00:00:30.320 - 00:00:37.600

That's the McDaniel. Dr. Byrd, how are you today? I think I'm okay. How about you?

00:00:37.600 - 00:00:50.900

I'm good although I'm realizing there are parts of Zoom that I have yet to master. When I set up this webinar, I didn't check a box that said,

00:00:50.900 - 00:00:59.130

"Enable practice session" because I didn't know what that meant and now I know what that means. I think you knew what it meant,

00:00:59.130 - 00:01:08.780

you just forgot what it meant. Maybe so well, when I started the webinar, we were automatically live about 10 minutes early. So I apologize to the attendees

00:01:08.780 - 00:01:21.480

who may have arrived a little early and have been waiting for us to get started. But we're both here now and it's noon so, we want to welcome everyone to

00:01:21.480 - 00:01:32.720

the first of our 2021 Doc Talks for the Task Force on Slavery, Segregation and Racial Injustice. We've missed you all over the winter break

00:01:33.700 - 00:01:43.810

but we are looking forward to resuming another series of these webinars every single Friday at noon central. And we're going to be

00:01:43.810 - 00:01:56.580

talking about documents that researchers with the task force have been grappling with learning about trying to put together with other documents and we're hoping that you get a little bit

00:01:56.580 - 00:02:06.450

of an insight into how historians think about documents and their relationship to the present. And if you weren't able to make it to our Doc Talks in the fall,

00:02:06.450 - 00:02:18.270

never fear we have a wonderful team of undergraduate media fellows working together with Kate Coley from the association of rice, alumni and alumni relations

00:02:18.270 - 00:02:31.330

to produce a podcast that you can find on our website at taskforce.rice.edu. And these podcast episodes are recordings of past webinars. So you can catch up with what you may have missed

00:02:31.330 - 00:02:43.500

in the fall. We're going to continue to release those episodes until we have all 11, I think it. was 11 or 12 that we did last fall.

00:02:43.500 - 00:02:54.810

I think there are about six already on the website. And we hope to add to that list with our recordings this spring. So, thank you for joining us.

00:02:54.810 - 00:03:01.870

Did I forget anything? You did not. I think this was perfect. I did have a question,

00:03:01.870 - 00:03:14.490

when you said we would be doing this every Friday, what about on "Sprinkle" Days? What if a Friday happens on a "Sprinkle" Day? That's a complication.

00:03:14.490 - 00:03:24.980

That's kind of one of those neologisms that later historians will never find a reference to a sprinkle day prior to late fall 2020.

00:03:24.980 - 00:03:30.110

So I haven't thought- But then they will find many. Yes. So I don't think, they will have any trouble

00:03:30.960 - 00:03:38.800

figuring out what it means. We'll figure that out. We'll figure that out and we'll make sure to make you aware

00:03:38.800 - 00:03:51.850

the week before and on our webpage. But yeah, so let's go ahead and dive right in to talking about some docs. I'm ready, or I'm mostly ready.

00:03:51.850 - 00:03:57.750

Now that I've said that I realized that I'm not recording myself and I remember that last, Oh yeah. Semester,

00:03:57.750 - 00:04:05.810

we decided we were gonna double record. So I've messed that up. I can't do that now 'cause I'm talking. That's okay.

00:04:05.810 - 00:04:16.080

We'll do it next week, we'll do the next time. You'll have yours and let's get going. I'm gonna share my screen. It's African American History Month,

00:04:16.210 - 00:04:25.200

right? And so, what I want to talk about is African American History Month.

00:04:25.200 - 00:04:37.300

If I can get everything going. Please give me a thumbs up if you see Carter G. Woodson. If you don't know who Carter G. Woodson is, if you just see a person,

00:04:37.300 - 00:04:51.620

that's what's going on. So of course, February is African American History Month. It began as a week long observance in the

00:04:52.570 - 00:05:04.640

late 1920s, organized by Dr. Carter G. Woodson and his Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. And here is a photograph of him

00:05:04.640 - 00:05:16.900

with the Negro history bulletin. I imagine this photo comes from the ASNLH has offices in D.C. but I am not entirely sure.

00:05:17.750 - 00:05:28.420

African American History Week became a federally designated month within many of our lifetimes in 1976.

00:05:30.350 - 00:05:42.550

So you can guess who signed that into law. It is still a project that Dr. Woodson's organization, the now renamed

00:05:42.550 - 00:05:54.420

Association for the Study of African-American Life and History Runs and the theme for this year, you need to know the theme, is "The Black Family:

00:05:54.420 - 00:06:12.950

Representation, Identity, and Diversity." We've got a series of events at Rice that I want to call to y'all's attention but also the association has a series of events.

00:06:12.950 - 00:06:24.070

So, you know what we didn't remind people watch the webinar with your phone and your camera so you can get the QR codes Only for Dr. Byrd's part

00:06:24.070 - 00:06:33.400

because I'm not that sophisticated. But he usually will have some QR codes for you. I've got three QR codes this week. So, if you miss these two

00:06:34.810 - 00:06:46.160

you'll get the third one. But Dr. McDaniel is on this list of events, Dr. Yarbrough and the History Department is on this list. She had a great event last night.

00:06:47.610 - 00:07:00.420

But now, let's talk about Negro History Week, or African American History Month in the context of Rice University.

00:07:00.420 - 00:07:12.810

And what I wanted to do this week is to explore African American history in the mind of Rice, right?

00:07:12.810 - 00:07:23.030

And one of the ways to do that, one of the ways we often do it here, is looking through the publications, the official publications of the university.

00:07:23.030 - 00:07:35.710

And so, what I wanna do now is a low exercise. And I don't know, well, I'm gonna have to do it with you Dr. McDaniel, 'cause I don't wanna run through.

