00:00:00.210 - 00:00:14.040

Yep. Test one, two, test one, two. Okay. All right.

00:00:26.420 - 00:00:42.310

(chair squeaks) It's good to be back after all of the disruptions of last week. It is very good.

00:00:43.770 - 00:00:58.480

And we have been fortunate at my house. I know there are a lot of people out there who are struggling. It was a hard week.

00:00:58.480 - 00:01:17.320

And it's turned into harder weeks to come for me. Now there's the everything getting stacked up because things were postponed, but it's Friday. And I'm told Monday is a sprinkle day.

00:01:17.320 - 00:01:29.420

That's one of those words that future historians aren't gonna find. Used in the archives prior to Circa December, 2020. Correct.

00:01:30.870 - 00:01:41.400

I'm glad for it. The Monday sprinkle day, I missed, which is unfortunate on my syllabus because my seminar meets on Mondays.

00:01:41.400 - 00:01:48.040

So. Ooh! I've got some figuring out to do. There's an app for that. Did you know that?

00:01:49.270 - 00:01:58.490

Syllabus maker? Yes. (McDaniel chuckles) But does it have a stupidity feature? If you missed, right? Where you'd say, what if you missed a day

00:01:58.490 - 00:02:05.550

because of a disaster? Then you missed another day because you messed up your own syllabus. About, okay.

00:02:05.550 - 00:02:15.560

It doesn't account for disasters. That's true. See? That's what I'm saying. All right, I think we've got a nice group here. It's always a nice group.

00:02:17.420 - 00:02:28.890

And I'm going first today but it also seems like I've messed around and have started the webinar, which is what I don't usually do, you usually do that.

00:02:28.890 - 00:02:45.080

But now I feel like I'm too far into back out, so I'm not gonna start it right. I'm just going to get going and say welcome to Doc Talks if this is your first time here, this is where weekly,

00:02:45.970 - 00:03:02.510

the two co-chairs of the task force on slavery segregation and racial injustice, myself, Alex Byrd, and my colleague, Dr. Kayla McDaniel come to you weekly from our offices to talk about

00:03:03.070 - 00:03:20.300

research relating to the charge of the task force. And mostly focus on the research questions, that documents raise related to our charge. Very few things get answered in these Doc Talks

00:03:20.300 - 00:03:36.280

but we hope to raise some questions that get answered later. And I'm going to start with where I left off two weeks ago

00:03:37.170 - 00:03:54.670

with Lightning Hopkins and am going to move on from there. So, here we go. I hope you see the picture of Lightning Hopkins

00:03:54.680 - 00:04:09.320

that I ended with last two weeks ago in my black history edition of the Doc Talks. And I hope one of the things that you remember from two weeks ago is, I went through

00:04:11.040 - 00:04:22.590

a series of primary important events in African-American history. Or important actors in African-American history. And we kind of played a game of seeing

00:04:22.590 - 00:04:38.650

if and when these folks show up in the Rice Thresher. And what their absence of presence might mean. And I was quite surprised, by the fact that one of the people who shows up in the mid 1960s.

00:04:39.270 - 00:04:56.010

Way more than I thought they would is the Texas guitars and blues man Lightning Hopkins. And I want to raise some questions about that today. (mellow guitar sound)

00:04:56.010 - 00:05:12.130

I won't give you much Lightning Hopkins because we've got to edit this down and there'll be fair use issues, et cetera but what you might wanna do on your own

00:05:12.470 - 00:05:30.710

as this moves on is to use whatever music program you like. And I would ask you to maybe find Tom Moore's blues or find Lightning Hopkins album called "Texas blues" and two songs in there in particular

00:05:31.580 - 00:05:46.500

that I think I'll mention is Tom Morris blues and Bud Russell's blues. And so you can listen to that while you're listening to me or listen to it afterwards.

00:05:46.500 - 00:06:01.000

So here's the QR code to follow along if you like, that code will take you to the article that I wanna start with today. And the article is an essay

00:06:01.860 - 00:06:14.610

in a section of the Thresher from March 4th, 1965. And it's a section of the Thresher called the "Thresher Review" which is kind of a literary pullout

00:06:14.610 - 00:06:29.170

or a critical pull-out, cultural pull out section of the paper. It's distinguished from the paper itself in that it's a more modern layout

00:06:29.170 - 00:06:49.150

than the number of the paper that it is contained within. There's more white space, the fonts are more modern. The piece on Hopkins is one of the longer pieces in the review.

00:06:49.150 - 00:07:09.060

It's distinguished by a ink drawing of Hopkins. And the article in question is pinned by Gregory Curtis, who if you Google you'll find out just like a good number of Thresher writers

00:07:09.060 - 00:07:28.120

and editors, goes on to have a distinguished career in journalism and magazine editing and publishing. This particular piece that he pins right here is called "Lightening Hopkins An Era in Retrospect,"

00:07:29.530 - 00:07:41.200

now Hopkins doesn't die until 1982. I want to make that clear, right? And so we have questions already, right? We have questions already.

