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Dr. Byrd. Dr. McDaniel. I think the word of the day is "brr." Yes, for Houston.

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That's true, that's true. For Houston. You have to add that part. A little cold. Apparently, well, I'm seeing you on campus.

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I feel like, I feel like you're breaking the rules. I, well, you know, they said essential workers should come in, and I thought doc talks is essential. That's true. That's true.

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Well, I'm gonna say I'm at work too. That's what I'm gonna say, since my background is blurred. Well, the thing is, you don't know, this, this could all be a really fancy backdrop. That's true. That's true.

00:01:05.670 - 00:01:18.660

Never know that it's, we're, now that we're... Except that hand-waving I feel like gave it away. We're in the metaverse now. But I hope, I hope you're staying well and warm.

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We are well and holding on. I, I need to say, for the sake of my grandchildren, that we were all, almost all of us, sick this week. I'm the only one who wasn't sick.

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And so that's for posterity. Or at least I'm not sick yet. And, and they did well, thank goodness for vaccines and boosters and all that. And, and thank goodness for friends and colleagues who will give you tortilla soup in

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the, in the middle of all of that. And so we, we, I appreciate that. We appreciated it. But a good, exciting week.

00:02:06.230 - 00:02:23.270

Indeed. It's kind of one of those weeks you're probably not sorry to see go. No. I never wanted doc talk to come faster. Well, you made it though. We're here. It's Friday, it's noon, that means it's time for doc talks, and we're so

00:02:23.390 - 00:02:36.380

glad to see everyone in our audience who's here today. We're here every Friday, as you know, to talk about some of the documents we're working with on the Task Force on Slavery, Segregation, and Racial Injustice here at Rice University.

00:02:36.560 - 00:02:50.900

And I'm really excited to hear about the document, a lengthy document, Dr. Byrd, that you shared with me you were planning to lead off with today. Yeah, well, thank you. It's a, it's a document that we've mentioned before.

00:02:52.880 - 00:03:16.160

We, when we, when we saw that we were going to have access to it, we teased it on a, on a previous show. And so today we're, we're going to get into it a little. Hopefully you can see my screen.

00:03:16.160 - 00:03:51.380

I've got Friday Night Lights up, which I'm sure a lot of folks in Texas and across the country now know about. But what I learned this week is that Rice also has a Friday Night Lights, right, there's an important book written about a season of Rice football

00:03:51.380 - 00:04:13.070

in the early 1970s. And are you starting to think that football books kind of have some title things with days of the week, right? So there's Friday Night Lights, and then there's a book about Rice football from the

00:04:13.070 - 00:04:37.400

early 1970s, '70s, called Saturday's Children: "Big-time college football, a bone-shattering, gut-wrenching, inside account of what, of what it's like to be," right, and then you get the title. It's by Giles Tippette, also the author of one of my favorite movies, or at least the

00:04:37.400 - 00:05:09.090

book that became one of my favorite movies, Tombstone. I like that. And I learned about this book reading Rodrigo Barnes's memoir, The Bouncing Football: Life Lessons on the Gridiron. And, and so what I wanna talk about today is, I'm gonna spend some time in his sections

00:05:09.090 - 00:05:38.450

of the book about his early life, and in particular, his time at Rice, paying attention to, right, just details that are interesting for us as people who are following the desegregation of the university, but also trying to draw out what types of questions Mr.

00:05:38.450 - 00:06:08.820

Barnes's account answers for us about pioneering black students at Rice, but maybe even more importantly, what types of questions it gives us, new questions, or the ways that it informs some of the questions that, that that we already have. So I thought I'd start with just a brief introduction to Rodrigo Barnes, though we, we

00:06:08.820 - 00:06:36.780

met him ever so briefly a couple of weeks ago. He grew up in Waco, Texas, was one of the three original male football players that desegregate Rice football, along with Stahle Vincent, who we've done a doc talk on, and Mike Tyler, who we've also mentioned on, on the doc talks.

00:06:38.160 - 00:07:08.790

They all arrive on South Main in the late 1960s. Rodrigo Barnes becomes one of the most celebrated of the, of the players, a highly decorated football player while he's at Rice, his sophomore season, wins Sophomore Defensive Player of the Year for the Southwest Conference.

00:07:10.310 - 00:07:31.040

For the Southwest Conference, just thought I'd repeat that. But also All Southwest Conference Defensive Player of the Year. And, and back in the late 1960s, freshmen didn't play football, right. So they played a freshman schedule.

00:07:31.040 - 00:07:47.630

So if you're this decorated sophomore year, that's, that's basically your first year of college football. Freshman play an abbreviated season, and then, and then basically practice the, the first year.

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Has an even more outstanding season at Rice a couple of years later in 1971, is equally well decorated. Southwest Conference Player of the Year and All Southwest Conference linebacker, and so even during his, his time as a, as a student at Rice, he was, he was well decorated and

00:08:15.920 - 00:08:39.370

acknowledged on, on the football field. Folks who have followed the, the early history of black students at Rice will also know that he's got many accomplishments off the football field as well. And that's what we'll, we'll lead into, as, as I continue.

