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Hello, everyone. Thanks for your patience as we got started this morning. We'll give a couple minutes for people to file in.

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How are you feeling? TGIF. It's always TGIF, isn't it? Well, and what's the acronym for

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T-G-I-N-T-L-W-O-S? I couldn't follow that, but I thought maybe you were saying almost the end of the semester

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or something like that. Yeah, next to last week of the semester. Okay, yeah. It is that. It kind of seems hard to believe.

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I'm grateful that we're ending early, especially with all of the COVID numbers around the country growing more concerning that gives people a chance to get home

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and finish out their work remotely, so. But it has made for a pretty compressed semester, so. In one of my classes yesterday, we had a really energetic, really engaged conversation

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that felt like sort of the kinds of conversation you get around the middle of the semester when things are really gaining steam. And then all of a sudden,

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we're gonna be done next week, but. That's the way it goes. We're all just adapting this year to-- Yeah, yeah.

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Doing the best we can under the circumstances. And I think that's key. We're gonna turn this into a pedagogy webinar.

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But I think expecting it, adjusting expectations-- Yes. Has I think probably been the most important part of being a professor and a student this year.

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Though with students, I think adjusting expectations of themselves is hard. Right, right. It's been challenging,

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but I've been proud of the students and our colleagues for how they've worked through those challenges, so. Yeah, still the best students in the world.

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Definitely. For those of you at other places I'll adjust that to say no better students than Rice students anywhere. They may have equals. (laughing)

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But there's no students-- Very carefully worded. Yeah, better than Rice students. Well, thank you all in the audience for attending today. We know you have lots of things on your plate as well

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and we appreciate your taking the time to spend this hour with us on our weekly Doc Talks. And if you haven't been to one of our Doc Talks before, every Friday from 12 to one this semester,

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we've been looking at some historical documents together from the research that's being conducted by the Task Force on Slavery, Segregation and Racial Injustice. And we try to give you a glimpse

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into the historical thinking process. How do historians wrestle with sources? What kinds of questions do those sources raise? How do those sources help us answer questions?

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How do we situate those sources in broader contexts to understand them better? And so thank you for joining us on that journey. Some weeks, Dr. Byrd, our Doc Talks are even more

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work in progress than others. I think this week we were talking before we hit the broadcast button about feeling that this week especially

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is gonna be a little bit improvisational, maybe a lot of it improvisational. (laughs) I can't hear you.

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I can't hear you, you've gone-- Sorry. I'm going to mention Terence Blanchard in my portion of the Doc Talk.

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So there's that. Well see, as a jazz fan, I know who that is, and if we can improvise as well as him, then I'll feel like we've really done something.

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But we may not get to Terence Blanchard level, but we are going to open a window onto the work in progress that the task force is doing. And the document that I brought today, Dr. Byrd,

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is one that is especially fresh. I'm not quite sure yet how to understand everything in the document. But I wanted to share it nonetheless

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because I think that it demonstrates the work that the task force has cut out for it, not only in working through the documents that are here in our own special collections

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at the Woodson Research Center, but documents that may not even be here at Rice that we have to go out and locate in other collections that nonetheless tell us something about Rice's history.

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And we never want to miss an opportunity to thank all of the archivists in the Woodson Research Center and our post-doctoral research associate, Dr. Will Jones,

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who've been doing heroic work going through boxes and boxes of materials to locate material that's relevant to the task force. And we also have to thank some of the archivists

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at other institutions too that are building out an archive that really we're kind of creating as a task force. The archive isn't just what's already there in the library

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but it's the way that we put together pathways through those materials and connect them in new ways. So we are kind of assembling a special collection

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within the special collections that has to do with material related to the taskforce. And that's a long-winded preface of saying that the document that I wanted to share today

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was actually found in the University of Houston special collections, and specifically in the papers of Joseph S. Cullinan. Can I just do one thing?

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And the answer to this question can be no after I ask it. No. Am I correct that the journey of this document is even a little more complicated than you let on?

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And I just want to ask you that because you made the point, but I think it's worthwhile for our audience to hear the even larger point about what

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people had to go through to track this piece down. Yeah, and I'd be happy to talk about that because this, I think we originally went looking for this letter because of a footnote.

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And so much of the research that historians do begins in the footnotes. Sometimes you think of the footnotes is where the research ends

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because that's where historian sites their sources in a published book. But sometimes footnotes can also launch new research and new searches.

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And so this came from, I believe, a footnote in the biography that Kate Kirkland wrote about Captain James Baker, who of course was the personal lawyer of William Marsh Rice

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and chairman of the board of trustees of the Rice Institute for many, many years. And I don't remember the context in which she cited this letter,

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but once we learned that it was there, we realized that it would definitely be a priority to try to find it. And that wasn't easy,

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partly because of the pandemic and difficulty of finding someone at the University of Houston who could scan this for us and send it to us,

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but they did find it. And so we're glad to be able to talk about it. This is a letter I'm showing on the screen. It's on yellowing typewritten paper.

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It has a watermark underneath the text that says copy. And it's dated November 1st, 1922. And like many of the letters that we've looked at, it's sort of a mix of different fonts.

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There's the actual typewritten letter but there's also, from a different typewriter, some names that are listed at the bottom that indicate who else the letter was sent to.

