00:00:12.020 - 00:00:30.220

Professor McDaniel, do not forget, for audio quality please start a second recording. Oh, thank you for that reminder, Dr. Byrd. Speaking of audio quality,

00:00:32.520 - 00:00:45.120

it sounds like you're dealing with some things today. I am. I've got excellent broadband. When it's working, I've got the broadest of bands,

00:00:46.690 - 00:00:59.950

but today it's not working. And so my spouse asked me, "Who are you talking to?" I felt like I was in one of those commercials. She said, "Who were you talking to

00:00:59.950 - 00:01:13.250

on the phone early this morning?" Gotta call the broadband man. Yeah, I was calling AT&T, but I'm coming to you on a tethered connection.

00:01:14.520 - 00:01:25.990

My phone, actually, my iPad is powering this conversation as fast as it can. So we're keeping our fingers crossed that the hotspot stays hot.

00:01:26.910 - 00:01:34.860

Yeah, I'm looking, it's plugged in too, so it shouldn't power down. Okay. Well, it's good to see you.

00:01:34.860 - 00:01:49.020

It's good to be here on another Friday Doc Talk. We've almost made it through another week, and I wanna welcome everyone who's tuning in in our audience, it's good to see you as well.

00:01:49.020 - 00:02:08.730

And we want to, before I forget, I wanna let you know that there's a Task Force event coming up at noon this Wednesday, that I'll place in the chat. So if you've been enjoying the Friday Doc Talks,

00:02:08.730 - 00:02:20.180

you also don't want to miss this lecture that the Task Force is co-sponsoring with the Department of Anthropology on Wednesday at noon from Professor Sean Kelly

00:02:20.180 - 00:02:33.070

who is a historian who studies slavery in Texas in the 1830s and 1840s in particular. And of course we've seen some documents from our Friday Doc Talks that show

00:02:33.070 - 00:02:44.010

that some of our research intersects with that period and obviously that geography. And so he's gonna be giving us a lecture from his research, and I hope that you will put that

00:02:44.010 - 00:02:54.740

on your calendar and make it. And you also wanna save the date. It hasn't quite been confirmed for sure yet but the following Wednesday, March 31st at noon

00:02:54.740 - 00:03:04.100

we are hoping to have a webinar with students from the Racial Geography Project. And you know, if you've been at some of our past Doc Talks where we had student researchers

00:03:04.100 - 00:03:15.640

join us to talk about their work, you're in for a special treat if you can make it on March 31st at noon to that webinar. So keep your eyes peeled on our website

00:03:15.640 - 00:03:27.150

for announcements about that, but do be sure to come on Wednesday to hear professor Kelly. I wanna highlight two, just two things. I think of myself, not you.

00:03:27.150 - 00:03:38.760

I just think of myself as holding space until the student researchers show up on Friday webinars. That's how I see my job. And the second thing is,

00:03:38.760 - 00:03:52.590

that's a pretty powerful co-sponsorship. You've got the Department of Anthropology, you've got History, and you've got the Task Force. So I appreciate that cooperation across the university.

00:03:54.140 - 00:04:02.610

Absolutely, and the work that we're doing as the Task Force, we couldn't do without the help of so many people. And so we're really grateful to be able to bring this

00:04:02.610 - 00:04:10.950

kind of programming to campus, which is part of our charge on the Task Force. We've been focusing on the Doc Talks a lot about the first part of our charge

00:04:10.950 - 00:04:21.210

which is to do the research. And the second part though is to create programming, including inviting guest speakers to campus who can facilitate dialogue

00:04:21.210 - 00:04:30.040

and frank discussion about the histories of Slavery, Segregation and Racial Injustice. And so that's what I think professor Kelly's talk on Wednesday will help us to do.

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And so we encourage our audience to come if they're available. Of course today it's Doc Talk day. And so we have some documents we wanna discuss.

00:04:40.710 - 00:04:54.300

And I can't remember, I don't think I signed anything but I seem to remember some sort of informal agreement that I would get us started this time, since I think the last time, we missed you last week

00:04:54.300 - 00:05:08.200

by the way, although Professor Waligora-Davis filled in excellently for you, Dr. Byrd, we missed seeing you last Friday. If Professor Waligora-Davis was here,

00:05:08.200 - 00:05:21.050

one thing I can be certain of is I wasn't missed too much until maybe after it was over and someone said, "Ain't there usually someone else there?" But no, she is absolutely fantastic.

00:05:21.940 - 00:05:30.820

It was great, but I think the last time we were together you volunteered to go first, if I'm remembering, anyway, I'll share. I'm ready.

00:05:30.820 - 00:05:38.520

If have to go first, I'm ready to go. Did I do that? You know, that's fine. Why don't you, you know what?

00:05:38.520 - 00:05:50.970

While you have your hotspot working, maybe it would make sense. All right, I'm gonna do the best I can here and see if I can put this thing through its paces.

00:05:54.820 - 00:06:10.810

Let's see. All right, so hopefully should see a Rice Thresher from April 22nd, 1948. You might not be able to see it too closely.

00:06:10.810 - 00:06:25.960

So I might should help some. This is what I want to focus on here is I wanna focus on the Rice Forum in the chat. If you know what the Rice Forum is,

00:06:25.960 - 00:06:39.420

go ahead and tell us. But it seemed like a a pretty exciting former program at the university. Basically a debating society around current events,

00:06:40.980 - 00:06:59.180

and here in the spring of 1948 they're holding a program about whether the state should pay a vet bonus. Forum on the vet bonus question. This is Texas, and paying the veterans a bonus

00:06:59.180 - 00:07:12.420

from the State of Texas is something that would require dipping into some tax money, right? So you can tell what this argument is gonna be about here in Texas.

