00:00:00.360 - 00:00:27.630

Okay. I'm glad to see you inside and dry. It's a rainy day outside. I was looking around, 'cause I don't have an umbrella and I know I need to go outside

00:00:27.630 - 00:00:48.980

later. So I'm a little distressed. I've been, I've been trying to convince my, my teenage daughter she should carry an umbrella, and I'm, I'm not being very successful at this. Has this ever happened to you, trying to convince a teenager of something, and...?

00:00:50.590 - 00:01:01.390

And it didn't, and it didn't work? Didn't work. Maybe you have lots of examples of it working, I'd love to hear those too, but at this point... No, I have no examples of it working.

00:01:04.320 - 00:01:17.870

Well, it's good to see you and glad that it's Friday. I heard, I had, I got an email today that referred to this as "Friyay." I haven't, I haven't used that before, but I might start. It's too late for me.

00:01:18.030 - 00:01:38.330

I'm not, I'm not going, I'm not going to use it. Well, we are glad that it's Friday, and glad that it's doc talk time. We wanna welcome all of our guests who are filing into the, the virtual room here. My name is Caleb McDaniel, I'm the chair of the history department here at Rice, and

00:01:38.330 - 00:01:56.750

co-chair with Dr. Alex Byrd, also here with me, of the Task Force on Slavery, Segregation, and Racial Injustice here at Rice. And every Friday, if you didn't already know, here on Zoom, we meet at noon central for doc talks, and this is a very informal, some days more informal

00:01:56.750 - 00:02:19.310

than others, this one's going to be a very informal, window into how we do our work as historians. So we are often working without a net on these talks. We are processing sources that we've been assembling as part of the research of the task force, and just looking at them together and thinking about what questions

00:02:19.310 - 00:02:38.390

they answer, what questions they raise, perhaps more importantly, for future research. And of course, we wanna make space for your questions as well. So if you have questions, feel free to put them in the chat or in the Q&A as we continue today. Before we get started, I, I wanna make sure our audience knows about another

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big task force event coming up this Thursday, if I'm not mistaken. So do you wanna tell us a little bit about that, Dr. Byrd? Yeah, so one of our favorite, we have no favorite webinar series at, in the task

00:02:54.530 - 00:03:28.310

force, we like them all, but one of the, one of our series is called Black at Rice, where we feature black members of the community at the university, and we're continuing that series on this coming Thursday with Black at Rice: Living the Black Employee Experience at Rice. And this is an important webinar because black employees or staff were

00:03:28.310 - 00:03:52.850

the first blacks at the university. They existed at Rice, they worked at Rice, they interacted at the university long before there were black students or faculty at the university. And so on Thursday, we have a mix of current and former black employees at the university

00:03:52.850 - 00:04:14.870

and really looking forward to hearing about how they see their work at Rice, how they place it historically, and what their vision for Black at Rice in the future is. Really looking forward to that conversation.

00:04:14.870 - 00:04:32.150

So I hope if you don't already have it on your calendar, you can use the link that I just put in the chat and be sure to join us on Zoom for that webinar. Remember too that on our website you can find archived versions of all of the past webinars that the task force has put on as part of our programming.

00:04:32.150 - 00:04:57.170

And you can also find there on the website our doc talks podcast. The doc talks that we record every Friday get a second lease on life on our podcast episodes, which usually include an edited version of one of these webinars, as well as a debriefing section with Kate Colley from the alumni office.

00:04:57.170 - 00:05:12.770

And these are chances for us to look back on our past conversations about documents that we've examined and think about them in the context of what's going on on campus at the time of our debrief. We've had two episodes of the podcast that have come out just in the last couple of

00:05:12.770 - 00:05:43.290

weeks, so I'll put the link there in the chat, and all of them I think, you're really good on all of them, Dr. Byrd, but my favorite one, I think I can say, of the podcast episodes, might be this last one because we get to hear from a guest host, Dr. Nicole Waligora-Davis, who came on and made us wish we had her here every week, perhaps.

00:05:43.380 - 00:06:08.200

But also what I love about that episode is it includes a peek into O-Week from this past year, with a lecture that you gave on diversity to the new students who are arriving at Rice that made use of or repurposed or called students' attention to a document that we have been looking at as part of our task force research.

00:06:08.220 - 00:06:25.830

A couple of documents, actually, a couple that came up on our doc talk. So if you're kind of curious to see, how does this research come to life in the present? What application might it have here and now, today, in O-Week, in the conversations we have with our new students as they arrive?