00:07:41.200 - 00:07:54.440

And let's get to some of them. I'm gonna start talking fast now because what I wanna do is I just want to run through a few of the highlights of this essay

00:07:54.530 - 00:08:09.140

because these highlights produce the questions that I want us to linger over toward the end. Now, the intention of the piece for Curtis is to interpret Hopkins,

00:08:09.140 - 00:08:26.240

but also as Gregory points out, he also wants to arrive at some conclusions about the Negro revolution. So this is a piece about Hopkins but he's gonna jump off from it,

00:08:26.240 - 00:08:38.170

into what he sees that Hopkins music and what he represents has to say about the moment in which Curtis is living right now. And I'll quote him.

00:08:38.170 - 00:08:50.250

Curtis says "The Negro revolution with which the author "is very sympathetic but in which, too, "he sees certain valuable things being trampled on

00:08:50.250 - 00:09:02.480

"and forgotten." But as one of those big little words. You always gotta be careful especially when you take a step toward solidarity

00:09:03.550 - 00:09:13.940

in a direction of solidarity and then you use the word but, that should raise some questions. And so thank you Dr. McDaniel,

00:09:13.940 - 00:09:24.860

you've already identified one of the places that we'll focus on. So Curtis begins by talking some about the historical significance of Hopkins and his art

00:09:24.860 - 00:09:38.540

and very quickly you begin to understand the significance of the title because according to Curtis he sees Hopkins as a living master of a dying art.

00:09:38.900 - 00:09:55.720

The blues he says are dying rapidly. And so that's one of his points is that we are watching the death of an American art form. The second critical point that he raises

00:09:55.720 - 00:10:09.240

has to do with the structure and the form of Hopkins's work. And the author is very taken by what he sees as the highly improvisational nature of Hopkins is singing and composing.

00:10:09.240 - 00:10:22.750

As a matter of fact, he doesn't really use the word, Curtis refrains from using the word compose for what Hopkins does and uses a more working man language.

00:10:26.290 - 00:10:36.960

He doesn't compose songs. He makes songs in the same way that one would make something with one's hands and tools. And so that's a second key point.

00:10:36.960 - 00:10:50.130

A third key point is that he sees Hopkins music as deeply rooted in his own personal experience. That Hopkins music doesn't go much beyond what he has seen

00:10:50.130 - 00:11:00.480

and what he is experienced for himself. And thus he sees a grittiness at the foundations of his work. And what Curtis means by grittiness

00:11:01.330 - 00:11:17.980

comes around pretty quickly. What he means is a sensuality and an intention to sex that he finds in Hopkins's blues. Some Curtis argues, not him, but some find this troubling

00:11:19.770 - 00:11:36.820

but he then goes on to argue that it's really not as crass as it seems because what is really at stake here in Hopkins's music is the deep feeling around central and sexual and romantic loss.

00:11:36.930 - 00:11:50.270

That if you got confused and thought he was only talking about sex and sensuality you would miss according to Curtis the blues which is what is actually behind much of this.

00:11:50.270 - 00:12:03.960

And he closes, Curtis closes with a critique and a lament. I'm looking up at my clock and I'm just so proud of myself at how quickly I've moved but I'm also a little afraid, okay.

00:12:05.990 - 00:12:17.700

So he closes with a critique and a lament connecting Hopkins to the present what he calls the Negro Revolution. And so now we're going to get down to the nitty gritty.

00:12:18.570 - 00:12:35.150

The critique is that Hopkins represents, Hopkins and his music represents something of a challenge to the current Negro Revolution to the civil rights movement and Hopkins's rejection

00:12:35.450 - 00:12:51.870

of what Curtis sees as white middle-class moors, Curter sees the civil rights movement is moving in the direction of leveling, not simply black and white opportunity, but more leveling what he sees

00:12:52.730 - 00:13:07.580

as differences between black and white ideas about respectability, these aren't his words. So let me use his words so I can do it justice. He uses the term conventional behavior

00:13:07.580 - 00:13:17.760

and now just read, conventional behavior as it is usually defined is that here it's to the approved norms of the middle-class Caucasian population.

00:13:17.760 - 00:13:30.980

This is the society that Hopkins has both rejected and been hesitant. I hate when I find a word that I can read, but can't say out loud quickly, hesitatingly acknowledged by,

00:13:34.500 - 00:13:48.510

what he's talking about here is a black middle class. I mean, a white middle-class roots music or Americana Aficionados who like him. Now, I'm going out on a limb, right?

00:13:48.510 - 00:14:01.810

Are drawn to Hopkins's music at this late stage in the blues man's career. And it is precisely this society. Now we get his interpretation of the civil rights movement

00:14:01.810 - 00:14:13.610

and it is precisely the society that the civil rights conscious Negro is seeking acceptance from today. So now we've moved into the realm of historical interpretation.

00:14:13.610 - 00:14:22.100

This for Curtis is what the civil rights movement is about. When the middle-class Negro and the middle-class white have the same aims, aspirations

00:14:22.100 - 00:14:38.110

and social moors, the Negro revolution will be to a large extent completed. I'm pausing for effect, even though I didn't write down pause for effect, but Hopkins in choosing to live

00:14:38.110 - 00:14:52.880

for the moment to revel and central gratification to establish his own morality has rejected the very end toward which the revolution is leading. There's a lot of remarkable business going on here.