00:07:12.420 - 00:07:29.040

But what I am particularly interested in here is this line right here, all Rice students are invited. This is good. It's gonna be in the Physics amphitheater.

00:07:29.040 - 00:07:43.670

We all know that as the back of Herzstein Hall. All Rice students are invited. And in addition, students of the University of Houston, Texas State University for Negroes

00:07:43.670 - 00:08:02.360

and St. Thomas University have been invited. So this is an interesting group of universities. One of them is not like the others, right? And in 1948 in the State of Texas, one of these

00:08:02.820 - 00:08:25.840

as its name does more than suggest is a segregated school, blacks in Texas, the Texas State University for Negroes. And this is one of the early mentions that I'm able to find for what we now know as Texas Southern University.

00:08:25.840 - 00:08:39.050

And we won't be able to find mentions too much earlier than this because Texas Southern University comes into existence, or I'm sorry, Texas State University for Negroes

00:08:39.050 - 00:09:00.450

with that name only comes into existence by law in 1947. And so what I wanna do with a couple of documents that I have today is to talk about Texas Southern University for Negroes

00:09:02.130 - 00:09:22.020

in The Thresher, and what place that holds in The Thresher. And you'll see that even though it begins with a just a kind of throw away mention, "We've invited people from Texas State University

00:09:22.300 - 00:09:42.990

for Negroes to join us on campus in the Physics amphitheater. That could create that it could, for those of you who have sat in the Physics amphitheater.

00:09:42.990 - 00:09:59.920

The second mention of Texas State University for Negros is really quite phenomenal, right? It's almost a whole page article. And this is what I wanna spend the bulk of my time

00:09:59.920 - 00:10:15.040

on here today is some questions that this piece raises for me. "New School in Houston is Center of National Attention." Hmm, Texas State University for Negroes,

00:10:15.040 - 00:10:26.150

a new school with deep roots. And it's by Abraham Nad. It's a pretty remarkable article. I'm trying to zoom in Dr. McDaniel, just in case.

00:10:26.150 - 00:10:40.940

I've never used this Adobe as a presentation software. So I don't know how well I'm doing. For a historian these are the newspaper articles I wanna read.

00:10:40.940 - 00:10:55.950

I just wanna say that when Nad says this is a new school with deep roots, one of the reasons that he's saying deep roots is 'cause he actually spend some time going into that.

00:10:55.950 - 00:11:11.440

And it would be for the reader of the moment. But also for those of you who caught what I said earlier about the founding date of Texas State University for Negroes, you should see a slight contradiction

00:11:11.440 - 00:11:25.260

in what I've said previously and what this headline says. And the Thresher is also making use of that contradiction. A new school with deep roots. What do you mean deep roots?

00:11:25.260 - 00:11:36.970

It's 1948 and everyone knows this school just started in 1947? And so one of the reasons I'm really drawn to this article is it does pretty good historical work.

00:11:36.970 - 00:11:50.170

And so it begins by laying out that the foundations of Texas State University for Negroes really go back to the late 1920s with the founding of the Houston Colored Junior College.

00:11:51.420 - 00:12:13.540

Back in the '20 and early teens it wasn't a big deal for school districts who were dedicated to elementary and secondary education to also form junior colleges or to tend

00:12:14.970 - 00:12:32.490

to the first couple of years after graduation. And so this Houston Colored Junior College fills this role in the Houston Independent School District. And it exists at what's now the

00:12:32.960 - 00:12:44.130

original Jack Yates High School on Elgin street in the third ward, now Baylor College of Medicine Academy at Ryan Middle School.

00:12:44.130 - 00:12:59.200

So if you're familiar with the third ward section of the city, it's not very far from Emancipation Park. So in 1927 you've got this Houston College Junior College that by 1935 adds an upper division

00:12:59.200 - 00:13:14.060

for the next few years of college. And Nad is pointing out that this is actually the origins of this school because by about 1944 they had outgrown, vastly outgrown their campus

00:13:14.060 - 00:13:29.620

at the first Jack Yates and had taken advantage of someone giving them some land, a significant amount of acreage not far from the University of Houston.

00:13:31.110 - 00:13:46.990

And by 1947 they are moved into this new building. It's one building, Professor McDaniel. I'm gonna cover up my screen just with my hand, thinking that that will cover up the screen

00:13:46.990 - 00:13:58.240

on your computer. How many people would you guess are enrolled in the initial classes at the Texas State University for Negroes?

00:13:58.240 - 00:14:20.890

It has one building in 1947. Ooh, and you're telling me I can't cheat? I'm covering the column inches that have the answers. One building, I'm gonna guess,

00:14:22.750 - 00:14:35.120

are we gonna do an upper or lower kind of thing? If I say a number, are you gonna tell me lower or higher? I'm gonna give it to you if you get it within a 1,000. Okay, okay.

00:14:36.280 - 00:14:50.410

I'm gonna say 8,000. That's pretty big. That's so big you don't get it, man. That's so big, it's about 3,000.

00:14:50.410 - 00:14:58.550

3,000. No more than 3,000, folks. This is pretty expansive. I mean, when I showed up at Rice in 1986

00:14:58.550 - 00:15:06.500

there were 3,000 students here. We had more than one building- One building more. when I showed up here at Rice in 1986.

00:15:06.500 - 00:15:19.080

So this is the post-war period, it kind of makes sense. We're in the process of educating. The United States is in the process of educating thousands of thousands of demobilized veterans.

