00:53:52.400

But so far, even though a lot of the names on the BSU's lists are the names of people that we would associate with the President's Lecture Series, those aren't the venues, right,

00:53:52.400 - 00:54:08.780

by which the people on that very list have often found themselves at the university, even though the idea about what counts as this work, I think, has infiltrated to all the parts of the university.

00:54:15.360 - 00:54:24.710

Yeah, I mean, it kind of raises the question too of when the college brought speakers, how was that funded as supposed to how the President's Lecture Series

00:54:24.710 - 00:54:38.290

was funded and publicized? You know, you wonder whether the larger Houston community was invited to lectures of different kinds, and how easy it would have been to attend lectures

00:54:38.290 - 00:54:56.400

in different series or publicized in different ways. Well, I can't speak to the ways that the colleges got involved, the specific ways. But they are carrying a good deal of the weight

00:54:56.400 - 00:55:12.450

when it comes to organizing the speakers around racial justice issues in the 1960s and 1970s, often pairing with a group that people were a member from earlier presentations.

00:55:13.810 - 00:55:30.760

The Rice Forum, which was a part of the Rice program, the RPC, that this combination of the college government, or at least parts of the college, and the RPC and particularly the Rice Forum,

00:55:30.760 - 00:55:45.910

is a pretty potent conversation combination when it comes to bringing speakers like Julian Bond, like Dick Gregory and others to the campus. The RPC are the folks

00:55:45.910 - 00:56:00.700

who bring Lightnin' Hopkins of course as well. That was fascinating. And I think, it sparks a lot of lines of reflection. I think we have a couple of questions in the Q&A

00:56:00.700 - 00:56:17.290

or comments in the Q&A. They look more like comments talking about that the BSA did eventually bring Reverend Lawson to campus, and also someone who remembers Dr. Madissel,

00:56:18.410 - 00:56:35.390

chatting and talking about a professor at Texas A&I in South Texas, who would have loved to teach at Rice, and commenting to the student about his sense of humor.

00:56:36.600 - 00:56:48.600

So thank you for those comments. I think those are really helpful and insightful. We wanna thank everybody for joining us for another "Doc Talk."

00:56:48.600 - 00:56:57.180

We hope that you'll be back with us. We're hoping to bring some guests, speaking of guest speakers today, Dr. Byrd, onto our "Doc Talks" in incoming weeks,

00:56:57.180 - 00:57:09.120

so that you can hear from some other voices as well. Please, speaking of guests lectures, don't miss Wednesday's event. It's gonna be I think a wonderful panel,

00:57:09.120 - 00:57:20.340

and you can attend to by Zoom. Hope you have a great weekend. It's gonna be a fabulous weekend. All right, I like that. All of us hold on.

00:57:20.340 - 00:57:23.200

Okay. All right, I'll see you, prof. See you later.