00:14:52.880 - 00:15:07.360

What you've missed is some interpretations of Hopkins's music, which you can gather if you read the article itself but you also see a kind of slide into an interpretation of the man

00:15:07.360 - 00:15:21.470

the person himself based on the music, right? Which can be some tricky territory. So he's decided a lot about Hopkins's morality based on what?

00:15:26.860 - 00:15:35.870

I don't know. (Byrd laughs) I thought you gonna help me out there Dr. McDaniel. I'm as speechless as you.

00:15:35.870 - 00:15:47.560

Yeah. Based on six or seven songs and what he played the last time he was visited Hanson college. That's a guess.

00:15:49.220 - 00:16:04.380

And this critique then leads to the lament. And the lament, according to Curtis, is that the blues comes out of a value system that is shaped by oppression.

00:16:04.380 - 00:16:19.890

And he seems, Curtis seems to understand Hopkins's universe as one built out of a lack of opportunity. There was probably plenty of lack of opportunity in the world in which Lightening Hopkins grew up in.

00:16:23.890 - 00:16:38.360

There was probably plenty of that there, but then Curtis moves from that to argue that consequently black people who lived within this lack of opportunity lived for the moment accepting

00:16:38.360 - 00:16:56.180

such as life's pleasures and its uncertainties and feeling it's loneliness and isolation. So the blues comes out of oppression. That's not too radical of an argument.

00:16:56.180 - 00:17:12.730

It misses some other things about performativity and the nature of the blues artists as an artist, right? As opposed to just someone relaying their experience.

00:17:14.640 - 00:17:21.450

So it misses that. But I won't argue, I don't think we can argue that there's a relationship between the blues and oppression,

00:17:21.450 - 00:17:35.730

but then here comes this work. Once the revolution argues Hopkins, then kill the blues as American black seek to escape the world that gave birth to the blues and all

00:17:35.730 - 00:17:49.190

of that subsequent richness that came out of it. Curtis thinks this might indeed be true. And in the section of the article, on the right side of the slide, he goes into a little more detail there

00:17:49.190 - 00:18:09.180

and ends with the conclusion that with the American Negroes gain and Ascension into equality it will come with some loss and a loss to American culture. American culture will be considerably diminished

00:18:10.670 - 00:18:26.990

with the equality of African-Americans. So a lot going on. And I did it all in about 12 minutes, still proud of myself. So here we go.

00:18:26.990 - 00:18:44.340

So I wanna sidestep the purpose of this isn't to so much critique Curtis, right? That's not the purpose, the purpose of it. And so I want to sidestep for a moment the argument

00:18:44.340 - 00:18:57.090

that one of the consequences of black freedom would be the diminishment of American culture. Set that to the side. Also wanna set to the side

00:18:58.020 - 00:19:12.260

the idea that the highest aspirations of the black freedom struggle is the struggle toward middle-class white life. And so pick those up later if we want.

00:19:12.260 - 00:19:20.490

We've seen that before I feel in an earlier Doc talk. Yes. That'd be a yes. It's a rap.

00:19:24.050 - 00:19:38.010

So spend all this time with them less to critique those ideas. Because for me, what's important about this dive into black culture that Curtis is doing in 1965

00:19:39.790 - 00:19:56.250

at a time when there might be one black student, there's one black student, not even categorize as a student I guess I might say, on campus at the time, are the questions that are raised

00:19:56.250 - 00:20:07.990

by this essay and the acknowledgement that the first black students who do show up to Rice and the first undergraduates are gonna be admitted in a couple of months after a month, really,

00:20:07.990 - 00:20:21.720

after this, that they will not arrive at Rice. The Rice they arrive at will not be completely without black people. And it won't be without black people

00:20:21.720 - 00:20:34.050

in a couple of ways, but the way that I wanna focus on for the time that I have left and to raise some questions out of it, is that one of the places that black people will exist

00:20:34.050 - 00:20:52.700

at Rice long before actual African American graduate and undergraduate show up is in the imaginations of current students. And that imagination is informed by a whole host

00:20:52.700 - 00:21:06.050

of sources. For the purposes of what we focused on here. It's informed by some really important realities about Rice, it's an imagination

00:21:06.050 - 00:21:19.450

informed by the performative landscape of the university and the black musical performers in this case Lightning Hopkins who moved through this space.

00:21:19.450 - 00:21:33.290

Okay. So we see here on the left, right? That in the very issue that Curtis's essay about Hopkins is placed,

00:21:37.490 - 00:21:55.970

the editorial board of the Thresher also writes, publishes its editorial on Rice in the Negro where they take the administration to task for what they see as it's kind of crass

00:21:55.970 - 00:22:15.150

materialistic movement into desegregation. It's a powerful argument but what's most important to me there is that an actual African-American also lives within those paragraphs unnamed

00:22:15.150 - 00:22:31.620

and not paid too much attention to. And so I want to raise that at the same time that I begin to draw out or just draw out

00:22:31.620 - 00:22:46.960

some of the ways that black people inhabit the imagination on campus, and therefore what actual black students I don't know if my elbows are in the frame but what actual black students then have to,

00:22:46.960 - 00:22:59.040

how they have to make room for themselves when they show up. And one of the reasons this is important is because it raises questions about what rice students,

00:23:00.670 - 00:23:10.580

white rice students are actually thinking about when they're writing about black people. And when they're thinking about black people and when they're seeing black people

00:23:10.580 - 00:23:20.740

and it has implications for how we interpret some of what we see in the Thresher and elsewhere. I've got like about four minutes. So here I go rushing through.