00:15:20.210 - 00:15:33.230

And so Rice is involved in some of this work itself. And so even though this newly formed school only has one building, you need to imagine that it's also full of tents and temporary buildings placed

00:15:34.240 - 00:15:51.210

on the campus in order to help educate the veterans. So its first year it has more than 3,000 folks. The next year it's down to 2,000. But I'm gonna pickup now, 'cause I wanna rush through

00:15:51.210 - 00:16:03.540

but I'm so excited about the deep roots. I wanted to make sure you got that. And then Nad goes on to just kind of lay out what some of the academic program looks like

00:16:03.540 - 00:16:22.740

at the university and the extracurricular program. I've spent some time on the TSU newspaper which makes sense, talks about the athletic program. Really interesting point about the athletic program.

00:16:22.740 - 00:16:38.090

Nad calls it a novelty, that's kind of an insult. But he says, "A novelty is the girl's basketball team which engages in intercollegiate competition." Oh my God.

00:16:38.090 - 00:16:49.780

Like it's one thing if you're gonna let the women play basketball, right? Have a club maybe or something, but Texas State University for Negroes

00:16:49.780 - 00:17:03.540

has a women's basketball team that plays other schools. Question I won't ask you. You're gonna say something, I saw your hand in point. Well, I'm just noticing, to the side of that is a column

00:17:03.540 - 00:17:09.300

about the Lyceum series that's comparable to the Rice Forum, so. Yes. This is the first document.

00:17:09.300 - 00:17:24.240

Yeah, absolutely. And I skipped it though, even though it's highlighted for me to treat it, but then I started too slowly. So that's good that you brought us back to that.

00:17:25.520 - 00:17:39.340

What I wanna spend the, one point that I haven't really been able to illustrate, but now you'll have to take my word for it. And it's illustrated in the column inches

00:17:39.340 - 00:17:49.040

that are presented here too. This a pretty detailed piece. And it ends, I wanna spend a little time with the way it ends.

00:17:49.040 - 00:18:03.810

"The students at TSU are a friendly yet earnest group. The halls are filled with conversation as students go from one class to another. It is not however the sound of exuberance.

00:18:03.810 - 00:18:22.510

Mostly it is a rather quiet, somewhat subdued sound." Nad may not be taken to account his presence on the campus. Maybe his observations is having an effect, but maybe not. But that was just running commentary.

00:18:23.910 - 00:18:43.330

"The students realize that their school is the center of a lot of attention, pointing back up to the headline, that their school will answer a lot of questions. On these answers depends much future history.

00:18:43.330 - 00:18:54.470

The men and women of Texas State University are trying to make the most of opportunities that are just now beginning to open up to them. If they succeed, they know these opportunities will expand.

00:18:54.470 - 00:19:06.080

If they don't, well, they don't even seem to consider that possibility. By the looks of serious determination on the faces of the students of Texas State,

00:19:06.080 - 00:19:24.930

it is not hard to believe completely that the university and its people," that's an interesting line, "have a much greater future ahead of them." So this is a remarkable, I think it's a remarkable article

00:19:25.100 - 00:19:40.240

and I would put the link in the chat if I weren't in Adobe. And I don't, I'm just afraid to mess anything up. So I won't, but I will when I get out of it. But it's a highly detailed article, really good piece,

00:19:41.950 - 00:19:59.090

obviously based on a significant amount of research. Did Nad go over to Texas State University for Negroes? Did he observe there? Was he in the presence of students at TSU?

00:20:00.270 - 00:20:15.660

I think the answer to that question is yes. What do you think, Dr. McDaniel? The question is, I'm sorry, I was putting your link in the chat for you.

00:20:15.660 - 00:20:26.500

Oh, thank you. Do you think this article is the output of some participant observation? Did he go over to TSU?

00:20:26.500 - 00:20:37.600

Do you believe that he walked these halls that he's talking about? He certainly seems to write as though he has. Yeah, I would.

00:20:37.600 - 00:20:49.490

Yeah, I see you're hedging your bets though which is what we're supposed to do. Yeah, it's full of great detail. Toward the end a certain amount of color.

00:20:51.120 - 00:21:02.790

If I recall too, there's an editorial either in this issue or another Thresher right around it that calls on Rice students to learn more about other schools in the city.

00:21:03.660 - 00:21:17.040

Yeah, and it's not, and it won't be. I'm gonna stay here for a minute. Throw me back on track after this, right? This issue of The Thresher actually speaks

00:21:17.040 - 00:21:27.200

to this in its feature. This article on TSU on the next page, if I'm remembering right, you have an article on the University of Houston

00:21:27.200 - 00:21:47.120

which is just as long, also illustrated. And so there's a, you do get a sense of a larger community of students throughout the city. But even given all of this detail

00:21:47.120 - 00:22:04.320

what strikes me about this article is there's not a single quotation. So I'm struck by that. I'm struck by what I sensed to be the lack

00:22:07.140 - 00:22:25.410

of a conclusion, the lack of a perspective, or the lack of a pronounced perspective, right? Is this an article about segregation? "New school in Houston Center of National Attention."

00:22:25.410 - 00:22:38.150

What's missing here, right? There's, even though there's such great context on the school itself, there's a sense in which the main point of the entire piece

00:22:38.150 - 00:22:51.580

has been pushed to the side. "New School in Houston Center of National Attention." Why are they the center of national intention? And then you have this ending where these 17 and 18 and 19

00:22:52.130 - 00:23:07.420

and 20-year-old students at TSU look to have the weight of the world on their shoulders. There's this ending that's just, "Oh my goodness, these people aren't just in school,

00:23:07.420 - 00:23:20.080

they are about the business of saving something." What that is I don't, I was about to say, what that is I don't know, but I do know. But what that is isn't clear in the article, right?