00:06:25.860 - 00:06:47.610

Then check out episode nine of the doc talks, I think that you won't be disappointed. So with all of those announcements out of the way, I guess we have to get started on today's doc talk, whether we're ready or not and probably not. Some weeks, you know, on this webinar, those of you who have been our regulars can

00:06:47.610 - 00:07:05.070

appreciate that some weeks we are more improvisational than others and usually it all works out. In fact, we just discovered as we were about to log on here that we both settled on some documents from 1961, so, we didn't even plan that, but I think it'll, it'll lead hopefully to some useful conversation.

00:07:06.360 - 00:07:26.280

And I'm gonna get us started with an old standby here on the doc talks, which is the Rice Thresher. We've talked before about how invaluable the Rice Thresher is as an archive for us of the university's history, and a window onto past conversations about slavery, segregation and

00:07:26.280 - 00:07:41.620

racial injustice. And the issue that I wanna share today is from December of 1961, and I'm hoping that you can see the front page of the Thresher big enough. Can you read that? Great.

00:07:41.740 - 00:07:59.050

L.B. Ryons, yes, I see it. L.B. Ryons at the top, yes, and above the fold, as, as we would say before all of our newspapers went digital. And this issue, I have to say, we could probably spend a whole webinar on several

00:07:59.050 - 00:08:16.210

different parts of this one issue. It's, it's really bursting with significance, I think, for the kind of work we're doing. And there's a lot of interesting things about about the issue that maybe are tangential to the work we're doing, but nonetheless, give us a glimpse

00:08:16.210 - 00:08:36.160

into Rice University on the eve of its beginning to desegregate. And I wanna come back to, to that word, that desegregation or desegregating later when we talk about this article right here on classes and desegregation. But you can see, as you've already referred to, Dr.

00:08:36.160 - 00:08:54.400

Byrd, at the top there, there is an article about Professor L.B. Ryons donating his entire estate for the building of what we now know of as the Ryons Lab here on campus. There's also some, some articles that talk about the growing connections between Rice

00:08:54.400 - 00:09:15.190

and NASA at this time, which is not unrelated to the growing interest in, on the part of the Board of Trustees, in changing the charter, because so many of the federal grants that were associated with NASA were connected to the question of integration on campuses like Rice.

00:09:15.490 - 00:09:35.230

There's also some really interesting letters to the editor in this issue that I wish we could spend time with, but we don't have time. This was a time when the current staff of the Thresher opened its pages with some frequency to faculty members at Rice, who shared their opinions.

00:09:35.230 - 00:09:59.590

You can see it here on page two, just above the, the masthead with the editorial staff, the editor Marjorie Trulan, and the associate editor Griffin Smith, we'll talk about him later, made a space for what they called a "faculty sound-off." And so we have here a letter from Niels Nielsen from, who's a professor of philosophy and religious

00:09:59.590 - 00:10:22.450

thought, under the headline, "Ties with Foreign Universities Needed." And I found interest in this article partly because it connected to a discussion happening even right now at Rice about the general education that we provide to students at Rice and what their education should teach them about current events, or how they should be

00:10:22.450 - 00:10:38.560

trying to connect their study with big issues or big questions. That's something that Dr. Nielsen pointed to in his article. He concludes by asking whether or not Rice could make some of the same investments that

00:10:38.560 - 00:11:01.720

happen at places like Stanford and Vanderbilt, because he notes that Rice has no interdepartmental concern comparable with that at other reputable universities from Harvard on down. That's kind of his word for general education, "interdepartmental concerns." And he asks, "Why not [have] some great issues courses like those which spark

00:11:01.720 - 00:11:23.680

interest in ideas at other universities," or "A wider range of concerns for the major problems" that are facing students in the present. So we could spend time on that if we had more than than the 50 minutes that we have. We could also look at an exchange between professors that is clearly the continuation

00:11:24.550 - 00:11:49.990

of a previous conversation in the pages of the Thresher, because we find out that Dr. Louis Galambos is replying in this issue of the Thresher to a colleague, Professor Bourgeois, or Bourgeois, I don't know if I, how he would have pronounced his name, but there was an exchange between Professor Galambos, who was teaching in the history

00:11:49.990 - 00:12:13.300

department, and another professor at Rice, and it becomes clear as you read these exchanges that part of the issue that they were disagreeing about was the question of desegregation, the question of racial integration at Rice, and some other time perhaps we can go back and look at Professor Galambos's original faculty sound-off where

00:12:13.300 - 00:12:33.910

he argued, or he was sort of surprised that students weren't taking more of an interest in the civil-rights movement and the questions surrounding integration that were occurring on other university campuses, and encouraging students to take up those questions. And then there was a reply by his colleague taking him to task for this.