00:07:35.710 - 00:07:46.890

I've got to relearn webinar and I don't wanna find the chat for anything or anything like that and mess anything up. And so the exercise I wanna do,

00:07:46.890 - 00:07:59.370

is I wanna take some prominent African Americans, or prominent events in African American history, and we want to use the resources of the

00:07:59.370 - 00:08:16.820

University of North Texas and the Texas history portal, and I wanna go through and see how and where some of these prominent events pop up in the Rice Thresher.

00:08:17.840 - 00:08:32.380

And I wanna do it today focusing on the pier before African American students come to Rice. Now, if we were doing this in class, we'd do it a mean way,

00:08:32.380 - 00:08:42.270

and we'd have not me, never mean in class. We'd have people guess who these folks are, but we're beyond guessing and so their names are right there.

00:08:42.270 - 00:08:56.890

So what I have here are three prominent African American intellectuals from the late 19th century, early 20th century, Anna Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells

00:08:56.890 - 00:09:08.740

and W. E. B. Du Bois. Now here comes to the exercise part and you can play this at home while I'm gonna play it with my colleague, Dr. McDaniel.

00:09:09.700 - 00:09:28.940

All right so let's, start with Anna Julia Cooper. And the question is and it's gonna start as a guess, right? Is, does Anna Julia Cooper show up in the Thresher in her lifetime?

00:09:30.070 - 00:09:43.500

All right, so that's the thing gets a little tricky there, right? So she lives a good long time, 1858 to 1964. So what, are you?...

00:09:43.500 - 00:09:58.640

Anna Julia Cooper, I should tell people was an educator and spent a good deal of time in and around Washington D.C. teaching in the D.C. public schools

00:09:58.640 - 00:10:10.070

for a while, but I'm also an early black feminist wrote a prominent collection of essays published around the same time

00:10:10.070 - 00:10:20.970

as the souls of black folk called "Voice from the South." And so, now for your guess, professor.

00:10:22.070 - 00:10:35.990

I'm going to guess, no. Okay, we'll get some time for people to play at home and the answer is indeed, no. Anna Julia Cooper does not

00:10:35.990 - 00:10:48.420

show up in the Thresher in her lifetime. But then to tell you the truth, as far as I can tell in at all, right? So hasn't shown up yet at all.

00:10:48.420 - 00:10:59.800

So that's something maybe we need to rectify, maybe not. Well, let's go on to W. E. B. Du Bois. What do you think? Lives longer,

00:11:00.940 - 00:11:12.940

1868 to 1963. Does W. E. B. Du Bois show up in the Thresher during his lifetime? This is a little tougher one, I think.

00:11:12.940 - 00:11:20.660

This is getting trickier. I'll buy, I'm gonna say, yes. You gonna say yes, Yeah. okay.

00:11:20.660 - 00:11:32.470

And I'm not gonna answer yet 'cause we're gonna change the game midstream. Ida B. Wells Barnett, also a contemporary of Du Bois,

00:11:32.470 - 00:11:51.170

a crusading anti, lynching journalists, and also quite prominent in urban reform movements when she moves to Chicago, after she leaves her hometown of Memphis.

00:11:52.780 - 00:12:04.340

So say yes for W. E. B. Du Bois, what do you say for Ida B. Wells? There, I'm gonna have to go back to no. That's my guess.

00:12:06.640 - 00:12:20.890

So, here we go. The answer for both of them is no. Yeah. So Du Bois first makes an appearance

00:12:20.890 - 00:12:39.620

in the Thresher in 1975, not until 1975. And Wells, shows up in 1993. Du Bois. in a letter

00:12:40.860 - 00:12:52.330

to the editor he's mentioned there. Let's go a little faster with this one. I think I have a feeling I felt the same way. I'm just guessing how you felt about those answers.

00:12:52.330 - 00:13:01.330

And I felt similarly, the way I'm guessing you felt. And so I thought, you know what? I'm gonna try a different approach.

00:13:02.210 - 00:13:17.150

And the approach now is American sport and culture and what we have here is Althea Gibson. We have also the basketball team

00:13:17.150 - 00:13:29.870

of Texas Western University, Texas Western is now UTEP And then also a photograph of the Brown bomber, Joe Lewis.

00:13:31.670 - 00:13:43.730

Do you wanna say anything that comes to mind for when you see these photographs before we do the exercise, Dr. McDaniel? What I noticed about

00:13:43.730 - 00:13:57.610

the basketball photo is an integrated team. And of course, I know about Joe Lewis just as a historian of the period that this was much more than a boxer,

00:13:57.610 - 00:14:08.220

or just about a boxing match but it was very much about the promise of integration. Joe Lewis ultimately joined the armed forces

00:14:08.220 - 00:14:21.320

and I know was a big part of the efforts during World War II the federal government to portray American democracy as inclusive and integrated, even though

00:14:21.320 - 00:14:42.540

the very armed forces that Lewis joined remained segregated. And then we have Althea Gibson who is the first black woman to win what we now call the Grand Slam championship in tennis.

00:14:42.820 - 00:14:55.070

She wins French Championship in 1956. It turns out she's just getting warmed up because the next year she takes two more Grand Slams.

00:14:55.990 - 00:15:09.520

The tournament that we now know of as the U.S. Open and also the big one, I won't even name the big one. The Wimbledon, she also takes Wimbledon.

00:15:11.920 - 00:15:26.060

So Texas Western is really important because it's that integrated team. But also if you count very carefully you can also see that they have enough...

00:15:26.060 - 00:15:39.930

The team is integrated in such a way that if they wanted to they could start five black players. If they wanted to, if the coach was so moved. And in 1965, 1966, the coach was so moved

00:15:40.850 - 00:15:55.690

and so he does start those five black players. And so Texas Western is prominent, comes up a good deal in African American History Month because it's the first team to win the

00:15:55.690 - 00:16:07.890

National Collegiate Basketball Championship through the efforts of five black starters. Which one are you feeling the most confident about Dr. McDaniel?