00:23:20.080 - 00:23:40.540

And so those are the questions that it raises for me. Why is that context missing? Why is that perspective so vague even? Why does this article seem to work hard to not come

00:23:41.150 - 00:23:55.770

to conclusions around the larger issue at hand are some questions that I have. And I've got five minutes, so I'm gonna power through. I'm not going first anymore, Dr. McDaniel.

00:23:55.770 - 00:24:15.020

Going first is just, it's tough. So I wanna fill in just a little bit of the context here and why this 1948 piece is so important. Sorry, I'm having some trouble with my zoom.

00:24:15.020 - 00:24:32.740

Zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom. Okay, why this piece is so import. So this is Senate Bill 140 from 1947 from the great State of Texas.

00:24:32.740 - 00:24:47.180

And it will fill in for us what's missing, what's missing from the Thresher article. What is the national attention that's happening? So here we have an act for the support

00:24:47.180 - 00:24:58.760

and maintenance and direction of a university of the first class for the instruction and training of the colored people of the state to be known as the Texas State University for Negroes

00:24:58.760 - 00:25:09.760

and to be located at Houston Harris County. And then it goes into a little bit more complexities that I don't have time for now. But basically it says, "We're gonna start a university

00:25:09.760 - 00:25:24.160

of the first class for blacks in the State of Texas. And then it just gets really jumbled. And part of it's gonna be in Harris County here in Houston. And part of it is gonna be in Waller County,

00:25:26.490 - 00:25:40.590

which not all that close, at what used to be known as the Prairie View University but we're gonna rename here in this law. And so, voila, Texas, black Texans, now you got a university

00:25:41.280 - 00:25:54.800

that's kind of one and a quarter universities, but hey you know, we're doing our best here, which still begs the question of why. And we get a little more context for that

00:25:54.800 - 00:26:08.120

by the time we get to the seventh page of the law. And here we go. In the interim between the effective date of this act and the organization establishment

00:26:08.120 - 00:26:18.360

and operation of the Texas State University for Negros at Houston, they understand that they don't have, they start a university that doesn't really have much going for it right now.

00:26:18.360 - 00:26:34.620

In the interim upon demand hereto for or hereafter made by any qualified applicant for instruction in any course, except law, offered at the University of Texas or any of its branches, the board of directors

00:26:34.620 - 00:26:47.180

of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas acting as the governing board of the Prairie View Agriculture and Mechanical College is authorized and required to provide forth with such instruction

00:26:47.180 - 00:26:55.290

through courses equivalent to the same instruction being offered at the University of Texas or any of its branches. (Dr. Byrd sighs)

00:26:55.290 - 00:27:13.760

So now we get to what's missing, right? What's missing in that first article is the purpose behind the school is, so if you're African-American and you apply to any faculty at any department

00:27:13.760 - 00:27:31.280

at the University of Texas, except law, and you're qualified and you're admitted, you will take that instruction, until the Texas State University for Negros is open, you'll take that at Prairie View A&M University.

00:27:32.910 - 00:27:42.960

Why except law? What if I wanna go to law school? What's gonna happen? In the chat, go ahead and answer that, I'll rush through.

00:27:43.850 - 00:27:57.710

The answer to it is that if you apply to the law school at the University of Texas, you'll be admitted to a very small law school in Austin in the basement of a building,

00:27:57.710 - 00:28:10.940

but you will have recourse to the law library at the University of Texas law school until such time the Texas State University for Negroes is open. In which case you will then be transferred

00:28:10.940 - 00:28:26.060

to the Texas State University for Negroes because they will also have a law school. And so that's what's missing here, right? So this is 1947.

00:28:26.060 - 00:28:42.160

This bill is 1947, which is reacting to a suit brought by a Houstonian by the name of Heman Sweatt in 1946 who applies to the University of Texas Law School at Austin and is rejected for one reason and one reason only,

00:28:42.160 - 00:28:56.840

because he is not white, because he is black. And Texas like a whole lot of States realizes, not realize it, they know it's been the case, that they are out of compliance with separate but equal.

00:28:56.840 - 00:29:07.330

They'd just been doing separate. And now this is their chance to try and be equal which they kind of fail, not kind of, which they also fail at.

00:29:07.330 - 00:29:24.170

If you remember what Texas State University's physical plan looks like at the start. And I just wanna stop here. And the reason I want to stop here is

00:29:24.210 - 00:29:45.290

because by the time we get to 1950, yes, 1950, we had the president of the Texas State University for Negroes who's coming to speak to the Methodist student fellowship

00:29:45.290 - 00:29:57.100

in February of that year. 1950 is also the year that Sweatt v. Painter, which is the lawsuit desegregate the University of Texas will be decided.

00:29:57.100 - 00:30:11.920

But by this time Lanier is coming over to speak to the Methodist student fellowship on the question of one world, one brotherhood. You don't have to go too deep into this article

00:30:11.920 - 00:30:29.030

to begin to see some of the differences between the first arrival of Texas State University for Negroes in the Thresher and the development of a voice really, a voice, a perspective

00:30:29.030 - 00:30:51.400

that is absent in that first piece. And I also, the other thing that I find interesting here is what the purpose of TSU is. The question that it raises for us at Rice is,

00:30:51.400 - 00:31:10.710

so Senate Bill 140 lays out sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly what the purpose of TSU is. But we've also had a couple of discussions where we kind of moved around the edges of how TSU functions

00:31:12.080 - 00:31:26.670

in Houston and about some of its purposes that aren't laid out there. And some of those purposes relate to Rice. So nowhere in Senate Bill 140 does it say

00:31:26.670 - 00:31:40.560

that the Texas State University for Negroes, one of its prime duties will be to serve the students at Rice University. But I think one of the questions we have to tend to,

00:31:40.560 - 00:31:56.980

given the work that we're doing is, "How does TSU serve Rice University," which is really a kind of amazing question, right? What we begin to ask is, what is a hastily organized,

00:31:56.980 - 00:32:16.970

underfunded, all the adjectives aren't in that direction, but that's where I wanna start. How does a hastily organized underfunded university find itself working for the students of Rice University?