00:12:34.240 - 00:12:51.390

And so you can see spread across several columns of this issue of the Thresher different writers who are coming to the defense, either of Professor Galambos or of Professor Bourgeois. And so we could spend a whole doc talk talking about those exchanges, 'cause I think

00:12:51.390 - 00:13:13.590

there's some really interesting comments in there. But what I really wanted to focus on was none of those things, but instead, as I said earlier, this front-page article about a referendum vote that was to be held on Monday. So at the very end of the fall term of 1961, Rice students were preparing to go

00:13:13.590 - 00:13:28.770

to the polls and vote on two referendums. And this is in an article by Griffin Smith, who we saw earlier was an associate editor of the Thresher at the time, and he lays out what the two issues that are, that are to be decided involve.

00:13:28.770 - 00:13:51.390

One of them is the question of whether the student government should be organized less by classes, which was still the case at that time, and more by colleges. So the college system at this time was still relatively new. It was introduced in February 1957, Smith shares, and this is about four years later,

00:13:51.780 - 00:14:11.430

and so the system of student government that we know of today, where colleges send representatives to the SA to represent their, their colleges, wasn't really in place. And that's what one of the referendums was gonna be about, should that change? And then the second referendum, the one I think we're most interested in as a

00:14:11.430 - 00:14:34.390

task force, was a referendum on a desegregation resolution that was passed by the Student Senate just a couple of weeks before on November 29th, in a 15-to-2 roll call vote. And it says here that the Senate proposed the all-school referendum so that the

00:14:34.390 - 00:14:53.800

students and faculty could also register their sentiments on the question of desegregation. Now, when we read this article, we find out that there was a backstory to the reason for this resolution, and it actually had to do with what was going on at the University of Texas.

00:14:53.830 - 00:15:17.470

We've talked a little bit before about how challenges to segregation at the University of Texas were related to conversations that were happening here on, on the Rice campus as well. But according to Smith, the stimulus for this resolution said Reed Martin, the president of the Rice Student Association, "was an action by the University of Texas

00:15:17.470 - 00:15:41.050

Board of Regents who had refused to integrate facilities at Texas until a majority of the Southwest Conference schools were ready for desegregation. So this is another marker of the time, right, Rice is still a part of the Southwest Conference, and so the Texas students had apparently reached out to Reed Martin and the

00:15:41.050 - 00:15:59.220

student government here at Rice to find out whether other SWC schools were, quote unquote, "ready for desegregation." They were looking to the student bodies for an expression of support. And so this referendum was to to test that.

00:15:59.220 - 00:16:24.180

A favorable vote here on the referendum would apparently constitute that expression of support. Now what really interests me is the next couple of paragraphs in this article, because just after explaining that whole backstory, Smith, the author of this article, says, "the resolution, of course, will not necessarily result in desegregation of Rice.

00:16:25.060 - 00:16:51.030

But although it is phrased as a," quote, "'academic question,' Martin said, anyone can see the practical implications involved. Martin explained, quote, 'We don't want to recruit Negro students, but we don't want to bar Negro students--we just don't want to make any judgments based solely on race.'"

00:16:52.080 - 00:17:11.650

That was Martin's quote. I'm getting, I'm getting feelings of deja vu. Well, maybe this will bring back one of our earliest discussions when we look to the next page, too, because there is an editorial that talks about these referendums, and it

00:17:11.650 - 00:17:27.490

starts with the headline, "Give Them the Chance." And at first when I saw that headline, I thought, oh, this must, this must be about the desegregation referendum. Actually, they're talking about the colleges, give the colleges the chance to, to form the, the student government, because that was the first referendum.

00:17:28.240 - 00:17:57.520

But there is a second part of this editorial that's about the desegregation referendum, and it says that the Thresher editorial board recommends that students vote for, vote for desegregation, which would "help to make Rice one of the first Southwest Conference schools to lend its support to the student body." But here, the Thresher emphasizes, and

00:17:57.520 - 00:18:18.870

this to me is reminiscent of Martin's comments on the first page, "the Thresher emphasizes that this vote is to determine student opinion on desegregation, not integration." They sort of counterpose those two terms. And then they clarify a little bit later on what they mean.

00:18:18.880 - 00:18:41.860

"A vote for desegregation will help to show that the student body at this university believes that no qualified student should be barred from the top-notch education offered here at Rice simply because his creator endowed him with black skin. "Here now are certainly many persons of races other than the so called white one," said the

00:18:41.860 - 00:19:02.680

Thresher, "yet the majority of Caucasian students do not find their presence offensive. They recognize them as fellow students here on the same mission, one which includes study, fellowship, and we hope, cultural exchange." So that's the document I wanted to bring for discussion.