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And there's also some handwriting on this page. At the top, there's some handwriting that says Rice Institute Student Loan Fund. And as I said, this is a letter that was found

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in the papers of Joseph S. Cullinan. And he's a very significant figure in the history of Houston because he's one of the founders of Texaco

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or The Texas Company as it was known when it was first started. So very big oil man who commanded a lot of power in early 20th century Houston

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because soon after the Spindletop boom in Beaumont, he moved his operations there and made a lot of money on oil. And so he was also somebody who

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was good friends with a judge named James Autry, who was also prominent in Houston. And that name might ring a bell for people who are interested in Rice history

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because of course, across the street from the Rice campus, there's the Autry House which is connected now to Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church. But when the Autry House was opened in 1921,

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a year before this letter was written, it served as kind of the unofficial student center for Rice students. And it was opened in honor of Judge Autry

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who had recently passed away. But his widow, Mary Autry, who was for many, many years a booster of the Rice Institute,

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erected this house and donated it kind of to the students of Rice. And so if you go back to early issues of The Rice Thresher, you'll find many references to the Autry House

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because that's where it was kind of, in the absence of a memorial student center, it's where students held their club meetings and had their social life where many guest speakers came

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to talk to students on campus. And so Autry is a familiar name. Of course, there's also the Autry Court in Tudor Fieldhouse which was named in honor of Mary Autry

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in the 1950s when her daughter donated funds to the gymnasium that was being built for that basketball court. So that's a long backstory to say

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how Joseph S. Cullinan is connected in part to Rice through his friendship and business partnerships with Judge Autrey. But in this particular letter,

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he's actually writing to Mr. Frank Andrews, who's the chairman of the Rice Institute Loan Fund. And if we were to go later in this file, we'd find an earlier letter that had been sent

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to Cullinan and other donors inviting them to contribute funds to the Student Loan Fund at the Rice Institute. And so he refers to that, Cullinan does,

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in the first paragraph. He says, your letter of October 25th requesting a subscription of $500 to the Rice Institute Student Loan Fund received.

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As you probably know, I have heretofore been a contributor to scholarships in the Rice Institute. However, for the reasons hereafter mentioned, I must respectfully decline to subscribe

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to the fund you are now proposing to raise. This is the kind of letter that I think anyone who's chairing a student loan fund has nightmares about receiving.

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A certain drama to it as well. Written with great drama. Yeah, he's leading up to the big reveal. And that comes in the next paragraph.

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Cullinan goes on to say that he has learned that a substantial if not a large number of the students of Rice Institute are members of the Ku Klux Klan,

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an organization the members of which swear allegiance to rulers other than our constituted authorities. So you can see why as researchers for

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the Task Force on Slavery, Segregation and Racial Injustice, this letter would be of great interest to us because here is a major donor to the Rice Institute basically saying that he can't give

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to the Student Loan Fund anymore because he's learned of connections between students at the Institute and the KKK. It's interesting to read this letter

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because it reminds us, as we talked about several Doc Talks ago, we had some students from The Racial Geography Project here discussing a photograph from the Rice Campanile

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from around this time that showed Klansmen in robes, and the caption in this yearbook photo said the Rice Ku Klux Klan,

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Rice Chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. And we had a lot of conversation in that Doc Talk about what to make of that photo. Did it indicate that there were

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students on campus that were part of this larger national organization that was really reviving or coming into being in the 1920s for the first time.

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Historians sometimes refer to this as the second Klan because while it reached back to the first Klan from Reconstruction, it also had some unique concerns in the 1920s.

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For example, Cullinan mentions here that, while I do not qualify as a Catholic, a Jew, or a member of any fraternal or secret society against which the attacks of the Ku Klux Klan

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seem to be chiefly directed, and with assurances of due respect to the high idealism of the founder of this institution and what it stands for, et cetera, et cetera.

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Cullinan says that because the second Klan was, in many ways, motivated as much by a nativist concern about Catholics and Jewish immigrants

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into the United States as it was by the longstanding anti-Black racism that the Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction era of course became most famous for.

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And so this is a letter that speaks to this moment in the rise of the second Ku Klux Klan in Houston. And Cullinan, we should say, and the rest of this folder makes clear,

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was a fierce opponent of the Ku Klux Klan. He was very concerned, as you can tell between the lines of this letter, by the threat that it posed to the Constitution,

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to a democratic society, to have an organization like this. And in fact, he says in the last paragraph here, from my viewpoint, it is time to separate

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the sheep from the goats. A time when all liberty loving and law abiding citizens should candidly speak their minds on this menace regardless of how, who, or where it hits,

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and further decline to support either organization, institutions or individuals known to be identified with the Ku Klux Klan or any other group whose activities include

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attack on representative government or inspire race or religious antagonism among our people. And now, well, you may have more,

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but this is generally where we get to your questions. It seems. Yes, yes. It raises a lot of questions for me.

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And I think the rest of the file answers some of it. One question might be Cullinan sounds pretty convinced that the influence of the Ku Klux Klan

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at the Rice Institute is substantial, as he says, and real, but it does raise the question of how substantial it was. He says a substantial if not a large number of students are members of the Klan.

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And so it doesn't answer the question of how many. That was something that we talked about when we were discussing that photo from several Doc Talks ago.

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So I don't yet quite know how to answer that question. But the other question that I had when I saw this letter had to do with how Cullinan found this out or what was the immediate context for this.