00:32:23.010 - 00:32:35.310

And that's a question that I'm interested in. Speaking of the weight of the world, at the end of Nad's article, the multiple burdens that students,

00:32:35.310 - 00:32:50.200

but also faculty and administrators are carrying at a university like that in a segregated Houston. It also made me think a little bit about whether there's even deeper roots than talked about there.

00:32:50.200 - 00:33:09.020

Because recently I was looking through some articles about the opening of the Rice Institute in 1912, and it was pointed out, I think in the WPA writers kind of travel guide about Houston that was done

00:33:09.020 - 00:33:21.900

during the Great Depression, the line that mentions the opening of the Rice Institute in 1912 is immediately preceded by a sentence about the opening of the first night school for African-Americans

00:33:21.900 - 00:33:35.830

in Houston in 1911, so the year immediately prior. And I think it's the Bruce Night School, but it was basically at a Houston high school, Houston Public School was providing the first opportunities

00:33:35.830 - 00:33:48.920

for sort of public education, post-secondary education for adults. And so we can go back even farther before that- absolutely.

00:33:48.920 - 00:34:00.100

at junior college, and think about these parallel histories and these histories that are interacting, which we miss if we just sort of think only narrowly inside the hedges

00:34:00.100 - 00:34:09.320

that about the charter and then the lift, the changing of the charter and the arrival of black students on campus. So these documents you shared get us

00:34:09.320 - 00:34:24.920

to think beyond the hedges I think. The arrivals, plural, the arrivals of black students and faculty and staff on campus. Thanks so much for sharing those documents.

00:34:24.920 - 00:34:36.480

I note that you went first, but you also, you looked at multiple documents, but we do that now, don't we? This is the, we should call this the Docs Talk.

00:34:36.480 - 00:34:47.170

That doesn't roll off the tongue as easily. If you have questions for Dr. Byrd about that document, please drop them in the Q&A, and I'm gonna try to talk about my document quickly,

00:34:47.170 - 00:35:01.340

so we'll have time to take your questions from the audience and discuss them. So let me find my document which is going to take us back in time.

00:35:10.550 - 00:35:23.090

So my document returns us to some of the earlier periods that we're studying as part of the Task Force, although not all the way back to the very beginning of our scope,

00:35:23.090 - 00:35:38.880

because I wanna talk not about the history of slavery today, although it's related, but I wanna talk about a document from 1866 which places us chronologically in the immediate aftermath of the abolition of slavery

00:35:38.880 - 00:35:51.860

by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution at the end of 1865. And so this document is actually a book that has been microfilmed

00:35:51.860 - 00:36:03.770

from the National Archives and Records Administration. And you can see here that it's referring to a sub-assistant commissioner stationed in Richmond, Texas, and that's a reference

00:36:03.770 - 00:36:13.120

to an official with the Freedmen's Bureau. So it's popularly known as the Freedmen's Bureau from Reconstruction. The full name is the

00:36:13.120 - 00:36:31.100

Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen Refugees and Abandoned Lands but everyone just refers to it as the Freedmen's Bureau. And this was an organization created by Congress to go to various places where recently enslaved people lived

00:36:33.270 - 00:36:50.900

in the former Confederacy, and to intervene in labor conflicts that were happening between former enslavers and former enslaved people to ensure that the 13th Amendment and soon other amendments

00:36:51.160 - 00:37:00.450

of the Constitution were being enforced as they should be by officials in those areas. And what they found themselves, especially in these earliest moments

00:37:01.320 - 00:37:12.290

after the Civil War doing, was dealing with a lot of things that weren't even directly on their docket from Congress. But as these federal officials who were

00:37:12.290 - 00:37:28.370

on the ground in a moment where slavery was collapsing and a sort of a new kind of labor arrangement and a new society was struggling to be born. They found themselves having to adjudicate

00:37:28.370 - 00:37:40.170

not just conflicts between former enslavers and formerly enslaved people, but conflicts between free people for example, who finally had a court where they could bring

00:37:40.170 - 00:37:55.340

their own grievances to try to get some kind of justice done, they would also perform marriages. It wasn't something that they were expecting to do. But one thing that Freedmen's Bureau found when they got

00:37:55.340 - 00:38:07.800

to many places in the South was that free people wanted to have their marriages recognized, because under the laws of slavery, they had not been able to formally marry, even though of course

00:38:07.800 - 00:38:20.660

they had built families and communities and marriages. They wanted those to be formalized by the Freedmen's Bureau. And so we could talk about the history of how the Bureau sort of scrambled to perform

00:38:20.660 - 00:38:31.010

that unexpected function and instructions that were sent out to Freedmen's Bureau agents who thought that they were just gonna be trying to negotiate labor contracts

00:38:31.010 - 00:38:42.520

between planters and black laborers. Instead, they found themselves performing these marriage ceremonies and they were getting instructions on how to do that.