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I wanna start with, without, you know what, I'm sharing my screen, and I realize I don't really need to do a lot of screen sharing. People may get tired of screen sharing. What I wanna do first is just, I said the, the, the main thing I wanted was to respond

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to the book as, as a historian in terms of questions that it raises for us. But, but, larger questions, but before I do that, I just, I wanna mention some of the details that kind of stick with me, that I'm not quite sure what, what to do with, right, but, but I think they're, they're fascinating, all the, all the same.

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So one of the things I took away from Barnes's account of his years at Rice is, is the importance of thinking about different desegregating spaces across the university, which I don't know that I had given due attention to until this. So black students arrive and occupy different spaces at the university, and

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athletics is of course one of those spaces, and it's, and it's a kind of peculiar space. But Barnes's focus on athletics raises the other spaces that we might also want to be attending to as, as we continue, right. No one's not going to remember the residential colleges as a space that's,

00:10:18.980 - 00:10:42.260

that's desegregating. But labs, right, I imagine desegregate, various types of classes across campus desegregate in different ways. And Rodrigo Barnes is, is quite particular about some classes that he, he

00:10:42.260 - 00:11:01.730

finds or found more problematic than others. And so in his account, classes in the PE department, right, for folks who wanted to major in physical education and health, he thought were particularly, the faculty there, he thought could be particularly problematic.

00:11:02.780 - 00:11:41.600

And he doesn't name names, but raises the questions of whether there are departmental leanings, right, that, that either empower students or can be problematic with, for students. He also, and this is a, this is an idea or a trope that is familiar to, to many of us, he pays close attention to the ways that sports, right, color

00:11:41.600 - 00:11:54.800

desegregation in particular ways. Because if you're on a football team, what's different about a football team than a history class? I'm sure if I pose the question to you, you could answer that question in several ways,

00:11:54.800 - 00:12:17.480

Dr. McDaniel, what's the difference between a football field and a history class? One, there's a lot they have in common, especially the way we teach, but, but there are some things that are, that are different about them. And one of the things that Barnes reminds us about, if we need reminding, is

00:12:17.480 - 00:12:36.960

that football coaches need to win football games, right. We don't leave each class thinking, "Oh my God, am I, am I not going to teach next week," right, "because of my performance?" That was a rough one, will I still have my job?

00:12:37.860 - 00:12:56.880

I have thought that, I have left class thinking that I lost, that's for sure. I've often lost, right. I've, the same, right, but I always thought I was gonna be back, right. But coaches, right, and players work under different pressures.

00:12:56.880 - 00:13:27.300

And one of the things that's clear in Barnes's book is the way that those pressures, right, can, can move to help overcome some people's bias, right, or at least paper over a bias that a coach might have, if they see that this player, right, regardless of his race or class or whatever, can help them win, that, that, that creates a

00:13:27.300 - 00:13:36.810

different dynamic that, that he is quite attentive to. I feel like I'm talking too slow, Dr. McDaniel, so I'm gonna speed up now. I'm gonna rush through the detail...

00:13:37.290 - 00:13:55.420

Take your time, take your time, take your time. And head to the, head to the question. Another dynamic that I hadn't really thought of, and this is, this is a terrible thing for a historian to admit, is that I've been bound by a certain presentism when it comes

00:13:55.420 - 00:14:19.470

to the dynamic of black students across campus that Rodrigo Barnes really opens up for me, or opened up for me. So I think of black Rice now as being phenomenally diverse, just remarkably and incredibly diverse in, in so many different kinds of ways.

00:14:19.920 - 00:14:44.940

And because I'm a Rice grad, right, I don't necessarily, and my, and I don't think of my own experience at Rice as being as diverse as the present experience, right. I sometimes shoot back in time, "Well, if my black experience at Rice, if I didn't consider it diverse in the early 1970s, what, what would have, what would it have

00:14:44.940 - 00:15:14.200

been like?" But Barnes brings a different, a different dynamic to understanding early black life. So when he shows up at the university, he says, you know, "There are about twelve of us, about a dozen of us or so," right, but by the time he's leaving, he thinks, "There are around thirty of us or so." And that move from twelve to thirty, in

00:15:14.200 - 00:15:40.570

his eyes, rearranges a great deal about the scope of black life on campus, right. And that's just not, that's the move I've made from the '80s to the 2010s, right, but he's, he sees that same move and that same diversification of black life on campus, with, with a doubling of the, of the student population.

00:15:45.510 - 00:16:08.610

But also paying particular attention to the ways in which that, the part of that number that are black athletes also speaks to that growing diversity. So, so he thinks, when, he thinks about a third of that thirty toward the end of his career at Rice were probably, were probably athletes.

00:16:10.780 - 00:16:26.230

Now I'm really speeding up. So black spaces on campus, outside of campus, are clear in Mr. Barnes's work. It's clear that we can learn some more about black students on campus if we know a little

00:16:26.230 - 00:16:52.900

bit more about the places where black folks in and around this part of Houston may have entertained themselves. On Almeda, or on what is now Emancipation Avenue, and then Dowling Avenue, but also Market Square arises as a place of, of, of mainly counterculture

00:16:52.900 - 00:17:20.270

recreation, white, white counterculture recreation, but Mr. Barnes found, found his way there as well. The dynamic of interracial friendships and particularly interracial romantic relationships is given a type of attention in the book

00:17:20.270 - 00:17:43.850

that, that really speaks to the interpersonal dynamics, and some real troubling interpersonal, interpersonal dynamics at the university. I think this is the, the, this may be the only section of the book that, that I read, but it speaks to an interaction between Mr.