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If he'd been giving to the Rice Institute before, what was it that triggered this decision on his part to stop contributing to the Student Loan Fund? And that's a question that we can answer partly by

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going back to the Woodson Research Center here at Rice rather than going to the University of Houston, because there is, in the Woodson Research Center, a scrapbook that I'll share with you now

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that was kept by an alumna of the Rice Institute. You can see her name on the front of this yearbook which it says, Memory Book of Four Years at College. It's got some sort of cartoonish sketches

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of graduates poring over books. And if I were to zoom in, maybe you could see that this is the scrapbook of Allie Mae Autry,

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a name that we were talking about earlier. The Autrys, of course, were family friends of Joseph S. Cullinan. And Allie Mae Autry was the daughter of the Judge Autrey

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for whom the Autry House is named. And her scrapbook is relevant here because her brother, also named James L. Autry, was also an alumnus of the Rice Institute.

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He graduated in 1921. But shortly after his graduation, you can see his graduation portrait here, a little more than a year later in 1922,

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he had a surgery and complications from the surgery resulted in his premature death at the age of 24. Now, why is James L. Autry's death significant here? Well, in 1922 when James L. Autry died,

00:19:41.080 - 00:19:51.310

his sister's scrapbook has some clippings from newspapers that we're looking at here. And two of these clippings from newspapers reveal something very interesting about

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the funeral for James L. Autry. It says that he was one of the most popular boys at Rice and that all Rice mourned when news of his death reached the campus

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and other quarters of Rice students and alumni. And it says that as soon as his death became known, his beloved friends sent myriads of wreaths, flowers and bouquets to his home

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as an expression of love and respect to the boy and sympathy to his relatives. Among them was a large fiery cross of flowers bearing the initial R,

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which was sent by the Rice Institute Chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. So this suggests, I think, in corroboration of the photo

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we were looking at in the Campanile, that there was a group of Ku Klux Klan members at Rice who styled themselves as the Rice Institute Chapter of the Klan.

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And in fact, another clipping in the scrapbook indicates that at the funeral itself, when the funeral procession was accompanying James L. Autry's coffin

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to his grave site in Glenwood Cemetery, that a little band of Klansmen, as this newspaper clipping said, hooded and robed, moved through the souring throng

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and placed a tribute of flowers on the casket of the dead brother and bowed and moved away. So it's kind of hard to avoid

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the conclusion from that scrapbook that it must have been known by then that James L. Autry Junior, while he was a student at the Rice Institute,

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had been a member of this small band of Klansmen, this group of robed and hooded Ku Klux. And sure enough, when we look at the letter from Joseph S. Cullinan,

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we find that that's how Joseph S. Cullinan found out about the influence of the Klan at the Rice Institute. Let me go back to that letter.

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If we were to scroll down, we'll find some other exchanges between Cullinan and a man named Judge W.W. Moore.

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And on this letter, September 22nd, 1922, Judge Moore informed Cullinan about the presence of the Klan at the funeral of James L. Autry. And he speculates that it may have been

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due to the widow, Mrs. Autry's brother, who was understood to be prominent in the Klan. But he says he's not sure. He knows that Mrs. Autry was agreeable

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to their participation in the funeral but he thinks that maybe she was too consumed by her grief to really think the matter through.

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And so Moore seems to be trying to conciliate Cullinan in this letter and keep him from reacting too harshly or precipitously to this news.

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But it's clear from Cullinan's response on September 27th, 1922, that he's not happy to hear this. He says, I must confess that I was greatly chagrined

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at learning that James L. was a member of the Klan, as well as the activities of the Klan and seeing to it that this was given due publicity. And he goes on then to talk about

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his opposition to the Klan again. And later in this same folder, which I don't think we'll have time to look at today, it's clear that Cullinan has some plans

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to write directly to President Edgar Odell Lovett and to the board of trustees to find out more about how they've allowed this chapter of students to exist on the campus

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and to make clear his displeasure. So can I, as I think I go back and forth. I'm risk averse in general across my life.

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And as a historian though, it comes and goes. Sometimes it's where I let go of my risk aversion and just go all out.

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But I'm going to use some of my risk aversion here to ask a question about a smaller conclusion and a larger conclusion. And the question about the smaller conclusion is,

00:24:36.970 - 00:24:50.060

how confident can we be that James L. Autry was actually a member of the Rice Klan? That's the smaller one. But then the second one is, does it matter?

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Does it matter for the larger questions in which you're interested that have to do with Rice, whether he was or not? I think it's a fair question.

00:25:02.290 - 00:25:14.110

I think where we can start to build a case by putting together various sources. If all we had was just the one photo of the Klan, the sort of,

00:25:15.280 - 00:25:31.810

apparently students dressed in Klan robes in the Campanile, it would be hard to draw any conclusions about who was in the Klan, what its activities were on campus. So I share your hesitance as a historian

00:25:31.810 - 00:25:45.400

not to draw final conclusions from one source or even two sources or maybe even three sources. We want to try to build a case to corroborate and we have to sort of approach each one of those sources

00:25:45.400 - 00:25:57.980

almost like a prosecutor would, and press it to see if it really can bear the weight of a particular conclusion. And this letter from Judge Moore to Cullinan

00:25:57.980 - 00:26:08.450

speculates that maybe the presence of the Klan at the funeral had more to do with Mrs. Autry's brother's influence than it did with James L.