00:16:07.890 - 00:16:16.160

When we can start, we'll start with that one. Which one appears in the Thresher? Yeah. I'm gonna go with the basketball team

00:16:17.210 - 00:16:24.230

Going with the basketball team. I'm not gonna ask you why, I think I know why, right? Surely.

00:16:25.390 - 00:16:38.020

That's my guess, yah. Well, it's late enough, right? It's at the tail end of the years here. And so,

00:16:38.020 - 00:16:49.220

I could imagine Joe Lewis, that's my second guess. Okay. But you're not feeling very confident about Althea Gibson. I'm not really confident about any of these guesses,

00:16:49.220 - 00:17:00.450

but yes. You know what? I think my search skills must've failed me in some way because there is no possible way,

00:17:00.450 - 00:17:17.960

right? That Texas Western does not show up in the Rice Thresher in 1966 but I can find him.

00:17:22.030 - 00:17:35.610

They do show up later when the coach of Texas Western during that year retires. So it does show up then. Joe Lewis

00:17:37.380 - 00:17:54.230

is champion from the late 1920s until the late 1940s. He doesn't show up when he's champion but he does show up very close thereafter.

00:17:54.310 - 00:18:10.590

It's in the Thresher in 1950. And I feel okay about it that. He shows up in a speech given by the President of Texas

00:18:11.740 - 00:18:25.260

State University for Negros who was speaking at Rice in 1950 about black education in the South

00:18:25.260 - 00:18:40.870

and he mentions Joe Lewis. Althea Gibson doesn't show up in her prime when she is winning on the French championship or Wimbledon

00:18:40.870 - 00:18:52.480

or what becomes the U.S. Open. But she does show up as a reference in a story about the Houston Oilers in the mid 1990s.

00:18:55.290 - 00:19:07.600

So not really a story about Gibson but, Gibson makes the argument she has a quote that says, "In sports it's what you do that matters,

00:19:07.600 - 00:19:21.980

not kind of who you are, or what you look like, or what you don't do." And the writer makes use of Gibson's words in a story about why the Oilers can't win.

00:19:23.370 - 00:19:42.130

So it's an odd, it's an odd one. So, one of the most prominent pieces of Houston history that is also a part of the nation's history

00:19:42.130 - 00:19:58.670

is the Camp Logan Riots of 1917 and Camp Logan is now what many of us Houstonian call Memorial Park though some people who live

00:19:58.670 - 00:20:13.520

in and around the vicinity of Memorial Park may describe their neighborhood as Camp Logan. But the Camp Logan riots were referred to

00:20:13.780 - 00:20:34.260

a mutiny of the black 24th infantry regiment, who responding to brutality and mistreatment toward black soldiers but also toward black Houstonians in what's now

00:20:34.260 - 00:20:54.080

the fourth ward section of the city. A mutiny or riot in response to that. The right lasts a day, 11 civilians are killed. Eventually

00:20:54.080 - 00:21:07.700

five soldiers also lose their lives and so do a handful of police officers. In the aftermath of the riot,

00:21:09.090 - 00:21:32.380

more than 150 members of the 24th infantry regiment are tried, are court-martialed for their behavior. A little more than 10 of them are eventually executed hanged

00:21:34.180 - 00:21:49.740

and about 40 hefty sentences. So this is... If you're in Houston in the fall of 1917 I can't imagine that there are bigger events,

00:21:50.610 - 00:22:05.010

right? That go on in and around there. Let's just skip Camp Logan. This one, I don't have to guess

00:22:05.010 - 00:22:17.230

because I've looked on my phone and there is no mention that I've been able to find in the Thresher about it. There are some which is especially interesting

00:22:17.230 - 00:22:31.010

because it's a period in Rice Institute history where there's a lot of discussion about military mobilization and students joining the war effort and Rice Institute kind of

00:22:31.010 - 00:22:43.440

recasting itself for those war preparedness activities. And there are even some, if you look in the company late from these years, there are cartoons and references to

00:22:44.460 - 00:23:02.870

football games being played between Rice students and and soldiers stationed at Camp Logan and drawings, some of them racialized of laundry women who were working at Camp Logan,

00:23:02.870 - 00:23:13.130

of soldiers who were stationed there. And so the fact that it doesn't show up in the Thresher, I think is especially interesting and notable. Yeah.

00:23:13.130 - 00:23:25.890

Especially given the nature of those interactions, right? It's almost as if, I mean, I don't wanna overstate the regularity of interactions

00:23:25.890 - 00:23:39.120

but the basketball games, for example, that are going on just seem to suggest a kind of regularity and I'm not using this word right,

00:23:39.120 - 00:23:53.050

no I'll take it back later, but a kind of regularity and intimacy that this place exists in the imagination exists quite proud of dominantly in the imagination

00:23:53.050 - 00:24:12.810

of Rice students of the period and for this riot not to show up or this event, right? Not to show up anywhere in the Thresher begs questions. And let's beg those questions now.

00:24:12.810 - 00:24:26.810

I'm gonna take about five more minutes. I think if I'm doing the clock right. So what is the significance of all of this absence? Right?

00:24:26.810 - 00:24:41.040

So the one place, I mean, so maybe the significance is I choose poorly, right? Is that I haven't chosen the right exemplars of African American History

00:24:41.040 - 00:25:01.040

to make this make this inquiry, so there's that. The other question is whether the Thresher is a place that given its audience and given its focus, right?