00:17:43.850 - 00:18:08.330

Barnes and one of his coaches, right, Mr. Barnes and one of his coaches, about, decisions he was making about who to, who to be friends with. So Rodrigo Barnes writes, "But racism isn't always overt and can take subtle forms." I

00:18:08.330 - 00:18:24.080

don't know that what I'm about to read is very subtle, but, but we're talking about the early 1970s, and so it's a, it's a different dynamic. "A good example is one of the assistant coaches noticed that I was friends with this white girl.

00:18:24.140 - 00:18:48.170

We weren't dating or anything, but any time people saw black guys talking to white girls, it was an occasion for suspicion." So I don't know if we've spent any time on this yet in, in, in, in doc talks. I think we mentioned it a little in our first doc talk with Jacqueline McCauley and

00:18:48.170 - 00:19:16.670

her invitation to a, to one of the dances by a white student on campus. So this is in that area that may deserve some returning to. "The coach couldn't tell me not to associate with her because she was white and I was black. So he told me that she was a," and then he uses a slur against women, "who I

00:19:16.670 - 00:19:36.890

ought to stay away from. 'Surely you're better than that,'" the coach says to Barnes. "The, the reality, though, was that she was nothing of the sort. The coach was just trying to find some supposedly legitimate reasons for me not to

00:19:36.890 - 00:20:04.270

be friendly with the white girl, but to do that, he had to resort to slandering her to put me in my place and to keep me away from her." It goes on and on in a little more interesting detail, and it's another reason, another reason to, to, to buy, to buy the book. The last interesting thing, and then I'll get, or our last kind of detailed thing,

00:20:04.270 - 00:20:27.070

then I'll rush through the questions, is, right, there's an irony that is, that becomes clear to me from reading Barnes's book. So Rice is established, right, Rice is established for "white youth of slender means," right, it's a university that is established basically for folks who don't

00:20:27.070 - 00:20:47.220

have a lot of money, right. And I don't know why this hasn't...it's established for folks who don't have a lot of money but the ways the university has been organized through time does not, has not taken into account that fundamental reality about its mission.

00:20:47.460 - 00:21:11.010

And so Barnes spends a not insignificant amount of time talking about being hungry on, on campus. So, and, and how folks dealt with that. So, and this is the 1970s, and one of the reasons I'm, right, my eyes are all big and

00:21:11.010 - 00:21:37.170

my, my, my forehead, my forehead is furrowed is because, so this is an issue that is fundamentally based in the way the university was founded and organized, so, has had to have existed from the beginning, and that Mr. Barnes is writing about it in the 2000s, and it, and it colored his experience in the

00:21:37.170 - 00:21:56.510

1970s, means that it's likely something that students have grappled with since there have been students at the university. So what I'm saying is, Rodrigo Barnes can't be the first person to complain about this, right? And so it has to have been a student complaint for some time.

00:21:58.260 - 00:22:26.940

But we've only relatively recently begun to really grapple with this part of college life. So, so, you see, I got trapped in that cave, I'm sorry, I got, I got, I got a little wiled up. Okay, let's quickly, quickly go to, so now here are the things I really wanna talk about, and that are these watersheds in the book, and touchstones that, that are peer

00:22:26.940 - 00:22:48.450

and origin stories that are expansive and that can and should inform the, the way our work continues. So the first one is one that we are aware of, and that is, Barnes spends a decent amount of time talking about a kind of overwhelming lack of institutional support in

00:22:48.450 - 00:23:06.240

the area of student life, in the area of student wellbeing, outside of academics. You remember Raymond Johnson, Dr. Johnson is talking about this very early on. Rodrigo Barnes makes some responses or has some opinions about the earliest black

00:23:06.240 - 00:23:32.600

undergraduates at the university and some of their issues that they faced. And as he remembers it, he would, he would analyze some of the issues that they face and explain some of their problems as being stemming from a lack of institutional support, which he says was really for every student, right.

00:23:32.940 - 00:23:58.920

Every, no students were well supported, but what that meant is that black students and international students had, had particular problems. He falls into some really hard academic times after his sophomore year and is put on probation. And that probation really opens up Rice to him in new ways.

00:23:58.950 - 00:24:16.080

He goes home for the summer, he loses his scholarship, he has to come back, make some money to get back to Rice. And he doesn't play football while he tries to get his grades up. And what that means is he's able to take like 19 hours worth of classes, and he's able

00:24:16.080 - 00:24:45.150

to hang out in the Rice Student Center, and in his words, he's able to talk more deeply and fully into a wider cross-section of black students across campus. And that probation becomes a really important touchstone in his life at at Rice that, that then begins to inform what's going to become his activism across campus.