00:26:10.020 - 00:26:20.960

And so that's a possibility. And in fact, Cullinan in one of his letters says that he's not sure how this might've happened,

00:26:20.960 - 00:26:33.650

whether through family pressure or college associates. So he's still himself kind of trying to figure out where that influence came from. But I think it is interesting that he

00:26:33.650 - 00:26:47.630

felt strongly enough about this to withdraw his funds from the scholarship fund. And that's where I think, on one level, it matters whether or not James L.

00:26:47.630 - 00:26:59.950

actually was involved with this group. But in another sense, the fact that Cullinan reacted as he did by not supporting the Rice Institute shows that even the appearance that

00:27:01.380 - 00:27:11.920

there was a presence of the Klan at the Rice Institute mattered for the history of the institution. The way it was perceived, the way it appeared, even to to some of its strongest supporters.

00:27:11.920 - 00:27:24.190

And I do have a question reading this, whether Cullinan is exaggerating when he says that he's learned of a substantial number of students at the Rice Institute,

00:27:24.190 - 00:27:38.910

because that suggests he's gathering information that goes even beyond this one funeral. But we don't know in the letter what his other evidence is. We only know that this is the conclusion he's come to

00:27:38.910 - 00:27:49.590

and he's decided to make his displeasure known. I'll just throw out that I'm equally interested, and this is very work in progress as well, but I'm equally interested later in this folder

00:27:49.590 - 00:28:05.230

by an exchange between Cullinan and the rector of an Episcopal church downtown, whose name was Peter Gray Sears.

00:28:07.230 - 00:28:18.440

And Peter Gray Sears was, it shows here, connected with the Christ Church Cathedral downtown. Was also a very well-known figure in Houston history.

00:28:18.440 - 00:28:34.790

Very connected to the history of Rice as well. William Marsh Rice is known to have donated to Christ Church early on in its history. And Cullinan has clearly told Peter Gray Sears

00:28:34.790 - 00:28:47.200

that he's very unhappy about this. And he's planning to write to the board of trustees of the Rice Institute. And in this letter, Sears tries to calm him down and say,

00:28:47.200 - 00:28:59.610

wait, don't go storming in until we've had a chance to talk. He says, recalling your statement to me that you had it in mind to address a letter of protest to the trustees of the Rice Institute

00:28:59.610 - 00:29:07.040

regarding what you conceive to be their disastrous policy in the government of the student body. I venture to presume so far upon the thought

00:29:07.040 - 00:29:21.320

of your friendly relationship with me to beg you most earnestly not to send that letter until we have had some further conference. And that's not the only letter he sent along those lines

00:29:21.320 - 00:29:30.230

because right after that letter, Cullinan wrote back and said, similar to his first letter, no, this is a time to separate the sheep from the goats. We can't be hesitant here.

00:29:30.230 - 00:29:43.010

We've got to take a strong stand against the Klan. So Sears tries again. And in fact, in a subsequent letter, he includes a letter from John Rockefeller to Sears,

00:29:43.010 - 00:29:55.270

very famous, of course, John Rockefeller, and he quotes a passage from this letter from Rockefeller that talks about how difficult it is to manage the affairs of a large business corporation where

00:29:55.270 - 00:30:03.330

you might not know everything that's happening in the corporation and you may not have control over everything. And Sears kind of makes the parallel

00:30:03.330 - 00:30:14.590

to the board of trustees of the Rice Institute. He says, if that's true of large business corporations whose executives have almost unlimited authority and power, then how much truer is it,

00:30:14.590 - 00:30:23.400

10 times truer with reference to those who have the responsibility of management and direction of a great body of high-spirited and hot-blooded human beings,

00:30:23.400 - 00:30:34.450

the young men and women of our best families who make up the student bodies of the various universities of our country. He says, these university presidents and trustees

00:30:34.450 - 00:30:46.790

have the toughest and most difficult job of us all, except always the preachers. So he seems to be kind of saying, before you storm into President Lovett's office,

00:30:48.290 - 00:30:56.960

think a little bit about the difficulty that President Lovett might have. And I think that could be just on its face, all that Sears is saying,

00:30:56.960 - 00:31:10.560

but it does raise some questions to me of, what might the board or members of the trustees have known about the presence of the Klan at the Rice Institute? Is there a reason why Sears wants Cullinan

00:31:10.560 - 00:31:20.230

to tread carefully in raising this issue with the trustees? And that's a question I think that these letters alone don't answer. We'll have to do some more research to figure that out.

00:31:22.250 - 00:31:33.680

Good day. And I don't know if that stuff you said in the beginning about improvisation held up. (laughs) It's definitely a work in progress.

00:31:33.680 - 00:31:45.070

I mean, these are very recent discoveries, so. And even a folder like that, when it came to us from the University of Houston, the letters aren't necessarily in chronological order.

00:31:45.070 - 00:31:55.590

Part of the difficulty is then trying to create a timetable of what happened when and relating it to the events of the funeral. So that's why I mean it's still a work in progress.

00:31:55.590 - 00:32:06.410

I'm not sure, as you said, we can draw final conclusions, but I do think that it gives us a lot more information than we had just by looking at that photo in the Campanile

00:32:06.410 - 00:32:18.850

a few weeks ago. So we're starting to build a bigger picture. Well, thanks for getting us going. I like to go second, so I'm glad that I'm back going second.