00:25:01.040 - 00:25:20.260

Is the kind of place where we shouldn't conclude too much from these absences, right? I think that's a question, not a statement. Do these absences necessarily say anything about

00:25:20.260 - 00:25:32.600

student awareness and what do I need to do, or what would we need to do next in order to have a kind of comparative sense? Right?

00:25:32.600 - 00:25:44.810

That's a question I'm gonna answer, right? What do these things look like in the local Houston paper? Are students more liable to get their news from

00:25:44.810 - 00:26:00.630

the local paper as opposed to a weekly or a biweekly student paper? And have things, here's the other question, right? Have things necessarily changed that much.

00:26:00.630 - 00:26:12.320

And i asked that question to see if we would draw similar conclusions today, right? So if I look for instances of judge Hidalgo in the current

00:26:13.240 - 00:26:29.160

Rice Thresher or Mayor Turner in the current Rice Thresher, and I don't find them, should I draw conclusions about the larger student body from there?

00:26:29.160 - 00:26:41.530

I'd be hesitant. I think in that instance, I'd be hesitant to, and it may help me want to be hesitant here as well.

00:26:41.530 - 00:26:50.740

What's on your prof? Well, I think you're what you're getting out there is the need to not treat the Thresher itself

00:26:51.950 - 00:27:05.170

as an unchanging thing over time. But as as a publication that might've had different priorities or different functions at different moments in Rice history.

00:27:05.170 - 00:27:14.920

So you'd have to see you've called it our attention to the things that the Thresher isn't talking about but you'd have to see what it is talking about

00:27:14.920 - 00:27:32.330

in order to judge the significance of those absences. So that's one thing that comes to my mind, but I also think to me the silence is significant and I was at a presentation earlier this week

00:27:32.330 - 00:27:44.780

in the history department about a group of Fondren researchers and students who are working with our colleague Professor Yarbrough on and I think also Professor Walla Gora Davis on

00:27:44.780 - 00:27:55.360

digitizing and mapping and explaining something called the Red Book the Houston Red Book, which is a directory, a scrapbook about

00:27:55.360 - 00:28:07.850

Houston's African-American community from the early 20th century around the same time as this photo that we were looking at now, the Camp Logan Mutiny.

00:28:08.730 - 00:28:21.600

And when you look at the pictures from that book, it's a reminder of how dynamic and expanding and diverse the African American community in Houston was

00:28:22.600 - 00:28:35.410

in the early years of the Rice Institute. And that's really important to understand, we can sometimes get so much inside the hedges that we narrate the history as one of

00:28:38.080 - 00:28:47.890

the absence of black students at Rice followed by integration. And can you lie the fact that it's not as though

00:28:47.890 - 00:28:57.260

black Houstonians weren't there during the period of segregation on the other side of the hedges they were. And as you pointed out inside the hedges with the

00:28:57.260 - 00:29:10.110

DSU president coming in to give a talk. And so, I think what you're calling attention to is all of these figures and events that are very much happening, and very much present

00:29:10.110 - 00:29:20.690

at the time and yet not being noticed or included or be included maybe in a way that diminishes their significance, that's the other thing that

00:29:20.690 - 00:29:30.310

I was thinking about is the various kinds of silence in the archive. You can silence with total absence, which is what you've been focusing on but

00:29:31.540 - 00:29:45.870

when Althea Gibson enters the record only in a quote about the Houston Oilers, or when W. E. B. Du Bois enters only as a letter to the editor instead of in the main text

00:29:45.870 - 00:29:57.280

of a writer, those are maybe not complete absence or complete silence but they marginalized nonetheless and don't center

00:29:58.320 - 00:30:13.730

their achievements or their significance in the way, I think that if we were talking about them today, we would find more appropriate. Yeah, I would hope and that you would...

00:30:16.240 - 00:30:26.840

I'm not gonna go down that road, I started a thought, I'm gonna stop it. I'm gonna take just three more minutes if you let me because

00:30:26.840 - 00:30:41.390

I spent a week not finding anything. But you found something. (upbeat guitar music) But then found something

00:30:41.390 - 00:30:51.050

and probably this is too much blues, we should stop. Let it play. We'll play about 30 seconds of it. I won't sing it.

00:30:51.050 - 00:31:20.250

♪ Yeah know it ain't the one thing ♪ ♪ you notice black man he did was wrong ♪ ♪ Yeah know it ain't but one thing ♪ If I paced myself better we deserve to hear

00:31:20.250 - 00:31:31.970

at least two minutes of that. So I decided that I'd looked for one more person, right? I'd look for one more person and I decided that person would be Lightnin' Hopkins.

00:31:31.970 - 00:31:46.560

And, oh my God, Lightnin' Hopkins plays Will Rise commons in March, 1961, plays Rhonda Lee in April of 1961, plays Will Rise again in October of 1963.

00:31:46.560 - 00:31:58.760

In November of 1964 the student board is debating raising more money because they wanna be able to afford to bring Lightnin' Hopkins back. In December of 1964 he plays at Will Rice again

00:31:58.760 - 00:32:07.910

for 75 cents admission. In March, 1965, a long critical essay on the music of Lightnin' Hopkins appears in the Rice Thresher.

00:32:07.910 - 00:32:18.480

Lightnin' Hopkins comes to Hanson College in November of 1965. He plays the RMC in February of 1968. Baker College brings Lightnin' Hopkins back again

00:32:18.480 - 00:32:31.370

for what I think is his last time on campus in 1971 in what might very well be the beginning of Baker Blues but that needs to be examined. After that 1971 performance into the 1970s

00:32:31.370 - 00:32:42.830

ads also pop-up throughout the Thresher, telling Rice students where lightning Hopkins is playing in other throughout Houston.