00:23:23.600 - 00:23:39.100

So there is a real black student at Rice at this time, is Dr. Raymond Johnson. And so there are issues that we have to deal with around that but secondly, I wanna return

00:23:39.100 - 00:23:50.800

and the Thresher helps us to return to this idea about sensuality, about sex and sensuality. So what are white students on Rice's campus

00:23:51.090 - 00:24:04.280

writing about when they're writing about black sensuality or black sexuality? And so if you read Curtis's essay, it seems to me that he just he's reacting

00:24:04.280 - 00:24:18.730

to Lightning Hopkins's songs, right? Though I must say he sees more sex and sensuality in Hopkins's music than I do now, but that's just me,

00:24:22.780 - 00:24:36.410

but I wonder also given the debates that populate the Thresher at the time about morality rules and what's allowed and not allowed

00:24:36.410 - 00:24:55.370

in the colleges and the movement of women across the campus. And the relationship in terms of authority between Rice women undergraduates and college magisters and the dean of students and the dean of women, right?

00:24:55.370 - 00:25:12.850

That we're at a moment where white students are really challenging the ideas of morality that the generation above them have. And so one of the, sorry, go.

00:25:12.850 - 00:25:25.870

I think one of our first Doc Talks about Jacqueline McCauley and her memory of going to a dance at, I think it was at Will Rise College or Baker or-- I don't know why I've Jones in my head

00:25:25.870 - 00:25:33.380

but I could be wrong. Maybe its just 'cause she was there, but she would've had to go someplace else. Well, finish, finish.

00:25:33.380 - 00:25:42.940

And then they ask her to dance. Yes. They asked her, the president of the college I believe, asks her to dance and she accepted. So that maybe is another example of what you're describing.

00:25:42.940 - 00:25:57.400

Yeah. Absolutely. That there's a way in which I've got to, I think, be careful about representations of Hopkins's sensuality or sexuality

00:25:57.850 - 00:26:08.780

because I have to also question the way in which they may not necessarily be an argument about Hopkins but an argument about the aspirations

00:26:08.780 - 00:26:22.180

of white college students at Rice who were engaged in a battle to open up their university. And we may get back to it, strangely enough there are some pieces in the Thresher

00:26:22.180 - 00:26:36.040

on the black freedom movement, where the authors end up conflating both of those arguments in their minds. I'll just also say that this is also a moment.

00:26:37.160 - 00:26:52.450

These are the weeks that the march from Selma to Montgomery and all of the drama,

00:26:52.450 - 00:27:08.960

the high civil rights drama of that time plays out. And so it also I think makes you wanna wrestle with the ways in which Curtis, he writes this before so, right before the first March,

00:27:08.960 - 00:27:27.080

but these arguments continue into the weeks afterward, is this the middle-class, is what happens in Selma, right? The staid middle-class movement that Curtis alludes to earlier.

00:27:28.390 - 00:27:42.680

And I think the next thing that comes to mind for me is what happens when real black students, actual real black students show up on campus with actual musical ideas and talents

00:27:42.680 - 00:27:57.140

and inclinations, right? And so what does it mean to show up, I guess I should say what this is this is the billboard Hot R&B 20 for 1965.

00:27:58.200 - 00:28:13.170

And so this is what a lot of black people but also a lot of white people are listening to in 1965. But what happens if you show up with this popular conception, if you're a black student

00:28:13.170 - 00:28:25.360

who shows up with this popular conception of African-American music, you wanna listen to Joe Tex "You Got What It Takes," right? And a lot of your white counterparts are really

00:28:25.360 - 00:28:35.180

into Lightening Hopkins, who your grandpa might be into, right? (Byrd chuckles) Might be into.

00:28:35.180 - 00:28:44.950

And so what does that mean for the way that your blackness is interpreted? If you're really into Sam Cook and the Four Tops and Joe Tex, and don't really know

00:28:44.950 - 00:28:59.410

who Lightning Hopkins's is. Last question, which I think is an important research question here is the ways in which black cultural criticism,

00:28:59.410 - 00:29:19.550

what are the ways in which black cultural criticism evolves once black students get on campus, but also once they start writing that criticism, Dr. McDaniel, I feel like I should have put in more pauses

00:29:19.550 - 00:29:27.170

and stops for us to converse. No, no. That was great. I'd listened to you keep going.

00:29:27.170 - 00:29:37.380

There's a lot there to think about and I'm sure that our audience might have questions or comments about that document as well. So we wanna remind everyone that you can drop those

00:29:37.380 - 00:29:48.260

in the Q and A, at the bottom of the window or in the chat. And we'll be sure to leave some time towards the end to address some of those questions. That was fascinating.