00:32:19.120 - 00:32:30.690

Last week, I think I went first and I never got over it. I had a really hard week following that. So it's good to be back where I'm in a more comfortable position.

00:32:32.580 - 00:32:46.640

We're gonna start with something that if you, when we speak publicly about our work on the task force, especially on campus, we're often asked questions about

00:32:48.130 - 00:33:01.350

the Founder's Monument. And when we're signing off from Doc Talk, we always say, please, everyone talk about Doc Talk.

00:33:01.350 - 00:33:11.440

But when we speak publicly as the co-chairs of the task force, we work very carefully, I think to, not I think,

00:33:11.440 - 00:33:30.940

we're very careful not to give personal opinions or about the Founder's Memorial. And we are... Mainly because I think we don't want to speak

00:33:31.890 - 00:33:43.440

on behalf of the task force as a whole while those deliberations are still going on. And with the not insignificant number of our community, the part of the work of the task force

00:33:43.440 - 00:33:59.330

that they're most interested in has to do with the monument. And our work does include that, but it is also much broader as anyone who's come to these Doc Talks has seen.

00:33:59.330 - 00:34:16.620

With all that said, today, I want to talk about monuments, plural. Because, and some reading and listening and viewing I have been doing this week about monuments.

00:34:16.620 - 00:34:25.670

And one of the things, one of the reasons I'm doing it is because we need to think about monuments in our jobs on the task force.

00:34:25.670 - 00:34:40.790

But also, I want to encourage our viewers to be doing the same. To continue, I hope, to educate yourself around any and all of the issues that we speak on

00:34:40.870 - 00:34:55.950

here during our weekly presentations. And so I'm going to start with some monuments. If I can get my screen going. Okay.

00:34:58.220 - 00:35:11.290

And so, I'm just gonna page through a few and describe what we see here. So here we have a large marble pillar.

00:35:12.820 - 00:35:32.600

It looks like it's on a three tier base. It's dominating a kind of darkened sky. But what about it though seems off, Dr. McDaniel? It seems like there's something missing.

00:35:33.450 - 00:35:46.180

I don't see a lot of monuments that's just a tall column with nothing on the top. Yeah, it seems like something's missing. So it's a tall column moving up into the sky,

00:35:46.180 - 00:36:01.380

but there's really nothing on top. And then this second photo is in a tropical area, palm trees. It's in the middle of a traffic circle

00:36:02.800 - 00:36:12.570

and has a semi-circular base. Again, rather tall. That looks like it's gotta be at least 20 feet tall. I don't know.

00:36:13.680 - 00:36:26.830

But again, missing something. It's this huge base that rises from the ground, but doesn't conclude. It seems like a conclusion is missing.

00:36:28.080 - 00:36:39.600

And the third one that I want to take a look at is a backside of a similar base, where we see something has been ripped out

00:36:39.600 - 00:36:57.680

and it's exposing some brick that was forming the base. And then this last photograph is of a Black man in Birmingham, Alabama,

00:36:57.740 - 00:37:16.650

looking up at a monument in that city. And I want to start with some semi-rhetorical questions, which means they may be invitations for us to talk a little, but they may also just be invitations for our audience.

00:37:18.090 - 00:37:31.860

Questions to inform their conversations as the week goes on. And the first question that comes up in a lot of secondary readings around monuments is, what's the purpose of a monument?

00:37:33.350 - 00:37:45.020

What explains the mass of these monuments that we just took a look at? The base of these monuments. Why are they so large?

00:37:45.020 - 00:38:08.090

Why do you imagine, Dr. McDaniel, or anyone else who's in the room with us today, why are these monuments so monumental? It's to call our attention to them.

00:38:08.090 - 00:38:25.130

It's to mark them out as special. But I also want to give you an answer to that question from the words of an informant from a documentary

00:38:25.130 - 00:38:38.100

called Monumental Crossroads, that I'll talk some about a little later in a little greater detail. But his answer is, I think,

00:38:38.100 - 00:38:50.350

really worth considering. This may be kind of small. I don't know if I can make it any bigger. But it's the words that I think

00:38:50.350 - 00:39:03.300

are most important to pay attention to. And he's speaking about the monument of Robert E. Lee that used to be in New Orleans. Uh-oh, I gotta stop share because I don't know

00:39:03.300 - 00:39:13.660

if I turned my sound on. Okay, here we go. All right, do you see Monumental Crossroads? Yes. Thumbs up.

00:39:13.660 - 00:39:27.590

Okay, here we go. Monuments but no one's ever been talking about that. They always talked about it as a footnote to understand. It was like, in case you ever forget where you are,

00:39:27.590 - 00:39:39.570

just remember look up at Robert. He looking at you and that's gonna remind you of the type of place that you're in. So this is an artist in New Orleans,

00:39:39.570 - 00:39:51.780

speaking about the ways in which that Lee statue dominated the landscape and what his community took it to mean. And what his community took it to mean is,

00:39:51.780 - 00:40:05.500

don't get confused about the real nature of this city. There's two things going on here in his answer. One, he's given a response that's really about direction finding

00:40:05.500 - 00:40:13.150

and what we would think of about as normal direction finding. You want to know where you are in the city, you ever get a little lost, look up.