00:32:44.620 - 00:32:54.290

Lightnin' Hopkins, We're gonna have to come back to and we'll come back to them a little bit next week. And so those of you who are online

00:32:54.290 - 00:33:04.070

have a homework assignment, those of you who aren't here, we won't have one. But I want you to read this appreciation of Lightnin' Hopkins.

00:33:04.070 - 00:33:21.150

If you take a picture of that QR code, it'll work. I'll also put it in the chat once I stop sharing my screen. But next week, I want to talk some about appreciations of African American History,

00:33:21.150 - 00:33:32.640

deep into the period in which black students are on campus and the ways that those appreciations sometimes show up before there are significant numbers of black students on campus.

00:33:35.930 - 00:33:44.850

Well, I will- Ask me prof. I will look forward to that. And thank you for playing some blues for us. I love Lightnin' Hopkins,

00:33:44.850 - 00:34:00.170

and I've talked to Rice alumni who can remember when Hopkins would go to Astros games at the Astrodome and be sitting up in the stands playing. So what an amazing Houston icon.

00:34:02.290 - 00:34:16.680

Well, the document that I wanna talk about takes us way back in the scope of our chronology. 'Cause I wanna talk about William Marsh Rice and his brother Frederick A. Rice,

00:34:16.680 - 00:34:29.010

and a document from 1863, which is in the middle of the Civil War. But before I talk about that document I feel I need to give a little bit of a backstory about

00:34:29.010 - 00:34:39.560

how I came to have a photo of this document. And so the backstory begins in 1997 and it also relates to this question,

00:34:39.560 - 00:34:51.760

we were just talking about regarding gaps or silences in the archive. And sometimes when we focus on documents in these webinars,

00:34:51.760 - 00:35:03.930

we look at what we have and what we do know, but we also have to think about what's not there, and why it's not there. And so this is a little memo on the screen front

00:35:03.930 - 00:35:15.370

as you can see a folder full of other photocopies and documents. And this one is a very brief letter dated January 2nd, 1997

00:35:15.370 - 00:35:24.810

and I should have counted it up. I think it has exactly one, two, three, four five words in the letter. So it's the kind of thing that today

00:35:24.810 - 00:35:35.230

we would send as an email, or maybe not even a full email. You could put the question in the subject line or you might include it in text message,

00:35:35.230 - 00:35:44.800

but this is 1997. So, you would still feed a little piece of paper through a typewriter and type out these five words.

00:35:44.800 - 00:35:54.870

And so it says, "Nancy, shouldn't we have this? Dean." So when I read that letter, of course,

00:35:54.870 - 00:36:07.090

the first thing I was wondering is she was Nancy and who's Dean? So Nancy was, Nancy Booth, who was herself a Rice University alumni,

00:36:07.090 - 00:36:19.550

and went on to become the Director of the Woodson Research Center in Fondren Library. And Dean, you can kind of figure out who that is by looking up

00:36:21.080 - 00:36:29.370

at the letterhead on this brief memo which is a little bit covered in this picture because it was paper clipped with some other papers.

00:36:29.370 - 00:36:39.600

But you can see that it says, "President for finance and administration. Actually the vice president for finance and administration, Dean Curry."

00:36:40.550 - 00:36:51.210

Who I think, I might say that that position was so powerful, you didn't necessarily need the vice. And you could be known just as Dean

00:36:51.210 - 00:37:02.050

and yet everyone would know who you were and be able to distinguish you from deans of various kinds on campus. But that's Dean was

00:37:02.050 - 00:37:15.620

the vice president of finance administration at Rice from in the 1980s all the way into the 21st century, but, left Rice, I believe about 12 years ago,

00:37:15.620 - 00:37:25.860

I haven't checked the exact dates to go on to a further career in higher education administration that some other institutions.

00:37:25.860 - 00:37:39.640

And here he's mentioned in a newsletter that I've pulled up about Fondren Library news from the fall of 1998. This is something I have to note as a historian.

00:37:39.640 - 00:37:51.670

I recently, I got the most recent issue of the Fondren newsletter electronically for the first time. I think they've made a switch now. That shows how far we've come from 1997

00:37:51.670 - 00:38:02.400

when you would type out letters that now the Fondren newsletter is being posted as a PDF only on the website. And you can click on a link to go check it out.

00:38:02.400 - 00:38:11.030

But in this particular newsletter, there's an article on the front page about the Fondren Master Plan Study and discussions about architects meetings

00:38:11.030 - 00:38:21.860

to expand and renovate Fondren Library. And I always read the Fondren Newsletter cover to cover because it contains lots of interesting information about

00:38:21.860 - 00:38:32.600

collections development and investments and what the library is doing. And then this front page, it mentions vice president Dean Curry,

00:38:32.600 - 00:38:47.540

who was meeting with the provost at the time David Austin, and the architects who were planning the renovation of Fondren Library. And I just have to scroll down a little bit

00:38:47.540 - 00:38:57.300

in this newsletter, because it also talks about a historic event, the opening of the GIS data center. And there's a little photo here in the inset that shows

00:38:57.300 - 00:39:06.160

a GIS data librarian, Darlene Edwards working with Alexander Byrd research scholar in the history department. Where's the hair Doc?

00:39:10.880 - 00:39:20.220

It was a stressful year maybe, I don't know. No that was the fashion man, fashion. That used to be the way to do it. Well, here you are sitting

00:39:20.220 - 00:39:32.970

at a computer with Darlene Edwards talking about arc GIS and how to make maps like the one that's down here of Harris County showing the percentage of households with renters in 1990.

00:39:34.050 - 00:39:43.410

It's a great, the whole issue is really interesting. There is a discussion about how the collection management team is gonna shift journals around into the new

00:39:45.200 - 00:39:56.470

offsite storage facility the library service center preparing for this remodeling. There's also a photograph of Willow Collins

00:39:56.470 - 00:40:06.170

who was recording some work that she was doing and bar coding items that's of course another big shift in the library's history is putting those barcodes on.