00:29:48.260 - 00:30:02.240

And one of the things I noticed just because of the work that I've been doing recently is the way that Curtis drew on a particular history of the blues that grounded it in the history

00:30:02.240 - 00:30:13.960

of slavery and enslaved people's experience in at least part of the excerpt that you showed us, which is I think one of the things that's within our charge to do

00:30:13.960 - 00:30:23.810

when we think about the task force on slavery, segregation and racial injustice, there's a narrow way of thinking about that that says, "We're only interested in,

00:30:23.810 - 00:30:36.570

"what were the direct connections "between the founders of rice university and slavery," but also it raises a question of how slavery inhabited the imagination of students

00:30:37.990 - 00:30:55.930

and faculty at the Rice Institute and Rice University. So that piece of the article attracted my interest as well. And it's probably not the only example that we could find in the Thresher from that period where students are talking

00:30:55.930 - 00:31:13.710

about slavery and it's shaped by a particular understandings of that history that may or may not and probably not a chord with what historians today would understand about that history.

00:31:15.740 - 00:31:35.840

They absolutely are talking about their education, what they've learned about slavery and debating what that means for the current moment in time. So this is the smaller critique, right?

00:31:35.840 - 00:31:52.090

One of the failures of this critique of Hopkins even though it speaks to slavery, right? Is a failure to actually let that knowledge inform a critique of Hopkins's art form, right?

00:31:52.090 - 00:32:09.230

So the main through line of this argument is that Hopkins is sensual and sexual and only about his own experience. So Hopkins doesn't write Tom Morris blues,

00:32:09.230 - 00:32:22.280

he doesn't write it. It's not his, he inherits it, right? And Bud Russell's blues, all those speak to a historical caring of material

00:32:22.470 - 00:32:35.650

that is absent in this critique. That's fascinating. And it connects in a couple of ways to the document that I wanted to discuss this week

00:32:35.650 - 00:32:47.200

which I think has some themes of music that might be able to get to but also approaches the history of slavery from the other direction.

00:32:47.200 - 00:33:01.810

I mean, you've just highlighted the cultural resources that enslaved communities drew on to survive enslavement. And what I wanted to talk about

00:33:01.810 - 00:33:19.510

in the document I brought today is the destructive impacts of slavery and specifically the slave trade on African-American communities in the mid 19th century. So let me pull up my screen, and I wanna preface this

00:33:21.000 - 00:33:37.210

by saying too that, even though we've been working on this subject now for over a year it's possible even at this late date to still be discovering sources that have not come to light before

00:33:37.660 - 00:33:51.050

in the histories that have been written about William Marsh Rice or the Rice Institute. And that's partly because of the greater availability of digitized sources.

00:33:51.050 - 00:34:04.460

I was inspired to do some digging around on the portal, the Texas history, after your presentation a couple of weeks ago using proximity searches and different ways of looking for names

00:34:04.460 - 00:34:18.130

like William Marsh Rice's in the digitized databases of newspapers from Houston around the time that he made his fortune here. And so that process led me to a source

00:34:18.130 - 00:34:30.710

that I had never seen before, before earlier this week. And it comes from Galveston Newspaper, Galveston Texas had a newspaper called "The Weekly Journal"

00:34:30.710 - 00:34:46.380

that's available on the portal of Texas history. And this particular issue comes from May 6th, 1853, like today, also a Friday. And the article that I wanted to focus on

00:34:46.380 - 00:34:59.270

is just one of a much larger page. As you can see here newspapers at the time were full of densely printed text. And often the front page

00:34:59.270 - 00:35:13.010

of the newspaper would contain advertisements. Today we have on our front page of a newspaper the most important stories of the day. In the 19th century it was a little bit different.

00:35:13.010 - 00:35:23.900

Usually the news would come on the third page or the fourth page. And that's because the composer of the type would want to get everything that could be set

00:35:23.900 - 00:35:35.170

in the cases for the printing and save those from week to week. And then at the last minute they would be able to put in the most recent news.

00:35:35.170 - 00:35:51.290

And so what we have on the first page are ads, advertisements, small cards that that could be purchased by people who were in business in Galveston or Houston and wanted to advertise their business.

00:35:52.460 - 00:36:06.340

And that business in the 19th century included the slave trade. It included the buying and selling of human beings. And this is the kind of sorts that's difficult to talk about

00:36:06.340 - 00:36:21.200

without pausing to reflect on what we're discussing here which is the commodification of people of African descent. And I've Zoomed in on this page to a card that's headlined

00:36:21.200 - 00:36:38.770

and I'm gonna quote the word here, "Negro Mart," and I'm going to briefly summarize what follows. It's an ad that's placed by a man named Thomas S Gresham. Who's bought the ad in Houston on January 31st.

00:36:38.770 - 00:36:48.610

And that tells us that this ad has been running in multiple issues. Remember this issues from May but this ad has been purchased long before.