00:38:42.520 - 00:38:56.340

So in other words, the Freedmen's Bureau was as one, the title of one book about the Freedmen's Bureau and Texas puts it, they were overstretched in many ways. They were a small bureaucracy that was being asked

00:38:56.340 - 00:39:12.630

to deal with a pretty cataclysmic change in the history of the South. And so this is one example is Volume one of letters that were sent by the sub-assistant commissioner

00:39:12.840 - 00:39:24.270

in Richmond, Texas, just outside of Houston. And you can see I'm just flipping through the first pages of this book. I'm not sure why I keep getting this.

00:39:24.270 - 00:39:38.190

Let me refresh my browser to see if we can make that go away. So you can see these handwritten pages where the sub-assistant commissioner is copying down letters

00:39:38.360 - 00:39:51.110

that he sent, that's at least how the book begins. But one of the things that the book becomes by the very end of the book, and I'm gonna skip here to page 53,

00:39:51.110 - 00:40:03.030

is a record of complaints that are being brought to the sub-assistant commissioner by recently emancipated people. Nope, it's not letting me skip.

00:40:03.030 - 00:40:15.600

Okay, so we skipped ahead to the last page here. And if we go back a few you'll see what looks to be more like a spreadsheet or a ledger where each row is a case that's been brought

00:40:16.390 - 00:40:32.270

to the sub-assistant commissioner for adjudication. And this is an interesting example, because here on the very first row, for example, you see that Martha Pinckney, I think it says,

00:40:32.270 - 00:40:46.450

who is a free woman, is bringing a complaint against her husband. And the complaint is that not in this case she would not like to have our marriage recognized

00:40:46.450 - 00:40:57.630

but she's actually trying to separate from him on the grounds of abuse and ill treatment. So here's a woman who's been experiencing some domestic violence, and she's trying to come

00:40:57.630 - 00:41:08.570

to the sub-assistant commissioner for help, protection from her husband, and the husband files a plea of not guilty. And the case is simply dismissed.

00:41:09.540 - 00:41:20.890

So sometimes you see a lot of evidence about testimony that is gathered by the sub-assistant commissioner. Sometimes there's not any such evidence that's collected,

00:41:20.890 - 00:41:33.260

but these kinds of sources are so valuable to historians of reconstruction and emancipation because they give us, not only are they some of the first records where enslaved people's

00:41:33.260 - 00:41:44.250

full names are recorded. Although not always. You can see here on this page that there's a woman who's referred to simply as Mary freed woman,

00:41:44.250 - 00:41:57.380

but we do also have these other rows where people's full names are listed for the first time. And we also get testimony from them about some of what they were experiencing,

00:41:58.970 - 00:42:12.340

particularly as they, in many cases, were continuing to work for the people who had enslaved them and were experiencing all kinds of injustice and mistreatment as you might well expect.

00:42:12.340 - 00:42:25.480

And so why am I talking about this source today in connection with our Task Force? Well, because if we go back to the very last page of this volume, you'll see a switch to a different headline

00:42:27.370 - 00:42:36.670

at the top of the page, which says. "Complaint of planters." So on the previous pages we had a lot of complaints that were being brought

00:42:36.670 - 00:42:50.640

to the sub-assistant commissioner by freed people. And this page, which is is kind of, it ends sort of abruptly, there's only two entries here, of complaints from planters who were going to come

00:42:50.670 - 00:42:59.050

to the sub-assistant commissioner and say that they needed some adjudication of justice. And the first entry here is the one that I really wanna focus on that interests me,

00:42:59.050 - 00:43:12.000

because it's a complaint that's brought by Mr. F. A. Rice, Frederick A. Rice, planter of Fort Bend County. It describes him.

00:43:12.000 - 00:43:23.840

Now we've talked, I think a little bit about Frederick A. Rice before on the Doc Talks. He was the brother of William Marsh Rice. And he was later in life known as Captain F. A. Rice

00:43:23.840 - 00:43:35.400

because he did serve during the Civil War in the Confederate military. This is his obituary that was published in the Houston Post in 1901.

00:43:35.400 - 00:43:48.740

So there's a picture of him here. And I believe it talks about here in the obituary that Captain Rice was also a trustee of the Rice Institute when it was chartered

00:43:48.740 - 00:43:59.640

by William Marshall Rice in 1891, because he was a longtime business partner of his brother, William Marsh Rice. And it also says here in this obituary

00:43:59.640 - 00:44:19.310

that for a long time Captain Rice had kept one of the largest plantations on the Brazos River. So it says that Captain Rice became an extensive planter, operating one of the largest cotton plantations

00:44:19.310 - 00:44:27.790

on the Brazos River. So that's part of Frederick A. Rice's history. He was a cotton planter. That's how he's described here

00:44:27.790 - 00:44:41.270

in this Freedmen's Bureau report from 1866. And now just wanna read what is his complaint that he's coming to the sub-assistant commissioner about. It says, "Mr. F. A. Rice, planter of Fort Bend County

00:44:41.270 - 00:45:03.180

makes complaint to the following effect. That there was in his service a freed boy named Jim Burleson, who is desirous of remaining with him. When hired it was represented

00:45:03.180 - 00:45:20.220

that his mother was willing, now his stepfather without the consent of his mother wishes that boy in order to take advantage of his services." What's going on here?

00:45:20.220 - 00:45:36.380

What do you think when you read that document, Dr. Byrd? What's happened to bring this complaint before the sub-assistant commissioner? I'm muted, now I'm unmuted.

00:45:36.380 - 00:45:47.610

So a couple of things happening here. I wanna rush to say the thing that you didn't ask me and that is a perspective, there is more perspective in this document than there was in the one I started with.

00:45:47.610 - 00:46:04.680

That even though this is a "trial" document, or a trial in quotations, it leans in a direction, right? So I just, I wanna say that at first. But it has been represented.