00:40:06.170 - 00:40:18.240

So anyway, I'm getting a little bit off track but I wanted you to know who Dean Curry was and here Nancy Booth was because this letter from 1997 is again,

00:40:19.090 - 00:40:29.630

in brief Dean asking Nancy, "Shouldn't we have this?" So what is he referring to? Well, when we go to the next page in this folder,

00:40:29.630 - 00:40:41.320

that letter is paper-clipped to a photocopy of an article from the Houston Business Journal. And I was thinking about this as you were talking Dr. Byrd about

00:40:41.320 - 00:40:53.660

comparing what's in the Thresher versus what was in the Houston newspapers at the time, because this is an excerpt from an article that appeared in a non-Rice publication, the Houston Business Journal,

00:40:53.660 - 00:41:05.580

but it was talking about something relevant to Rice University and the history of Rice. And as you can see on this photocopy, there's some highlighting,

00:41:05.580 - 00:41:15.760

there's a yellow highlighter that presumably Dean Curry has taken to this article to circle and call attention to one particular piece.

00:41:15.760 - 00:41:29.600

And I should back up and say that this article is about pieces of Houston's past. And it's written by a journalist named Bill Schadewald, who's talking about a recent visit he took to

00:41:29.600 - 00:41:38.510

the Harris County Heritage Society Collections Department. Actually, I said, it's by this author but it's a little unclear. It seems from the top here that maybe

00:41:38.510 - 00:41:52.870

the regular columnist was on vacation and they were publishing this column either by him or another author that had been published before July 24th of I presume the previous year.

00:41:52.870 - 00:42:07.530

But here it's being published January 2nd, 1997, the same day that Dean Curry writes his note. So why was Dean Curry interested in this article while you can see from the highlighting that

00:42:07.530 - 00:42:22.210

this article about the heritage society downtown says, a couple of boxes hold some of the personal papers of William Marsh Rice, the philanthropist who gave his name to Rice University,

00:42:22.210 - 00:42:34.080

Rice Boulevard and the Rice Hotel. Here's a love poem on parched paper in fading ink written to Rice from a girl named Maggie. Here's a letter from a cotton trader

00:42:34.080 - 00:42:48.690

accusing Rice of reneging on a previously agreed price. Here's a letter from a law enforcement officer informing Rice that his escaped slave Kristian had been caught on the Brazos River

00:42:48.690 - 00:43:01.450

and was being returned to the Rice family. I've done a fair amount of reading on the life and mysterious death of William Marsh Rice but those few intimate documents added a whole new

00:43:01.450 - 00:43:13.110

human dimension to the man. Now I could keep reading a little bit from this article that I think that's enough to show why Dean Curry was interested in circling this paragraph,

00:43:13.110 - 00:43:22.210

and why he asked Nancy Booth the head of the special collections at the time, "Shouldn't we have this?" What do you think Dr. Byrd,

00:43:22.210 - 00:43:34.670

should we have this? Should Fondren Library have had these documents? I feel like the answer that Ms. Booth will reply with is I think she'll reply, yes.

00:43:34.670 - 00:43:46.500

If I were in her shoes I would have said, "Yes, we should have this." Okay, that's a good guess. And I'll get to her reply in a minute.

00:43:46.500 - 00:43:57.750

No, go on. I thought we were going straight to it. Well, first there's this other letter at the top. It's another letter to Nancy and it's unsigned

00:43:57.750 - 00:44:07.750

but it appears to be by another librarian who had gone down to the heritage society to take a look at these documents. It's dated January 24th.

00:44:07.750 - 00:44:23.880

So a few weeks after the letter from Dean Curry came and the librarian was sort of frustrated because the curator at the heritage society at the time said that when Dean Curry was there the other day

00:44:23.880 - 00:44:34.990

it was only the second time that the William Marsh Rice papers there had ever been looked at by this curator. And it sounds like,

00:44:34.990 - 00:44:44.680

there was not really a finding aid, or a description of what was in the papers just to Hollinger boxes which is a kind of box that historians are very familiar with from the archives of...

00:44:44.680 - 00:44:53.660

We know those boxes. Full of miscellaneous records, correspondence, et cetera. So, one thing that I noticed about this is, wow, Dean Curry,

00:44:53.660 - 00:45:09.380

the vice president of finance and administration went down to the heritage society to look at these papers and flagged them for the library. Maybe that's a common thing for an administrator to do,

00:45:09.380 - 00:45:20.190

I'm not sure, but it indicates that Dean Curry was interested in the library and interested in the history of Rice and wanted to find out more.

00:45:21.290 - 00:45:31.380

So let's get to Nancy Booth's reply. And I love this reply because it's a very librarian reply a few days after that, a letter reporting on

00:45:31.380 - 00:45:44.090

what her employee had found. She wrote back to Dean and said that his note about the Heritage Societies holdings came when she was away.

00:45:44.090 - 00:45:56.140

"I understand that in the meantime you've been there to look at them." And then she says, and this is a great quotable line, "Papers aren't always where they should be."

00:45:57.240 - 00:46:05.490

Papers aren't always where they should be. 'Cause remember he had asked, "Shouldn't we have this?" And she said, "Papers aren't always where they should be.

00:46:06.350 - 00:46:15.400

Family members or former business associates sometimes give them to less than appropriate repositories. And there are other Rice papers." She says, "At the Houston Public libraries,

00:46:15.400 - 00:46:24.850

Houston Metropolitan Research Center, we try to keep up to date on collections elsewhere, like the Rice papers for our information and for referring researchers."