00:36:48.610 - 00:37:03.430

And what it says is that Gresham has just received direct from Virginia and Maryland 50 enslaved people ages 10 to 25 years old. He describes them as quote,

00:37:03.430 - 00:37:17.100

"One of the most likely lots of enslaved people "that has ever been brought to Texas. "And he says that he's going to continue to have "on hand in his place of business, a supply of men, women

00:37:17.170 - 00:37:33.950

"and children, sufficient for the Texas market kind, "at prices as low as they can be bought in New Orleans." Now that's not all of it's in the ad, but let me pause there and just say, as a historian of the 19th century

00:37:33.950 - 00:37:48.370

some of the things that I'm noticing one is that this is telling us about giving us insight into some important dimensions of the interstate slave trade

00:37:48.370 - 00:38:01.880

in the 1850s, and historians have written about the fact that as cotton expanded in the deep south prices that could be paid for enslaved people grew along with

00:38:01.880 - 00:38:15.810

the profit margins in cotton. And that attracted the interest of slave traders who were willing to purchase enslaved people in the upper south places like Virginia and Maryland

00:38:15.810 - 00:38:32.430

where prices were lower, and then transport those people either on coastal steamboats or on steamships down the Mississippi River or in some cases in overland coffles that would have been marched hundreds

00:38:32.430 - 00:38:45.820

of miles to the deep South where these traders would then attempt to sell these people brought from Virginia and Maryland at higher prices in places like Galveston and Houston.

00:38:46.940 - 00:38:56.480

We obviously don't know exactly how these men, women and children arrived in Galveston. I think it's probably, or in Houston I think it's probably safe to speculate

00:38:56.480 - 00:39:11.400

they came through Galveston and were brought to Houston for sale. The prices are compared to the prices that could be paid in New Orleans, which was the largest domestic slave market

00:39:11.510 - 00:39:24.360

in the country at this moment in time. But the fact that they were brought from Virginia and Maryland means that their experience was very sadly representative

00:39:24.360 - 00:39:40.020

of the experience of hundreds of thousands of African Americans in this period. And if we try to estimate the number of sales that were made like this somewhere around 1 million enslaved

00:39:41.060 - 00:39:52.660

people were brought from the upper south states like Virginia and Maryland to the deep South in places like New Orleans and Galveston. So we're talking about 50 people here

00:39:52.660 - 00:40:05.370

but we need to set that in the context of 1 million. And in some historians have even referred to that movement of enslaved people through the interstate trade as a second middle passage

00:40:06.240 - 00:40:22.120

one that was extremely destructive to African American communities in the upper south. We can imagine families being broken up. We can imagine communal ties being disrupted

00:40:22.120 - 00:40:39.370

by a trader like Thomas S Gresham regarding those people as a lot of property that he could sell. Is there anything in that first part of the ad that raises questions for you as well Dr. Byrd?

00:40:49.090 - 00:41:11.520

So no big questions, right? I'm curious about and you gestured toward an answer about how they get to Houston, right? Do they arrive by ship straight to Galveston?

00:41:12.570 - 00:41:31.230

Are they transshipped from some other Gulf port to Galveston? Are they marched to Houston or pushed along some combination of by you and walking,

00:41:36.740 - 00:41:51.950

it is an overpowering, right? Just, I think in the imagination of historians who study this era, the sentences in this ad are overpowering for the amount of distress

00:41:53.290 - 00:42:10.620

that they contain when we focus on the people involved. And to return to a theme that we've talked about so often the silences in between these lines and how much is left out of this advertisement,

00:42:12.410 - 00:42:31.270

this piece of publicity that doesn't refer to them by name that doesn't group them together as families but anonymizes them for the purpose of commodifying them and reading them for sale.

00:42:31.270 - 00:42:45.000

So I agree. I mean, it's the kind of document that because of the scale of the interstate slave trade is sadly not unfamiliar to historians who would peruse through newspapers

00:42:45.000 - 00:42:59.300

from this period, but it's impossible not to pause and stop every time you see something like this and reflect on all that's left out. But now I wanna talk about why I'm discussing

00:42:59.300 - 00:43:13.970

this particular advertisement in the context of our Doc Talks and why I found it in the first place is I was trying different ways of looking for William Marsh Rice's name

00:43:13.970 - 00:43:28.830

in 19th century newspapers from this period and at the bottom of this ad placed by Thomas Gresham for these enslaved people for sale. He says, "Refer to Messrs R & D.G Mills

00:43:30.100 - 00:43:44.780

"and J.C Shaw of Galveston, or B.A Shepherd "and W.M Rice and Co. Houston, "Colonel Charles Bolton, Caney and Colonel John W. Walker." There's a list at the bottom

00:43:44.780 - 00:44:03.440

of this ad of Gresham's references, if you will. And my attention was immediately caught by the fact that William Marsh rice and company, this is in 1853. So by that time, that could refer either to Rice's

00:44:03.440 - 00:44:17.980

partnership with Abraham Grosbeak or it might refer to his partnership with his brother, Frederick Allen Rice. I'd have to go back and check to see when Rice arrived. So one set of questions is who the William Marsh Rice

00:44:17.980 - 00:44:32.390

and Company is at that moment. But the bigger question, obviously for me is what is Rice's name doing in this ad and what work is the reference to Rice doing for aggression?