00:40:13.150 - 00:40:21.520

See if you can find that statue of Robert E. Lee and then orient yourself. We always use that. We always use the, when we were living on campus,

00:40:21.520 - 00:40:33.280

the rainbow building, the Herman Building, as our help finder. Yeah. Well, and as a Houstonian, as a young man who learned to drive in Houston,

00:40:33.490 - 00:40:43.540

for me, and got lost lots of times, but for me, it was the Transco Tower. You newbies will know it as the Williams Tower, but for me, the Transco Tower,

00:40:43.540 - 00:40:54.450

which you could see from almost anywhere, was my orienting point. But this man from New Orleans, in addition to that physical kind of wayfinding,

00:40:54.450 - 00:41:11.690

is also speaking to a kind of social wayfinding. When you get successful in this city or you're making your way in the world and things seem like they're going well,

00:41:11.690 - 00:41:25.130

keep your guard up. Don't be confused about where you are. Look up at that statue of Robert E. Lee and take care because that demonstrates something

00:41:25.130 - 00:41:41.190

very real and substantial about the city that has not changed. And I found that material looking through a documentary

00:41:41.220 - 00:41:56.880

that I want to recommend to y'all by Tim Van den Hoff, which will be available once I can convince, and I don't think it would be very hard to convince the history librarian to purchase the digital rights.

00:41:56.880 - 00:42:10.870

And I've been previewing it this week. And I want to share the trailer of that documentary to you now because it begins to frame the ways

00:42:10.870 - 00:42:34.370

that people argue and have discussions about monuments that I think are important for us to consider. So here we go with that. The Confederacy was on the wrong side

00:42:34.370 - 00:42:44.320

of history and humanity. This is a history we should never forget and one that we should never, ever again put on a pedestal to be revered.

00:42:46.690 - 00:42:54.590

This racist monstrosity of hate. That's what I called it. The monstrosity of hate. (yelling)

00:42:54.590 - 00:43:01.970

We stop against oppression. That's what that statue represents. And you want to tear it down. (yelling)

00:43:01.970 - 00:43:14.680

White power! Go home! Go home! Why did my great-great-grandfather fight for the Confederacy?

00:43:14.680 - 00:43:24.380

He didn't own any slaves. There's a great African proverb that says until the lion tells his tale, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.

00:43:26.800 - 00:43:39.200

That Confederate blood's in my veins. Had nothing to do with white supremacy. I'm tired of hearing that. The South truly believed that they were fighting

00:43:39.200 - 00:43:52.790

the second American revolution. Slavery was a symptom and not the disease. This is not even an accurate scale of how many people were enslaved throughout this state.

00:43:53.690 - 00:44:08.360

We're bringing up the narratives that, for so long, haven't been told because we don't acknowledge them. You don't want to hear about old handsome Black men talking about his love for his homeland.

00:44:08.360 - 00:44:20.800

We're not here to refight a 150 year old war. The dilemma today is that we cannot have an honest discussion on the war. The battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia.

00:44:20.800 - 00:44:34.570

Nothing no more, nothing no less. It's about sweet tea and pearls, eating grits. (laughs) Those mean old White folk. So wrong, so wrong, so wrong.

00:44:35.930 - 00:44:43.310

It's like reclaiming history. A new message of freedom. And that's what's going on in America. But we need to keep it civil

00:44:43.310 - 00:45:00.900

and not just act out of pure emotion. I want this thing, I want this damn thing gone. (soft music) So what we have here, I think,

00:45:00.900 - 00:45:13.770

Van den Hoff is quite successfully in this trailer and mostly successfully in the larger piece, laid out the kind of troubling between history and memory

00:45:14.780 - 00:45:28.900

that frames debates around these matters. And our work in the taskforce navigates some of that material, which is why we're interested in things like

00:45:28.900 - 00:45:48.200

William Marsh Rice's loyalty during the Civil War, because it matters to how people interpret the meaning of things that are related to him. I want to say, I'm running a little bit out of time,

00:45:48.200 - 00:46:03.740

so I'm not gonna show this, I'm just gonna say it. Also for me, in Monumental Crossroads, one of the most effecting parts of that documentary, if you remember the Civil War reenactor

00:46:03.740 - 00:46:11.740

who's got the battle flag of Northern Virginia and other battle flags, but also the flag of the United States, all arrayed behind him.

00:46:11.740 - 00:46:28.680

And there's a section during that part of the documentary where all of the children are circled around him. You remember from the trailer that they're of all races and ethnicities.

00:46:28.680 - 00:46:40.750

And there's a rather labored part of the documentary where he begins his work by saying, I want one of y'all to point out, what's the most racist flag?

00:46:40.750 - 00:46:52.280

Someone point out the most racist flag. And one of the students raises her hand and points to the, I guess it's the third, I don't want to mess up, but one of the battle flags

00:46:52.280 - 00:47:03.920

of the Confederacy. And he says, yeah, yeah, a lot of people pick that one. And the little girl says, people say it's racist 'cause it's about slavery.

00:47:03.920 - 00:47:15.290

So she's careful to say people say, not that she says. But then this reenactor, a little bit dissatisfied with the answer, moves about three flags down

00:47:15.290 - 00:47:25.550

to the flag of the United States of America and unfurls it and says, this flag flew over slavery for, then he gives a certain amount of years,

00:47:25.550 - 00:47:39.770

which for him, is much longer than the Confederacy. And so he leaves this class of youngsters with the idea that no, this is the most, this flag of the United States is the most racist flag.