00:46:24.850 - 00:46:36.670

Now, I should say that these letters I've been showing you are from the Woodson Research Centers collections and so, in the Woodson Research Center archives we've had preserved

00:46:36.670 - 00:46:49.790

here a reference of these holdings at the heritage society that very explicitly mentioned something of interest to us and our taskforce.

00:46:51.310 - 00:47:05.260

The name of an enslaved man that according to this Houston Business Journal article had escaped from William Marsh Rice. And it gives his name as Kristian.

00:47:06.640 - 00:47:16.880

Now you can imagine why I was very interested in when I saw that my reaction was kind of like Dean Curry's, "Shouldn't we have this especially as the task force?"

00:47:17.960 - 00:47:30.860

But of course we know in 2020 and 2021, papers aren't always where they should be and archives aren't always as open as we'd like them to be because of the coronavirus

00:47:30.860 - 00:47:40.960

and all of the closures with social distancing. It wasn't possible for us to get into some of these collections in the fall, including the one at the

00:47:40.960 - 00:47:52.250

Houston Metropolitan Research Center that Nancy Booth mentioned there. But we have to give a big shout out Dr. Byrd to the Houston Public Library, which assisted us

00:47:52.250 - 00:48:05.740

over the winter break and digitizing that collection. And if anyone's interested, they can find that on a page that Fondren Library has assembled of resources for the work of the task force

00:48:05.740 - 00:48:15.150

which means we also have to give a big shout out to the current staff in the Woodson Research Center, which has been working very hard to make accessible these kinds of documents

00:48:15.150 - 00:48:24.210

for anyone who's interested in looking at them. But what about this Heritage Society collection? What about these papers that Dean Curry noticed?

00:48:24.210 - 00:48:36.680

Those papers, I was able a few weeks before class started to go down to the Heritage Society as Dean Curry did, and looked through those Hollander boxes myself and,

00:48:36.680 - 00:48:49.770

I don't know how often they had been opened since they were opened twice before Dean Curry saw them, but it seemed that they had not been used very often. In fact, they were difficult for the staff there

00:48:49.770 - 00:49:00.530

at the Heritage Society to find, but, through their determination they came up with those two Hollinger boxes and I was able to go through them and

00:49:00.530 - 00:49:12.340

because it's not 1997 anymore and we don't type out all of our memos, I also had a very high powered camera on me at the time that I was there and it was easier

00:49:12.340 - 00:49:24.350

than it would have been for Dean Curry in 1997, to take some pictures of some of the documents that were in that collection. And here's one of the first pictures I took.

00:49:24.350 - 00:49:35.920

You can see here what a how long had your box looks like and you can see that these documents are split up into different folders. And sometimes historians talk about

00:49:35.920 - 00:49:46.120

silences in the archive Dr. Byrd, but sometimes the archives shout and make very clear that there's a folder that you want to open and this particular folder,

00:49:46.120 - 00:49:58.200

as you can see is labeled "Notice To Pick Up Slave 1863." I opened that folder. First, maybe.

00:50:00.490 - 00:50:15.480

And what I found was this scrap of paper that is the one that the Houston Business Journal in 1997 was attempting to describe. And if you're looking at it on the screen,

00:50:15.480 - 00:50:25.030

this sort of takes us back to some of the earliest documents we looked at in our Doc Talks where the handwriting can be a little bit difficult to decipher.

00:50:25.990 - 00:50:41.660

And in fact, the name of the enslaved man that was included in the Houston Business Journal and described as Kristian is I think more likely to be the name Captain.

00:50:41.660 - 00:50:56.280

You can see what looks like the name Captain here on this little blue scrap of paper with handwriting on it. But since we're running out of time, I'm going to try to transcribe on the fly and read

00:50:56.280 - 00:51:09.200

what this note says and then we can talk about what it means and what questions it raises for further research. So it's dated June the 15th, 1863.

00:51:13.970 - 00:51:39.840

Mr. William and Frederick Rice, dear sirs. I have a Negro boy who says he belongs to both of you. He calls his name Captain say 17 or 18 years of age. Was caught by Thomas Stevenson on the Brazos river

00:51:39.840 - 00:51:58.890

on the 12th and committed to me as jailer of the town of Hempstead, Austin County. You are requested to come forward, prove property and take said Negro

00:52:00.040 - 00:52:19.110

or he will be dealt with as the law directs in such cases. And then it's signed by the marshal of the town of Hempstead and the County of Austin. What questions or conclusions

00:52:19.110 - 00:52:35.900

do you think we can draw out of that document, Dr. Byrd? So one of the questions that I have immediately about Captain 'cause that's who I'm drawn to first and most is

00:52:37.310 - 00:52:54.470

how to get where he was gotten is the first one. But the second question has to do with his understanding. We spent some time on these webinars discussing some of the complicated financial arrangements

00:52:54.470 - 00:53:19.090

by which William Rice and his business partners own things or had mortgages on things and people. And so one of the thoughts that comes immediately to mind is what is the degree to which captain understands

00:53:19.090 - 00:53:37.300

the ways in which he is possessed, right? So he names two people or his captive says he named two people as the folks who owned him or to whom he belonged.

00:53:37.300 - 00:53:45.960

Right. And I find that interesting. He doesn't just say William Marsh Rice. So he says William Marsh Rice and Frederick Rice

00:53:45.960 - 00:53:58.740

who was Rice's brother and business partner at the time. In fact, they were together in a business firm, a relationship that was known as, William Marsh Rice and Company,

00:53:59.600 - 00:54:07.520

and the company was Frederick A. Rice William Marsh Rice's brother. So that's something I noticed too is something that's really missing

00:54:07.520 - 00:54:25.530

from the business journals description of it. The business journal that Dean Curry clipped simply said that Kristian, the miss transcription of that name belonged to William Marsh Rice.