00:44:34.170 - 00:44:48.120

And it's a question that I'm not sure I can answer with certainty yet because if we were to pan around on this page we'd find other advertisements that also list references

00:44:48.120 - 00:44:59.480

of this kind, cotton factors who are willing to buy and sell cotton, let's say in Houston. And they want to list merchants that are good references

00:44:59.580 - 00:45:12.310

for a particular land agent or a particular cotton broker. And so, as I was preparing for this Doc Talk, I asked around some colleagues who are experts

00:45:12.310 - 00:45:27.210

in the history of the slave trade and slave traders in particular to ask what they would make of this kind of reference to Rice in this context. And I also went back to some books about this subject

00:45:27.210 - 00:45:42.510

including "Carry Me Back" by Steven Daily who's a professor across town at the University of Houston and this book is focused on the domestic slave trade in American life.

00:45:43.540 - 00:45:53.920

And he talks about the fact that many slave traders advertisements in this period included these sorts of references at the bottom.

00:45:54.980 - 00:46:11.170

And according to him, it was partly because of the reputation that slave traders had in some parts of the Americans South for engaging in unsavory practices. So there was a recognition

00:46:11.170 - 00:46:29.140

on the part of some white southerners that not every enslaved person arriving for sale in the deep south from Maryland or Virginia had necessarily arrived there by legal means as they were understood in the 19th century.

00:46:29.140 - 00:46:40.200

Where they kidnapped from the North? Could it be possible that they were free people that slave traders had speculated and by kidnapping and bringing to the south.

00:46:40.200 - 00:46:54.100

And that's the only one of many kinds of unsavory practices that that slave traders were sometimes accused of. And according to Daily, because of that, a number of dealers employed creative advertising

00:46:54.100 - 00:47:09.410

to help improve their public image as honest businessmen. And he goes on to say that one such technique would have been to list references of reputable local business firms

00:47:09.410 - 00:47:26.880

as a way of sort of projecting the normalcy of this kind of business and the respectability of it. So that could be one reason why Rice's name is listed there. It might speak to Rice's standing

00:47:27.040 - 00:47:37.820

in the Houston Community that Gresham wanted to be associated with with him. The question in my mind for further research though, is there more to it than that?

00:47:38.840 - 00:47:54.540

Because we also know that merchants like William Marsh Rice often as we've talked about in this Doc Talk before extended credit and helped to support financing for planters in the Houston area,

00:47:54.540 - 00:48:06.910

advancing plantation supplies on credit on the understanding that he would receive and sell the cotton that came in at the end of the season. We know that he accepted enslaved people as collateral

00:48:06.910 - 00:48:19.780

for some of those loans in mortgage agreements. And so another question we could ask is, did Gresham mention these merchant firms partly because buyers have enslaved people

00:48:20.960 - 00:48:37.320

who would have been from the point of view of a planter and expensive capital investment might need some financing, might need some assistance with getting credit to purchase from this lot

00:48:37.320 - 00:48:48.340

of people that Gresham has for sale. And so when I asked some colleagues and historians, there's two ways of reading this and maybe they're not

00:48:48.340 - 00:49:02.760

in contradiction with one another that on the one hand Gresham might have cited Rice to bolster his own respectability but also at the same time alerted potential buyers to Rice,

00:49:02.970 - 00:49:24.340

as someone who could help to broker these sales of people brought from Virginia and Maryland. I'm going to ask the question with some 21st century terms.

00:49:24.340 - 00:49:48.670

So you can help me out on some of this, if I read this ad and I'm interested in purchasing two enslaved African Americans but don't have sufficient money,

00:49:48.670 - 00:50:03.330

one of the things that you'll be interested in figuring out is whether if I as a reader would see some of these people as a bank. And as a way to finance my purchasing

00:50:04.340 - 00:50:17.410

of these folks who had just arrived. That's that's exactly right because banks were actually illegal for a large part of Texas's history

00:50:17.410 - 00:50:29.560

they were sort of viewed with suspicion. And so often merchant firms like William Marsh Rice and Company provided some of the services that we would expect banks today to provide,

00:50:30.450 - 00:50:39.820

lines of credit and loans. And so that's a possibility here. And I think it's heightened by the appearance of some of these other names

00:50:39.820 - 00:50:55.680

R & D.G Mills are not unusual names. They were some of the sort of wealthiest planters and financiers in Texas in this period operating out of Galveston.

00:50:55.680 - 00:51:07.740

And there's also the name that some of our audience might have noticed right before William Marsh Rice and Company there's a mention of B.A Shepherd, B.A Shepherd,

00:51:09.460 - 00:51:26.250

does that ring any bells for you? Interesting that you should say bells and the ringing of bells, but could it be the Shepherd that's related to the Shepherd School of Music?