00:24:45.150 - 00:25:13.110

He becomes, in his words, more, more committed to solving the problems that the lack of support for black students have, have on campus. And so there's an interesting origin story of the Black Student Union as, as being, and we've tended to that some in previous doc talks, but, but he also raises a different, a

00:25:13.110 - 00:25:31.740

different watershed. And so, and it may be a personal watershed, and this is why, tending to the origins of the BSU, his book raises some, some questions about that, it's because, what we're going to find is probably, right, we're gonna find numerous origin stories,

00:25:32.010 - 00:25:53.740

right, a range of origin stories. And before I read Barnes, I didn't, and I know you've done some work about this, so I'm gonna ask you and we'll see what happens, but I didn't, I didn't put, until I read Barnes, I didn't put the BSU and the Masterson Crisis, those weren't two things I

00:25:53.740 - 00:26:07.790

thought about together. That's an interesting point. I've, I've been thinking about them together, but tell me a little bit more. Why, why do you say that?

00:26:07.790 - 00:26:39.200

Is there some evidence about that in the autobiography? There is. So, so Barnes talks about what the Masterson Crisis, the environment that it helps create on campus, and he talks about the Masterson Crisis as a, as an introduction to campus politics, that, that informs his approach to black politics on

00:26:39.200 - 00:26:55.780

campus. So he shows up and he's, to, to use his own words, he's, he doesn't really know, this is his own words. I don't know how seriously we should take this. A lot of people, this is a trope that a lot of people use when they talk about their

00:26:55.780 - 00:27:13.770

introduction to politics. But he says, he wasn't quite sure what was going on with the Masterson Crisis, right, so, but that's, that's kind of well-worn trope for, so maybe he wasn't, maybe, maybe he was. So he says he's not quite sure what's going on about the Masterson Crisis, but it

00:27:13.770 - 00:27:29.300

was, but it was ubiquitous in ways, according to him, that you couldn't help but get drawn in. So, so he finds himself out at these protests, right, and I don't remember if he says he's carrying signs or anything, but carrying signs.

00:27:29.300 - 00:27:58.630

He might not be, right. And what he sees is the university turn to pressure, right, turn to a kind of democratic pressure. And so once he's on probation, right, and he's talking to more black students and then

00:27:58.630 - 00:28:29.200

recalling the Masterson Crisis and how that thing unfolds, he says it kind of occurs to him, well, the answer to everything at Rice is kind of clear, post-Masterson, right? You want stuff, you need stuff, you apply mass democratic pressure. And so as a historian, and now I'm about to, I'm gonna shut up after I say this, Dr.

00:28:29.200 - 00:28:51.110

McDaniel, because I'm, you know, I'm, I'm due a, I'm, I'm due going far afield now, and so I'm about to go far afield. So when I was coming up as a historian, one of the, one of the great things about being in graduate school was learning the black history of things that I already thought I

00:28:51.110 - 00:29:09.760

knew the history of. So like once my mentors started to teach me that I could not understand the civil rights movement, which I would fight you if you said it didn't start in the sixties, by the time I got to graduate school, I would fight you if you said, right, that I couldn't

00:29:09.760 - 00:29:24.460

understand the modern civil, that the modern civil rights movement is a postwar movement. Like, I, it's like, World War II? I don't have time to be learning about World War II or the Depression or any of that stuff. I wanna know about the civil rights movement.

00:29:24.970 - 00:29:45.250

But right, this this argument that the civil, the 1960s civil rights movement is a postwar movement, right, and, and so you gotta understand the war, right, and then you got to understand black folk's place in the war. And then you gotta understand how they come back from the war, right, how the war

00:29:46.120 - 00:30:09.760

energizes a certain kind of politics, right. So that, that's what I started thinking about when I thought about Masterson and what are the, what are the watersheds in Rice history, right, that we do not fully understand because we don't understand their African American histories, but also what

00:30:09.760 - 00:30:31.900

might be the watersheds in African American history on campus that can be significantly more fully understood when contextualized by some of the larger politics on campus. So there you go. That's my, that's my doc for today.

00:30:31.900 - 00:30:55.480

Well, I'm as soon as we end here, I'm gonna get myself a copy, because it sounds fascinating. And, you know, the conversation about how to connect the origins of the Black Student Union to larger forces on campus and things that were happening in the '60s connects in my mind with our conversation last week where we were looking at the

00:30:55.480 - 00:31:20.290

protest outside the basketball game and situating it not in 1976 or '77 where it's usually been placed on timelines, but putting it where it belongs, in 1972, around these debates around the Black Student Union Center and getting recognition from the university for the Black Student Union, and I pulled up the petition we were looking at

00:31:20.380 - 00:31:36.700

last week that shows Mr. Barnes's signature at the top of this petition calling for a BSU Center, because I think it fits very well with, with what you're saying. But this whole point about how to write these narratives, I think, is one that we

00:31:36.700 - 00:32:00.880

need to keep turning over, because the Masterson Crisis, you're right, is typically thought of in isolation from some of, some of these later things that are happening in the 1970s, or it's connected to, to the counterculture on campus and the Abbie Hoffman affair in 1970.

00:32:01.090 - 00:32:21.880

So thinking in terms of the narratives of the Masterson Crisis and how, what its, what its origins might be if looked at from the perspective of black students and what its consequences might be if looked at from the perspective of, of black students. So there's a lot of, a lot of richness there that I think I'm gonna continue to think

00:32:21.880 - 00:32:38.980

about. Thanks for sharing that. I hope we'll get a chance to talk more about Rodrigo Barnes in future weeks. This is, I think, a good segue into the document I wanted to, to talk about, because the last several weeks, we've been discussing black students in, in the 1970s,

00:32:38.980 - 00:33:00.280

their efforts to, to organize the Black Student Union, some of the, the challenges that they were facing in the residential colleges. We saw that Lovett College, for example, was considering appointing a black graduate student as an RA because of a concern that black students in the college were living off

00:33:00.280 - 00:33:21.760

campus or they weren't feeling included into the, the college community. We looked last week at a conversation between Curtis Davis and the Dean of Students at the time about the needs, the real needs that black students had on campus in the 1970s, which I think is what you're pointing us to as well.