00:47:39.770 - 00:47:52.580

And so if you're going to be against the Confederacy, then you're going to need to be against the United States. So I want to recommend, you need to be against the flag of the United States.

00:47:52.580 - 00:48:10.160

So I want to recommend that documentary to the folks who are with us today. And the second thing that I want to sort of frame in terms of ways of talking about

00:48:10.160 - 00:48:29.160

and thinking about monuments is I want to focus on some words from Mitch Landrieu, who was the mayor of New Orleans in the summer of 2017 when they removed many of their Confederate monuments.

00:48:29.930 - 00:48:48.250

And I want to focus on three parts of that speech that speak to history but also to process. And he starts as follows, or this is from the beginning. He lays out kind of what New Orleans is known for

00:48:48.250 - 00:48:55.870

in the popular imagination. And then he rushes and says, but there are also other truths about our city that we must confront.

00:48:55.870 - 00:49:09.930

New Orleans was America's largest slave market, a port where hundreds of thousands of souls were bought, sold and shipped up the Mississippi River to live lives of forced labor, of misery,

00:49:09.930 - 00:49:19.990

of rape, of torture. America was the place where nearly 4,000 of our fellow citizens were lynched, 540 alone in Louisiana,

00:49:19.990 - 00:49:29.610

where the courts enshrined separate but equal, where the freedom riders coming to New Orleans were beaten to a bloody pulp. So when people say to me

00:49:29.610 - 00:49:40.700

that the monuments in question are history, well, what I just described is real history as well, and it's searing truth and it immediately begs the question

00:49:40.700 - 00:49:51.220

why there are no slave ship monuments, no prominent markers on public land to remember the lynchings of the slave blocks, nothing to remember this long chapter of our lives,

00:49:51.220 - 00:50:05.190

the pain, the sacrifice, the shame, all of it happening on the soil of New Orleans. So he's raising here an important question that I as a member of the task force need to grapple with

00:50:05.190 - 00:50:14.230

and I hope everyone in our community always needs to grapple with. And that's, what is the totality of the monumental landscape in a community?

00:50:14.230 - 00:50:27.900

And what types, if any, of conversations are going on on the campus? And here, the mayor of New Orleans is speaking to a very lopsided monumental landscape.

00:50:31.800 - 00:50:42.370

A second point that he raises that I won't spend a lot of time on because I think it's clear in our work, he says, these statues are not just stone and metal.

00:50:42.370 - 00:50:55.410

They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional sanitized Confederacy, ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement

00:50:55.410 - 00:51:08.010

and the terror that it actually stood for. And what I really like about this is he's asking for the larger community to do what historians

00:51:09.460 - 00:51:25.870

mostly tend to do. And that is to present and consider all the evidence. And in public monuments, do those monuments speak to,

00:51:25.870 - 00:51:36.300

this is an old fashioned word, I think, Dr. McDaniel. It's okay for me to use it because I'm over 50. Everyone else who's hearing it can just translate it to another word that works better for them.

00:51:36.300 - 00:51:54.000

But I think his argument here is, where's the truth in your monuments? Do your monuments speak to the truth or a truth? And lastly, I'm gonna stop in two minutes, I promise.

00:51:54.000 - 00:52:03.330

And then you're gonna make the last last point. I'm gonna stop here. Is he's raising a point about community and citizenship and decision-making.

00:52:03.330 - 00:52:16.400

And he's talking about the removal of a statue of P.G.T. Beauregard that came down. And here's Terence Blanchard, who is a jazz trumpeter and composer.

00:52:16.400 - 00:52:25.320

Earlier this week, when this statue came down, Terence Blanchard stood watch. His wife, Robin, and their two beautiful daughters at their side.

00:52:25.320 - 00:52:36.330

Terence went to a high school on the edge of City Park named after one of America's greatest heroes and patriots, John F. Kennedy. But to get there, he had to pass by this monument

00:52:36.330 - 00:52:48.800

to a man who fought to deny him his humanity. He said, Blanchard said, I never looked at them as a source of pride. It always made me feel as if they were put there

00:52:48.800 - 00:53:05.580

by people who don't respect us. This is something I never thought I'd see in my lifetime. It's a sign that the world is changing. That was powerful, thanks for sharing that.

00:53:05.580 - 00:53:12.990

Have you read his book, Mitch Landrieu? He's got a whole book. Maybe we can recommend it-- I have not. That's what I should have done.

00:53:12.990 - 00:53:25.300

(laughs) I think it expands on some of the points that he made in that speech, I think, that your article that you were quoting from. But I think it's a helpful book,

00:53:25.300 - 00:53:39.420

partly because it chronicles his own memoir of, as a White Southerner as Louisiana and kind of evolving his own thinking on these issues and changing over time.

00:53:41.570 - 00:53:51.990

One thing that-- The importance of jazz musicians in his changing over time, I think, also. Yeah, I think those are really useful questions to ask.

00:53:51.990 - 00:54:00.750

I mean, especially the why questions. You're right, those are very much a historian's kind of questions. Like when we were looking at the document

00:54:00.750 - 00:54:11.580

of the Cullinan letter, we immediately ask, well, why is this letter here? How did it get here? What led to it reaching this point?