00:51:28.130 - 00:51:45.880

It could, that would be Benjamin A. Shepherd who was born in Virginia around 1814, but eventually made his way to Galveston and then settled in Houston in the early 1840s and became a commission merchant

00:51:45.880 - 00:51:56.880

much like William Marsh Rice. And after the civil war he went on to become a banker in Houston. Since you mentioned banks earlier

00:51:56.880 - 00:52:11.540

and invested in a lot of the same industries a lot of the same companies as William Marsh Rice, railroads, transportation companies and oversaw one of the largest banks in Houston

00:52:12.040 - 00:52:26.010

for most of his career until his death in the 1890s. Now you may ask, well, what is his death in 1890s have to do with the Shepherd School of Music which didn't really get started until

00:52:27.020 - 00:52:43.320

after the integration of the university and in the 1970s which is a question I had as well. But it turns out that one of the earliest donors of the Shepherd School was the granddaughter

00:52:43.320 - 00:52:57.140

of Benjamin A. Shepherd, the BA Shepherd whose name appears in that ad. Her name was Sallie Shepherd Perkins pictured here on the screen in 1940.

00:52:57.140 - 00:53:16.990

And she wanted to donate the money to create a music school in the south land as she put it to pay homage to her grandfather, Benjamin A. Shepherd who had apparently been a great influence on her life and particularly

00:53:16.990 - 00:53:30.600

her interest in music. He had encouraged her to pursue her musical talents and was said to have remarked while she was playing on a toy piano that she needed to go to Leipzig

00:53:30.600 - 00:53:40.930

and its famous school of music. One of the leading music conservatories of the late 19th century. And so Sallie Shepherd Perkins in 1950

00:53:40.930 - 00:53:53.240

made the initial gift to create the Shepherd School of Music. And in honor of her grandfather, Benjamin A Shepherd. And so there's so many questions then that I think

00:53:53.240 - 00:54:09.350

that ad, which again, as far as I'm aware has never been discussed before or seen in connection with William Marsh Rice's history about if not the direct capital, the social capital networks

00:54:09.840 - 00:54:27.720

that the slave trade created in places like Houston and Galveston, bringing merchants together as references as financiers and laying the foundations of some of the financial institutions that powered

00:54:27.720 - 00:54:41.190

Houston's growth in the late 19th century in the antebellum period and through economic transactions that involved men, women, and children like the unnamed individuals

00:54:41.190 - 00:54:54.120

in that advertisement placed by Gresham. Good hard work today. On that sobering note, I think we'll turn it to the audience

00:54:54.120 - 00:55:09.540

in case there's any questions that they have for us. One question in the chat has to do with whether perhaps Shepherd Drive very close to the the Rice Campus might also be named

00:55:09.540 - 00:55:20.320

after Benjamin A. Shepherd. I'd have to check that, but I wouldn't be surprised because he was an extremely prominent figure in Houston history.

00:55:21.650 - 00:55:33.900

And we also let's see have some Q and A's. You had a few that you wanted to address. Yeah. Well, we've got some good extra information

00:55:33.900 - 00:55:54.850

in the Q and A that extends some of the questions raised in the first part of the presentation. So we have a Rice alumni or alumni who says, "Makes me wonder what else my white Rice classmate

00:55:54.850 - 00:56:06.270

"was thinking when she told me "that I was the first black person "her mother had ever met who was not a maid." And what did that mean when she said that?

00:56:07.240 - 00:56:20.550

Yeah absolutely. It kind of speaks to the image or the kind of the imagined assumptions that many white students at Rice had

00:56:20.550 - 00:56:36.590

and the lenses through which they were then seeing new classmates when they began to arrive. And I didn't mention this in the first part of my presentation but I think if for folks in the audience

00:56:36.590 - 00:56:50.950

who want to get a more kind of visceral image of what students may have had in their minds when they went to see Hopkins or when they thought about Hopkins

00:56:50.950 - 00:57:03.920

and other blues men and blues women there's a film called "The Blues According to Lightning Hopkins" that you can take a look at

00:57:03.920 - 00:57:22.840

and I won't characterize it but I will say this, that some of the choices that the film makers make reinforce some of the questions that we've asked here today. Since you mentioned films, that makes me think

00:57:22.840 - 00:57:39.750

of the one moving image document that we've done on the Doc Talks of Dr. Freeman and the way that he filmed himself walking across campus in a three-piece suit and dressed in a very respectable way.

00:57:41.500 - 00:57:56.970

And I think the questions you've raised today help us better understand an image like that and what had to be performed and what the ways in which

00:57:56.970 - 00:58:11.320

that created the parameters in which interactions on campus took place in those years. Great questions. And well, we wanna thank everyone in the audience

00:58:11.320 - 00:58:21.790

for spending this hour with us. We hope you'll be back at our next Doc Talk. We hope that you'll also share with others about what we're doing here every Friday at noon.

00:58:21.790 - 00:58:32.520

It's a great way to keep up to date with the research that the task force is doing and learn about things as we saw this week, right alongside us as we're conducting this research

00:58:32.520 - 00:58:44.900

and thinking about the questions that need to be answered about our university's history. We also wanna encourage you to go to taskforce.rice@edu, where you can find podcast episodes

00:58:44.900 - 00:58:57.760

of past episodes or past Doc Talks including debrief conversations with the wonderful Kate Coli from alumni relations. And we hope that you'll follow along there

00:58:57.760 - 00:59:10.770

or you can subscribe to the Doc Talks podcast in Spotify or Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So thank you so much for being here. And I hope that everyone has a good weekend.

00:59:11.700 - 00:59:16.760

Great to be back with you in this way Prof. Same, take care. See you next week.