00:46:04.680 - 00:46:21.260

So I don't know what happened, so I wanna say that. But it's been represented by Rice that he's got Jim Burleson in his service because his mother agreed to it, again, represented by Rice.

00:46:21.260 - 00:46:32.500

I have nothing from Burleson's mother and actually may have some, I have reason to believe, reason to question whether she did indeed.

00:46:33.820 - 00:46:44.910

It's an open question- Yes, I- And the reason. I think it's more than an open question because, and I think you're onto something there.

00:46:44.910 - 00:46:57.600

When we go back to some of these complaints that were brought, not by the planters, but by freed people themselves. One of the complaints that often appears earlier

00:46:57.600 - 00:47:11.990

in this book is from freed women or mothers who come to the sub-assistant commissioner and say that they want control over their children, that their children are being forced

00:47:11.990 - 00:47:29.770

to work on these plantations. And their expectation of freedom is that they should be able to decide whether to withhold the labor of their children from those plantations or not.

00:47:29.770 - 00:47:40.520

And so often I'm trying to find one, see if I can find one. I mean, here's an example of Louisiana, a freed woman, complains that John Kisa a planter

00:47:40.520 - 00:47:50.820

of Fort Bend County refuses to pay her for her labor since freedom. So a lot of the complaints are of that nature that somebody is just not even paying.

00:47:50.820 - 00:48:02.160

Here's one, okay? This one says, Amanda Frances, a freed woman, complains that Mr. George Pleasant has been whipping her child,

00:48:03.020 - 00:48:13.610

a girl about a 15 years old. And so she states that, she goes on to basically say that she's the mother and the planter

00:48:13.610 - 00:48:23.820

should not have obviously the power to do that. And there's lots of examples like this in the book. Those are just a couple that I see. But frequently you see mothers coming

00:48:23.820 - 00:48:37.760

to the sub-assistant commissioner to seek some control over the labor of their children. This is a particularly tragic one that I think puts that one in context,

00:48:38.680 - 00:48:53.700

Lavernia Petty I think it says, comes to complain that she is seeking recovery of her child, Robert, from George Hooper. And the sub-assistant commissioner records

00:48:53.700 - 00:49:04.280

that a guard was sent to investigate and returned that the child was dead. So there's many tragic stories like this in the book where women are trying

00:49:04.280 - 00:49:14.870

to gain control over their children. So I think you're absolutely right, Dr. Byrd to ask. Those are cases where we do actually have the testimony of the freed women themselves coming

00:49:14.870 - 00:49:25.810

to the sub-assistant commissioner and they are all in a certain direction. And then here we have the planter coming, Frederick A. Rice, giving a different perspective on it

00:49:25.810 - 00:49:38.910

which is he's claiming that this, we can assume, we don't know the age of Jim Burleson, but we can assume that maybe he is a minor or he's younger in some way because his parents,

00:49:39.830 - 00:49:54.270

his mother and what Frederick A. Rice describes as a stepfather interested in his services. Frederick A. Rice says, "He wants to stay with me and his mother approved of that."

00:49:54.270 - 00:50:03.710

But we don't actually know, I think you're pointing out. We only have one perspective on that. We don't know what Jim Burleson said. It could be though,

00:50:03.710 - 00:50:13.700

I think we wanna take seriously the possibility that it's possible that Jim Burleson did not want to work for the man who described as his stepfather. We saw a grievance- Absolutely.

00:50:13.700 - 00:50:26.290

a few pages ago, a case of domestic violence in the family of two freed people. They were coming to the sub-assistant commissioner. So, you know, it's a possibility

00:50:26.290 - 00:50:36.730

that this Jim Burleson did not want to go work with his stepfather, that's possible. Even the fact that he's described as a stepfather is kind of interesting to me,

00:50:36.730 - 00:50:52.690

because as I said, there were not formal marriages that were being recognized by the law prior to emancipation. And yet Frederick A. Rice seems to have some notion of who Jim Burleson's father is versus his stepfather,

00:50:52.790 - 00:51:03.650

which kind of implies some sense that there was a recognition of these ties that would be honored when it suited the interest of the planter,

00:51:03.650 - 00:51:19.090

here Frederick A. Rice wants to recognize the mother's claim because he presumably wants Jim Burleson to continue working for him. So there's a lot that this document hints at,

00:51:19.090 - 00:51:30.350

but doesn't really fully reveal to us about the conditions that led to this particular complaint, including what came of it. Because on the margin here you can see

00:51:30.350 - 00:51:43.370

that on the side it says, if we turn our head, "This complaint tabled for the present." So there was kind of nothing done about it, at least at this particular moment.

00:51:43.370 - 00:51:56.500

And we'd have to see if we could find other sources to find it out. But I think what it does reveal is it gives us a glimpse of the kinds of struggles over labor and family

00:51:56.840 - 00:52:11.100

and equality under the law that were happening in places like Fort Bend County. And certainly people like Frederick A. Rice who was this planter were in the middle of those conflicts.

00:52:11.100 - 00:52:23.680

But this book also gives us a sense of how much wider the conflicts were as well. And if we want to think about sort of the deep roots to go back to the term that was used

00:52:23.680 - 00:52:38.430

about Texas Southern University, what are the deep roots of segregation in Jim Crow that we eventually get to at the moment of the Rice Institute's chartering and opening?