00:33:21.760 - 00:33:39.670

So I wanted to return to the 1970s, and you said earlier that you were gonna admit something that you probably shouldn't admit as a historian, and I'm going to admit something that most people don't realize about historians, but it's true, which is that we really don't have very good memories.

00:33:41.360 - 00:33:55.900

You know, people think historians can just pull up any fact at any moment, but we have to write things down. And if we don't write things down, then we're just as apt to forget as, as anyone else. And so I was I was sharing with you, Dr.

00:33:55.900 - 00:34:13.960

Byrd, earlier that I couldn't remember if we have talked about this first document I wanted to show on doc talks before. I think we probably have, and so I'll have to beg the indulgence of our audience if we have, but I promise that we're gonna get to a document that's actually not a document

00:34:15.100 - 00:34:35.890

that we have not done on doc talks before. But this seemed like an appropriate place to begin for me, it's, it's a Rice Thresher front page from 1977, February 10th, 1977, and it's above the fold, an article about music and discussion to mark Black History Week.

00:34:36.850 - 00:35:02.200

We should have started off by acknowledging, Happy Black History Month, we're now in February, and one of the things we've talked about before is efforts of black students in Rice's history to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination and later his birthday, to organize black cultural events on campus that would introduce a wide array

00:35:02.200 - 00:35:23.740

of students to black music, to black literature. And this, I think, falls in that, that vein, an effort in 1977 by the Black Student Union, which now, four years after the document, four or five years after the documents we talked about last week, clearly is organized, visible, active on campus, and has

00:35:23.740 - 00:35:39.500

arranged a whole series of events to mark Black History Week. And I love this article for a couple of reasons, one is that it talks about history at the beginning and gives the history of Black History Week, its origins in the early 20th century in the work of Carter G.

00:35:39.520 - 00:35:56.890

Woodson, a noted black historian. And then it also gives us a sense of some of the things that the Black Student Union thought of as important to introduce on campus. The week was gonna launch on the first Sunday with a gospel music festival in the

00:35:56.890 - 00:36:14.260

Grand Hall of the RMC, and choirs from the Antioch Baptist Church, from I guess Missionary Baptist Church, were gonna be on campus. There were gonna be readings of black literature. On Wednesday, there was a panel discussion that I really wish we could find some

00:36:14.260 - 00:36:36.880

recording of or some other record about, because it featured among the panelists, Dr. Rose Brewer, who we've talked about before on the doc talks, an Assistant Visiting Professor of Sociology; Robert Bell, Professor of Psychology at Rice, and also a key figure in advising early black student groups on campus; and Student Association

00:36:36.880 - 00:36:56.220

representatives from the University of Houston and Texas Southern University were on campus to discuss the topic, "Black Students and the Promise of White Education:" colon, "Cultural Suicide?" Question mark. So you can imagine that that must have been a very stimulating conversation.

00:36:56.430 - 00:37:22.020

Then on Friday, there was gonna be a dance seminar with the Dance Theater of Harlem, and this is the part that, that I think, this is the reason I think we've talked about this document before, because I remember seeing an article on the doc talks that mentioned the band that was slated to perform on Sunday, February 20th, in 1977 at "The Pub."

00:37:23.590 - 00:37:52.360

Also known as sometimes "Willie's Pub," but here it was just referred to as The Pub in 1977. And the, the band that was going to be performing was Bubba Thomas and the Lightmen Plus One, "a nationally famous jazz ensemble" that was appearing in Pub "courtesy of the Rice Program Council," and all of these events, the article concludes, were

00:37:52.360 - 00:38:14.380

gonna be "presented with no admission charge with the hope of culturally enlightening you, and the BSU invites all the Rice community to take part in these activities." So I think we've mentioned Bubba Thomas before. I know we've talked about different times in Rice history when black musicians appeared on

00:38:14.380 - 00:38:33.670

campus, and we've talked about Lightnin' Hopkins and some of the Thresher coverage about Lightnin' Hopkins. We've talked about Milton Larkin back in the 1930s and his big band on campus. We've talked about a band called Black Blood that appeared at an early Martin Luther King

00:38:33.850 - 00:38:51.260

Jr. Day celebration hosted by the BSU. But I'm pretty certain, you can correct me if I'm wrong. Again, memories are faulty. We have not yet on doc talk ever heard a recording of one of those bands on campus.