00:54:11.580 - 00:54:23.840

And I think those are the questions that we have to ask about monumental landscapes as well. Why are these the monuments that we have? And why don't we have other monuments

00:54:23.840 - 00:54:32.070

or monuments to different things? I don't remember the exact wording from the speech. And that's one thing that struck me just as I've been thinking about this is

00:54:32.070 - 00:54:48.260

on the one hand, there's some clear differences, I think we could agree, between the monument of Robert E. Lee in New Orleans and a statue to William Marsh Rice on the Rice campus.

00:54:48.730 - 00:55:00.740

I think one thing they do have in common if we ask the question of how they got there is we would find probably in both cases that the decision-making that went into

00:55:02.370 - 00:55:16.090

putting them there was probably not what we would consider in 2020 a democratic or inclusive or very kind of deliberate process of decision-making.

00:55:16.090 - 00:55:26.680

And that's something that just as a student of Civil War monuments in American history, I've come to understand is that many of these monuments were actually funded

00:55:26.680 - 00:55:43.510

by private groups that lobbied state governments and local governments to give them the permission to put these statues there. There's a historian who, at UNC who says

00:55:43.770 - 00:55:56.860

it's kind of like the monuments were sort of a colonization of public space by private groups that have their own agendas. And yet today, we forget about that backstory

00:55:56.860 - 00:56:10.880

of how they got there and it seems as though they've always been there or they represent the decision of the entire community to put them there. And it raises the question of the Founder's Memorial too.

00:56:10.880 - 00:56:24.050

What were the decisions that went into putting it there? Who was in the room where it happened, I guess? Was it a handful of people? Did it include faculty?

00:56:24.050 - 00:56:32.750

Did it include staff? Did it include alumni? Did it include students? I think we'd probably find the answer to that.

00:56:32.750 - 00:56:50.190

It was, in that case as in many Confederate monument cases, a decision that was made by a pretty small group of people. And so that's one respect in which the two kinds of monument, despite their very vast differences

00:56:50.190 - 00:57:02.320

and kind of the symbolic message that they're sending, it's worth wrestling with that similarity between them that they were put up at a time when decisions about monumental landscapes were made by

00:57:02.320 - 00:57:14.260

a very small fraction of the communities that were in existence even at that time. Yeah, I agree. And I want to,

00:57:14.260 - 00:57:25.070

I'm risk averse, as I said, but I want to say something risky here just because it opens up a question for me that I need to open up for myself.

00:57:26.400 - 00:57:43.760

So I agree with you that I see the differences in a monument to Robert E. Lee and the Founder's Monument. But also as a historian, because I'm inclined to see those differences at first,

00:57:44.780 - 00:57:59.090

I also want to make some room to make sure that that initial inclination doesn't hinder my interpretations about some close similarities around the larger purposes of those.

00:57:59.090 - 00:58:15.240

And so, and what I mean by that hopefully more clearly is the mayor speech talks about what's the importance of omission as well. And so the question that rises in my mind is,

00:58:15.520 - 00:58:32.320

what's omitted from the Founder's Memorial? Do those omissions in the work that they do end up drawing greater similarities between what the Founder's Memorial does

00:58:32.320 - 00:58:46.410

and what Robert E. Lee's memorial does on their respective landscapes? And they may do the same thing too in serving that kind of wayfinding or orienting

00:58:47.870 - 00:58:58.960

function that you started off by talking about. That is this the kind of thing that some members of our community, just as in some members of New Orleans,

00:58:58.960 - 00:59:08.790

look up at and see or remember what kind of place this is. And that's kind of something that I think we really do want to preserve room

00:59:08.790 - 00:59:17.100

to wrestle with and think about. I think we've spoken past, maybe this was intentional on your part, Dr. Byrd, not to take--

00:59:17.100 - 00:59:28.810

We started late. We started late. Started late, so. But I know I have a meeting to get to. But I could leave you to answer some questions

00:59:28.810 - 00:59:40.850

or we could invite our audience to feel free always to email us, if you have comments or questions that you want to follow up on. And we want to remind you to visit our website

00:59:40.850 - 00:59:52.030

at taskforce.rice.edu because there you can find podcast recordings of past Doc Talks, and we hope that if you missed some of our past discussions,

00:59:52.030 - 01:00:01.390

you'll catch up and follow along with those podcast episodes. You can also find videos of our webinars. And we want to let you know to put on your calendar

01:00:01.390 - 01:00:12.880

that on December 1st, we'll have our last taskforce webinar of the semester. And I'm really excited about this one, Dr. Byrd. Do you want to tell them who our guest of honor will be?

01:00:12.880 - 01:00:23.970

So Raymond Johnson will, Dr. Raymond Johnson will be our guest. The first African-American student and first African-American research associate

01:00:25.200 - 01:00:35.720

admitted to the university. And it is going to be a real honor. And I know all of you will mark your calendars for it.

01:00:35.720 - 01:00:45.860

We'll give you the exact time as soon as we have it nailed down. But as always, thanks for joining us. I'm gonna run too,

01:00:45.860 - 01:01:00.050

but if you email us questions on this, our most controversial podcast or webinar to date, I promise you we'll bring them up next week. Thank you so much, have a great weekend.

01:01:00.050 - 01:01:01.750

Take care, have a great weekend.