00:52:38.430 - 00:52:52.010

What are the deep roots of the racial order in Houston as it exists at that moment? And what a document like this is helping us see is some of those roots and these struggles between planters

00:52:52.010 - 00:53:10.420

and freed people over pay, over family autonomy. And we need to take those deep roots I think into account when understanding why, for example an institute that Frederick A. Rice was a trustee for

00:53:10.420 - 00:53:22.240

was limited to white inhabitants of Houston only. One other thing I'll say that that draws me to this source is the fact that as with many other pages in this book,

00:53:22.240 - 00:53:37.720

we have here the full name, Jim Burleson, of somebody who I think we can presume, we need some more sources to confirm it, may well have been enslaved by Frederick A. Rice

00:53:37.720 - 00:53:50.780

prior to emancipation, and is now continuing to work for him, but it raises the question of what can we learn about Jim Burleson with that last name?

00:53:50.780 - 00:54:03.340

One of our very first Doc Talks we saw a mortgage document that listed people on the Chenango Plantation in Brazoria County, and it only gave us their first names. And so records like this,

00:54:03.340 - 00:54:15.030

I was sharing with you the digitized version of this microfilm on the FamilySearch website, because these kinds of documents are so helpful for genealogical work, because especially

00:54:15.030 - 00:54:24.800

if you're doing African-American family history prior to this moment of emancipation, you're looking at documents, if you have them at all, if you have names at all that only have a first name

00:54:24.800 - 00:54:40.930

and so raises some questions for me about Jim Burleson and his relationship to the Rice family. Rich, rich, rich, rich document. We've got a question for you.

00:54:40.930 - 00:54:48.560

Yes? From Tiffany Rechsteiner, I don't know what our habit is. Should I be calling people's name out on the webinar?

00:54:50.300 - 00:55:03.130

All right, and the question is, "Does the term planter indicate that the planter was necessarily a slave owner? Were there planters who used paid laborers?"

00:55:04.150 - 00:55:18.070

Good question. Well, by this point, 1866, there are no slave owners because slavery has been abolished. So in this case, these planters are all presumably paying

00:55:18.070 - 00:55:25.450

their laborers to do plantation work. They're supposed to be paying. Supposed to be, and now we saw in the ledger there was the freed woman who came

00:55:25.450 - 00:55:38.780

to the sub-assistant commissioner saying she hasn't been paid for her labor since freedom. And so there was plenty of that, but it is a good question. I mean, in the antebellum period planters

00:55:38.780 - 00:55:53.730

I think we could fairly assume was describing on plantations, what's happening- I'm gonna add just a little twist to Rechsteiner's question in case it's a twist

00:55:53.730 - 00:56:09.280

that she intends. What if she's asking about the aspects or potential for labor radicalism in the South in the 18th and 19th century?

00:56:09.280 - 00:56:26.200

Are there people on the fringes of society experimenting in the South with paid labor with African-Americans or freeing their slaves and then entering paid labor relationships with them?

00:56:27.360 - 00:56:32.850

Just in case. That's a good question. That's sort of another Doc Talk altogether that we could do.

00:56:32.850 - 00:56:48.500

I think there were rare cases, a few cases that I can think of where, in Texas, where what's being attempted is cotton cultivation with free labor.

00:56:48.500 - 00:57:02.960

But there were anti-slavery Texans who were and we saw last, in our document last week with this whole conversation about Peter Allen, whose status was a little unclear.

00:57:02.960 - 00:57:17.230

Was he a free person? Was he not a free person? There were cases like that where somebody who was maybe formerly enslaved was able

00:57:18.840 - 00:57:30.000

to earn some wages by working, for example as Peter Allen did as a barber in Houston. And so there are cases of that. But when we're talking about planters

00:57:30.000 - 00:57:43.230

we're talking about plantation labor in Fort Bend County in this period, we're talking about slave owners by and large. Now it does raise a question of,

00:57:43.230 - 00:57:58.050

"Well, could we conclude from this document alone that Frederick A. Rice was a slave holder?" It would be, if this was the only document that we had, we might wanna hesitate before saying that

00:57:58.050 - 00:58:11.060

because he's a planter in 1866, he must have been a slaveholder before 1866, because there were even sort of northerners who were coming down from the North in the aftermath

00:58:11.060 - 00:58:19.430

of emancipation to try their hand at cotton cultivation with free labor. So by the time you get to 1866 in many other, some other parts of the South,

00:58:19.430 - 00:58:30.610

the government's actually selling off abandoned Confederate lands to cotton industrialists from the North who come down to see if they can kind of vertically integrate.

00:58:30.610 - 00:58:43.710

They're spinning textiles in Massachusetts or New York. And they come down to see if they can run a plantation and do it on a free labor basis, do it with wage labor. So, if this was the only source we had,

00:58:43.710 - 00:58:58.510

we might ask, "Well, did Frederick A. Rice decide suddenly in 1866 to get involved in cotton cultivation? Now, in this case though, we do have other documents that contextualized Frederick A. Rice that show

00:58:58.510 - 00:59:10.670

that he was, he did enslave people prior to emancipation. But that's a good question. I'm not sure if that's partly what Tiffany was trying to get at, whether we can-

00:59:10.670 - 00:59:23.030

Her question, that question was deep. Just like everything we've done today has been deep and complex. That's what history is all about, right?

00:59:23.030 - 00:59:33.620

Is raising questions and seeing what we can answer with these documents, seeing what new questions the documents raise. As always, it's been good to spend this time with you

00:59:33.620 - 00:59:45.810

and wanna thank all of our audience for joining us. I'm gonna try one more time to put the link in the chat for Wednesday's Task Force webinar. If you enjoyed this discussion about this document,

00:59:45.810 - 00:59:58.950

then you, I think, would be very interested in learning about Isabella's journey, which is going to be presented by Professor Sean Kelly from the University of Essex on Wednesday at noon.

00:59:58.950 - 01:00:08.740

So please mark your calendars and make plans to attend that as well. See you next time. Bye-bye, see you next time.