00:38:51.260 - 00:39:14.000

You're shaking your head. Okay, good. Well, it's, it's cold outside today, so I thought it would be great to bring some heat. And I found recently in going through some of the recordings from KTRU, the radio station here on campus, that a tape recording of this concert by Bubba Thomas and

00:39:14.000 - 00:39:37.670

the Lightmen Plus One in the Pub exists in the Woodson Research Center. And thanks to the efforts of archivist Norie Guthrie and others at Woodson Research Center, many of those tapes have been digitized, and some of them you can actually go to the website and listen to clips right there on the finding aid, and you can see

00:39:37.670 - 00:39:57.080

that there's a lot of really interesting things to listen to here. We don't have time to go to all of them, but including some of our colleagues in the history department, current and former, who appeared on KTRU. This one, though, is a, is a pretty big file, and so I had to write Norie and get a

00:39:57.080 - 00:40:15.250

copy of it sent to me through a file sharing. And I wanted to, to play just a little bit of this concert that was held in Pub in 1977. Before I do, let me just say a little bit more about Bubba Thomas. Bubba Thomas went to Booker T.

00:40:15.250 - 00:40:38.600

Washington High School here in Houston, he grew up in the Fourth Ward. He early on became a student of Conrad O. Johnson, very famous for, for leading the Kashmere Stage Band that went on to become nationally famous and, and educated a whole generation of musicians in Houston,

00:40:38.600 - 00:40:49.550

particularly in jazz. And after his graduation, he played basketball at Booker T. Washington, he learned to play the drums. You can see him here on the set.

00:40:49.590 - 00:41:15.530

Bubba Thomas went to Wiley College in, it's Marshall, Texas, I believe, and graduated from Wiley, returned to Houston later, and in the late '60s, he had a radio show on KYOK here in Houston playing jazz, playing Stevie, Stevie Wonder, a lot of the great hits of that time.

00:41:16.070 - 00:41:39.740

And he formed this band that featured a lot of musicians from TSU, but also people that he had met through the Kashmere Stage Band, through Booker T. Washington, and put together the Lightmen. And it was called The Lightmen Plus One by 1977, because they added a pianist and

00:41:39.740 - 00:41:56.270

vocalist who had not appeared on some of their earlier albums. And here they are coming at you live from the Pub in 1977, and I'm gonna cross my fingers and hope that you can hear this audio. So I'll start it and you tell me if you can hear this.

00:42:01.010 - 00:42:40.880

Aw, hold on to it. Oh, you sound so good tonight, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, look here, look here.

00:42:42.380 - 00:42:59.580

Look here, how many football players we have in here? We have any football players in here? Alright, now, so, you know, I know you have a nice archrival here in the city with a, a cat across the street over there.

00:43:00.300 - 00:43:21.050

Meow. Okay, now we got something we want you to tell them in this current football season. How, Don? Don and Virgil is gonna take off on something. And when he starts, I want all the football players, when he say the magic word, I want you to yell now. Okay?

00:43:21.050 - 00:43:36.610

Now you'll know what the magic word is, because if you're gonna win in September, or whenever it is, you'll know what we're gonna say, and you're gonna tell UH that. Ah! Ah, I hear a rivalry.

00:43:36.610 - 00:43:51.600

Come on, come on, let's work hard, right, come on. Aw yeah, aw yeah. We're gonna let the Rice Band play this, too. Yeah. Come on, work hard for it, yeah.

00:43:53.380 - 00:44:38.160

Aw yeah. Take your time, take your time, take your time, take your time, yeah. Alright. I wish we could take our time and listen to a lot more, but...nothing I say would probably be better than just letting that roll.

00:44:38.170 - 00:45:04.940

You set it up for us to wait for the football players to, to shout! Well, I won't, I won't get that far, because there's a pretty long intro into the song. The title is "Get the Funk Out." So it's, it's a great performance, and there's 2 hours of this on these tape reels that has now been digitized and available at Woodson, and

00:45:04.940 - 00:45:24.950

I was thinking as we were listening back to your presentation at the beginning today about different spaces on campus desegregating, and thinking about Pub and thinking about this performance in Pub I think is a kind of watershed moment that we, we could think about.

00:45:24.950 - 00:45:43.670

Later in this concert, Thomas from the stand says this is their first time playing at Rice, but hopefully not their last. And I also noticed, I noticed you noticing as well, that there were quite a few football players in the audience, and seemed to be having a pretty good time.

00:45:43.820 - 00:46:06.050

So this is, I think, a great record of, of an amazing performance in the Pub. I mean, one of the things that comes through to me is just the joy and the fun that was being had at this particular concert. But it raises questions for me, to, to listen to this, not just as a music fan,

00:46:06.050 - 00:46:26.670

although I'll get to that later, but it does raise questions for me about how Bubba Thomas and the Lightmen came to appear at Pub. The Thresher article that we saw mentioned the Rice Program Council, so I guess one answer we could give to, to that question is the simple one that the Rice Program Council

00:46:27.720 - 00:46:44.700

arranged it and invited Bubba Thomas and the Lightmen to come to campus and play. But we could also, just like you were talking about earlier with the civil rights movement, we could stretch that narrative back farther in time and think about some of the deeper origins of this particular concert.