00:54:25.530 - 00:54:37.850

And when you look at the document, it's a little more complicated because this note is being addressed to two people to William Marsh rice, and to Frederick A. Rice.

00:54:38.760 - 00:54:56.660

I also notice and wonder about what led up to this moment. I'm drawn to the fact that Captain was about the age of many students who start their careers at Rice, 17 or 18 years old.

00:54:57.600 - 00:55:11.610

And I'm drawn to something else that is in this document that was not in the Houston Business Journal which is the date of this document, June 15th, 1863.

00:55:11.800 - 00:55:24.750

And that date is really significant for a couple of reasons in my mind. One is, it means that this document dates from after the emancipation proclamation of January one, 1863

00:55:26.800 - 00:55:42.210

and it shows that white Texans and law enforcement officers as the Houston Business Journal puts it we're continuing to enforce the laws of slavery in Texas even though Abraham Lincoln had

00:55:42.210 - 00:55:56.280

declared enslaved people in Confederate States like Texas to be forever free. Captain had not yet felt the full effects of that emancipation order

00:55:57.520 - 00:56:09.720

but he may have felt some of the ripple effects of the war itself and we have to speculate a little bit about how it was that he could escape William Marsh Rice and Frederick A. Rice.

00:56:09.720 - 00:56:20.450

That's one question that occurs to me and did the fact that this is the middle of the civil war have anything to do with that. The timing raises those questions

00:56:20.450 - 00:56:33.870

and it's also important because of what we know happened this year. William Marsh Rice left Houston not long after this date after the death of his wife and moved to Mexico

00:56:33.870 - 00:56:47.060

where he was engaged in cotton trading across the border as we've discussed in an earlier Doc Talk. And so when the Houston Business Journal referred to some other documents about cotton traders,

00:56:47.060 - 00:57:00.330

there was a lot of other letters in this collection about that time in Mexico. So one thing this document does not answer for us to the extent that we might like is

00:57:00.330 - 00:57:15.180

what happened to Captain. The Houston Business Journal says that he was being returned to the rice family quoting there what the journalist said but this document,

00:57:15.180 - 00:57:29.430

in fact, it doesn't say that. It says that he was being held in a jail in Hempstead that William Marsh Rice and Frederick A. Rice were ordered to come prove that he belonged to them

00:57:29.520 - 00:57:46.870

and pay the expenses to the jailer for having to house him or he will be dealt with as the law directs in such cases. So what would the law have directed in that case and what happened?

00:57:46.870 - 00:57:56.720

Did the Rice brothers in fact show up at the jail? Those are some of the questions I'm left with when I look at that document. But I think what is clear,

00:57:56.720 - 00:58:09.640

even though the full answers to those questions aren't yet is the answer to Dean Curry's question asked way back in 1997, "Shouldn't we have this?" I think we should have this.

00:58:09.640 - 00:58:22.060

I think we should include this in the archives of the university. We should think about how it affects our telling of our history, the history of William Marsh Rice.

00:58:22.060 - 00:58:33.090

And I'm so grateful that the staff of the Woodson Research Center today has been working tirelessly to take the collection that the heritage society

00:58:34.930 - 00:58:51.420

and take steps now that Dean Curry was asking about in 1997 to digitize all of those documents and make them available to us as researchers on the task force and to the entire Rice community

00:58:51.420 - 00:59:02.460

and the entire Houston community including the heritage society itself. So there will be more to come I think, from this collection in our future Doc Talks this semester.

00:59:02.460 - 00:59:15.570

And things sometimes happen... Well, I'm optimistic. So it's rarely that I don't say this. There is a sense in things happen in their time, right?

00:59:15.570 - 00:59:29.970

And there's a sense in Booth's response to Dean Curry that a thing can only be in a place, right? So Curry's question is shouldn't we have this, since it can only be in one place.

00:59:29.970 - 00:59:42.300

Right? And Booth's response is sometimes things are in less appropriate places. I think that less appropriate

00:59:42.300 - 00:59:53.680

is something we might want to revisit with these two collections. Because now in 2020 and 2021, I think it's possible to make the argument

00:59:53.680 - 01:00:09.840

that they were in the perfect places because they were in places with librarians and scholars who were eager to collaborate with other librarians and scholars

01:00:09.840 - 01:00:23.700

and in a time when it is now possible to make these items widely available. And so that they can be in hundreds of places at once. Absolutely.

01:00:23.700 - 01:00:33.760

I think that's the benefit of having these digitization tools like the ones that you used to search for things in the Rice Thresher in your document.

01:00:33.760 - 01:00:50.760

And so I think that we are the beneficiaries now of some of that technology that will enable us to learn things that really haven't been known fully before. The proximity search is a powerful tool

01:00:50.760 - 01:01:01.710

assuming that it's working, right? I mean, I have no idea if it's a bug in the machine. Or user error. Or user error.

01:01:01.710 - 01:01:13.510

Though well, I'll stop. But I feel like there are a couple of approximations of Althea with Gibson that the proximity search missed but it got enough.

01:01:15.150 - 01:01:26.380

Well, thanks again, Dr. Byrd for sharing those documents and thanks to all of you who are here in the audience. We really appreciate your being with us. If you have any questions that you'd like us to think about,

01:01:26.380 - 01:01:37.700

you can certainly drop those in the Q and A. We can try to address them on a future Doc Talk or in our podcast episodes where we're often joined by Kate Coley to do some debriefing.

01:01:37.700 - 01:01:47.020

And thanks once again to the librarians at the Houston Public Library and Watson research center and the heritage society that have been invaluable partners

01:01:47.020 - 01:01:58.450

in making some of these sources available. Stay warm this weekend. Make sure you wrap up your pipes. We're off to fix that setting

01:01:58.450 - 01:02:00.880

so that we don't broadcast right away.