00:46:45.210 - 00:47:09.120

One of the places I think we would have to go back is to a document that I know we did talk about early on in doc talks, which was a series of articles in the Rice Thresher from two years before that concert in November, or a year and a half, I guess we should say, in November 1975, when there was some controversy over a proposal to charge a

00:47:09.120 - 00:47:25.590

blanket tax to all students to fund minority student organizations, including the Black Student Union, the Chinese Student Association, and the Rice Association of Mexican American Students. And you might recall the Thresher came out pretty strongly with an editorial against

00:47:25.590 - 00:47:50.070

this blanket tax proposal, but there was an article in the same issue from BSU leaders, including the chairman Paul Guillory and Craig L. Jackson, the BSU co-chairman, who wrote to explain that the reasons why they urged approval of this minorities blanket tax, and one of the things they talked about was the

00:47:50.070 - 00:48:16.950

events that the BSU would bring to campus, including some plans they mention here in this, at the end of this article, "the possibility of a concert featuring one of the area's top jazz groups," which was being seriously looked into in November of 1975, unnamed. Now, you might remember that the blanket tax failed, it was not passed by the

00:48:16.950 - 00:48:44.550

students, spoiler alert if you weren't with us on that, that particular episode. But it's clear that, that Jackson and other BSU leaders continued to work to bring bands to campus, because in the spring of 1976, a year before this concert that we just listened to, February 12th, 1976, probably with Black History Week again.

00:48:44.640 - 00:49:04.110

Oh, in fact, it says, "As part of their National Black History Week celebration, the Rice Black Students Union sponsored the TSU Jazz Ensemble, one of the nation's leading collegiate jazz groups in the Baker Commons," in this particular concert, not at pub, but at Baker Commons, that was one year before.

00:49:05.760 - 00:49:24.270

And so I think there's kind of a longer history behind this performance by Bubba Thomas and the Lightmen stretching back at least to, to 1975. We could maybe even go all the way back to where we stopped last week in 1972, with the origins of the Black Student Union.

00:49:25.140 - 00:49:50.430

And I wanted to pull up this article because, a couple of days before this performance; remember it was on February 20th; on February 17th, Craig Jackson wrote an article about this gig coming up by the Lightmen. And we have, of course, met Craig Jackson on the doc talks before, because I believe it

00:49:50.430 - 00:50:08.220

was in this same academic year that he interviewed Dr. Rose Brewer on KTRU about Alex Haley's Roots. And of course, he was one of the co-authors of that editorial arguing for the blanket tax in 1975.

00:50:08.700 - 00:50:24.540

And here he is writing about the Lightmen, and he says that he's been talking with Bubba Thomas in advance of this gig. He said, and I'll just read a little bit of his article, "In talking to Bubba Thomas, leader of Bubba Thomas and the Lightmen, the group that is appearing in the Pub Sunday

00:50:24.540 - 00:50:48.810

night courtesy of the RPC and pub management, I inadvertently referred to their music as 'soul jazz.' Immediately he corrected me and stated that 'soul jazz' implied 'black jazz,' a redundancy, since all jazz, from Chick to Grover to the Count, has its origin in the early black musical arts." And then he talks a little bit about

00:50:52.440 - 00:51:19.180

the fact that artists who happen to be black don't resent white artists in the field, but they do stress the black musical origins of this important musical art form. And he says, here, "I'll characterize the Houston group as being a 'contemporary jazz organization,' that of which you needn't be a jazz purist to enjoy.' And then he defines

00:51:19.180 - 00:51:38.290

what a jazz purist might be here. 'You know those misplaced beatniks and their espresso coffee, who can listen to some of Coltrane's last works and understand every bit of it as you sit there wondering when the good part will begin.' Okay, so there's some inside baseball jazz humor there, but it's

00:51:38.290 - 00:51:58.360

clear that Jackson is trying to situate Bubba Thomas and the Lightmen within the 1970s jazz scene and connect them, by using the term "soul jazz," to some of the more popular music that jazz musicians were, were performing in the '70s as crossover, that had crossover appeal.

00:51:59.260 - 00:52:22.470

And he mentions in particular their last album, "put out a little more than a year ago, which features some very fine numbers, including 'Country Fried Chicken,' the title cut with Ronnie Davis, the sax extraordinaire from Bellaire High School." And I have to say, I have to stop here for a minute, Doctor Byrd, and say, this album,

00:52:22.480 - 00:52:49.780

Country Fried Chicken, that Craig Jackson mentioned, I'm a proud owner of this album on vinyl because a few years ago, all of the Bubba Thomas and the Lightmen albums that were put out in the 1970s were remastered and released by a label called Now Again Records, and one of them was the Country Fried Chicken album that, and I don't know if

00:52:50.230 - 00:53:09.040

you can see here up front, I also have a signature, an autograph, by, by Bubba Thomas, because he appeared at Cactus Music here close to campus when those were released and signed, signed copies of, of many of those albums. Yeah.

00:53:09.040 - 00:53:26.220

I'm gonna need a photograph of Bubba Thomas signing the album in order to authenticate the signature. Does this work here? Is this okay? There he is, the great man, the great man himself, and he did a wonderful conversation

00:53:26.220 - 00:53:46.710

about his history growing up in Houston performing music. I wish that I had known at that time, which I didn't know, that he had performed at the Pub, because I certainly would have asked him about that experience. But nonetheless, it's a great album, and I think you got a little bit of a taste there

00:53:46.710 - 00:54:10.140

of, of what the music is like from from the live recording. It's clear, though, that Craig Jackson is very proud of the fact that Bubba Thomas and the Lightmen were going to be performing on campus, and in fact, he says here, maybe in a sort of a reference to the friendly rivalry that Thomas also alluded to between Rice and

00:54:10.170 - 00:54:32.340

UH in 1976, Jackson points out this was gonna be their first college concert of the year. "We get them before Cougar High does ." Cougar High. So and, it's "like all Pub concerts, it's free." So one question for me, we've talked a little bit about the origins, and I think one of the things we, that I gather from,

00:54:32.340 - 00:54:48.480

from looking at these articles, is that we could say, Pub hosted the Lightmen because the RPC invited them and leave it at that. But I think what you're also seeing is the arc of some of this activism and advocacy that you were alluding to, Dr.

00:54:48.480 - 00:55:16.350

Byrd, in your document with Rodrigo Barnes as well. If, were it not for students like Craig Jackson, who were, who were working to bring Houston, black Houston, and black musicians onto campus, this concert may well never have occurred. And in fact, there's one, one more document that I wanna show from the next day.

00:55:16.350 - 00:55:41.970

So this is February 21st, 1977, and it just so happened that Monday, the day after this concert, was Election Day on campus, when student leadership positions were being filled, and that meant that candidates for, SA President, candidates for the Thresher editor-in-chief, candidates for the Rice Program Council, were making their case and

00:55:41.970 - 00:55:57.630

asking students for votes. And it was interesting to me that the candidate for the President of the Rice Program Council referred to this, this concert the night before, that the RPC had brought Bubba Thomas and the Lightmen to campus.

00:55:58.110 - 00:56:18.000

And if you elected him, there would be more concerts like this from the RPC. And there's also a really interesting pitch here from the vice presidential candidate, who's identified here only by a last name, Miller, so one question would be, which Miller?

00:56:18.000 - 00:56:39.540

What student was running for vice president here? But Miller gives us a little bit more to think about with the RPC when he says that, "Despite everything the RPC has done to elicit feedback from the students, those people presently in power have not shown a willingness to provide entertainment for

00:56:39.660 - 00:57:02.760

every social segment of the Rice community," with "every" in bold there. "A full range of interests must be given equal and effective representation within the committee." And he goes on to say, "Unfortunately, some members of the current Program Council have attempted to alleviate this situation but have often been met with

00:57:02.760 - 00:57:25.470

indifference, if not outright opposition. For example, attempts were made to tap the local talents that abound in Houston at this time. Specifically, the series of jazz concerts scheduled for this year were canceled for purely political reasons." So I've got more questions.

00:57:25.800 - 00:57:47.340

What started out for me as kind of a celebratory moment in Pub that both as a fan of this music I enjoyed listening to, but also for the glimpse it gave us of, of a desegregating social space on campus. Now, I've got questions from that, those few lines, about what else was going on behind

00:57:47.340 - 00:58:06.780

the scenes, what were the concerts that were cancelled? What was the attempt to invite Bubba Thomas met with, with universal acclaim and support, or was there some indifference or opposition to bringing local musicians like Thomas onto campus? So I've got some questions that, that I think we'll have to pursue more in our

00:58:06.780 - 00:58:20.040

research. Just phenomenal. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna get my one question in in the minute that we have left, I wanna return to Jackson's "inside jazz" bit.

00:58:20.040 - 00:58:50.780

And I want to, I want to wonder out loud that it's that, but, but I'd be curious the ways that it speaks to the history of the RPC before there're black people on campus. So, so we've we've spent some time talking about kind of RPC expertise around black music and arts and the role that they play in introducing black arts on campus before

00:58:50.780 - 00:59:08.090

there're black students. And they do some fairly significant work. But now you have this moment in the '70s, right, where, so, so my question would be, I'm having trouble getting to it, but, right, we have this transition moment where

00:59:08.090 - 00:59:37.070

the expertise, where does the expertise in these areas lie? And, and for, for Jackson's bit about the beatnik listening to the latest work of Coltrane, I think he said Coltrane, right, is that we, we have, we have treated some long and effusive treatments of black music on the, on the doc talks, that are both

00:59:37.070 - 00:59:57.500

celebratory but also raise some questions about the role of black music in, in the white counterculture at the, at the moment. And so I see some of that tension. The bands that, that the BSU wanted to invite, and the expertise they were bringing

00:59:57.530 - 01:00:18.140

to, to that question, compared to, to these earlier moments. I think that's a great, that's a great point, that's a great question. And, and I don't know who, again, who Miller was, and if, if the perspective that Miller is, is voicing there is the perspective of someone like Jackson who feels that, that

01:00:18.140 - 01:00:41.480

black students are not being sufficiently represented in the RPC Program Council, or if instead there's kind of, in the same way that you saw in that fight over the, the blanket tax debate, it could be a student who thinks that things are skewing too much in, in a particular direction that he doesn't like, and wants to bring a different

01:00:41.480 - 01:00:54.450

kind of band to campus. I don't know, I mean, that's a good question for us to, to consider. But after I finish listening to the rest of this concert, as soon as we log off. Have a great weekend.

01:00:54.480 - 01:01:10.140

You too. Have a good concert and--have a good weekend, and thanks to all... You have a good concert! Thanks to all of the people in the chat who are sending us some some encouraging messages, and we hope that you are with us again.

01:01:11.040 - 01:01:13.770

Next Friday on doc talk. Stay warm, everybody.