00:19:02.950 - 00:19:25.300

There's one last coda down on page seven, or excuse me, on page six, where we learn that Reed Martin, the president of the Student Association, and Griffin Smith, the associate editor who wrote those front-page stories that we looked at, were going to travel to Austin, Texas, to represent Rice University at the Council on Human Relations there,

00:19:25.300 - 00:19:41.860

sponsored by the National Student Association and by the SA at the, at the University of Texas. And the question before this council was going to be racial discrimination in higher education and the students' responsibility in responding to it.

00:19:42.070 - 00:20:02.440

And there was to be a speech and then some discussion and debate after the speech, and so Martin and Griffin Smith were going to Austin to participate in that exchange. So that's the document that I've been looking at and thinking a lot about this morning. What, what do you make of it, Dr.

00:20:02.440 - 00:20:21.820

Byrd? Well, a couple of things, and I played my hand a little during your presentation. So one is the continuity of argument about what desegregation entails, right.

00:20:21.820 - 00:20:51.630

So we see here in 1961 people making recourse to this idea that it's one thing to not bar blacks from the university, it's another thing altogether to recruit them. So, well, you can now come to dinner at my house, you may not get an invitation, right. I'm not sure, it's a bad analogy, bad analogy, but, but still, this idea that

00:20:51.630 - 00:21:20.220

recruitment is a, is a whole 'nother level, and also something not to be encouraged, right, and not necessarily to be encouraged. And the second thing is this related idea, if I, if I heard you right, about this vote being about desegregation only, not integration, and if my history of the

00:21:20.220 - 00:21:49.060

University of Texas is, is correct, or my grasp of the history of the desegregation of University of Texas is correct, what, what that brought to my mind is aspects of the desegregation of the University of Texas, wherein, when black students were first allowed at the university, there was still much discussion and debate about where they,

00:21:49.080 - 00:22:16.050

where they could live and where they would live at the university, and at the University of Texas, there is indeed the opening of facilities beyond the university where where black students initially live, even though they're going to classes at, at Texas, and I'm, and I'm curious if, if, I wonder if that's what they had in mind for Rice.

00:22:17.160 - 00:22:40.320

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I think looking at it from the perspective of 60 years later, I think a lot of people might think of those two terms as synonymous, desegregation and integration, and yet what you're painting a picture of is the specifics of those two terms within the context of the time, and they may not have been thought of

00:22:40.320 - 00:23:00.360

as synonymous by the students who were debating these issues. It's interesting to me, if you look a little bit more closely at that front-page article, it says that if Rice students vote in favor of the referendum, it won't be for the first time, because in 1957 there was a poll sponsored by the Thresher and the Forum,

00:23:00.360 - 00:23:17.970

which, we've talked about the Forum before, and 522 Rice students and faculty voted on the question of integration of Rice Institute immediately, eventually, or not at all. And in that poll, voters favored, favoring the integration of Rice totaled 61.4%,

00:23:17.970 - 00:23:41.520

according to the Thresher, but 37.7% opposed it at any time. So one wonders if we, we roll the clock back again to 1957, what the framers of that poll meant by the term integration. Were things happening at the University of Texas that were shaping these two terms and

00:23:41.520 - 00:24:01.440

what they meant? Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't be surprised, though I would look so that I could be surprised, I wouldn't be surprised if the late 1950s poll wasn't using the language less precisely, or that, that they were indeed using the language less precisely than

00:24:01.440 - 00:24:21.940

these editors are in 1961. I wouldn't be surprised if the 1961 editors had, had more distinct ideas about what these terms could, could represent. Well, I think that's a question that we could pursue with, with further research.

00:24:21.980 - 00:24:39.460

And there's lots more in this issue that I'd like to investigate more. The relationship between the faculty and the students, faculty and students were both taking these polls, and it's clear in the letters to the editor I referred to earlier that faculty were taking a lot of interest in these questions and were writing into the

00:24:39.460 - 00:24:57.280

Thresher about it, and yet the, the trip of Martin and Smith to Austin to participate in a discussion about "students' responsibility" with regard to racial discrimination was clearly on the minds of the student writers and editors of the Thresher at the time.

00:24:57.820 - 00:25:25.240

I'm also struck by the part of the editorial that referred to "other students who were already at Rice," who, according to the editorial, "were persons of races other than the so-called white ones," and a reference to their experience on the part of the editorial writers as evidence that desegregation should be supported by, by the

00:25:25.240 - 00:25:48.970

students. I mean, there's a whole host of questions that I think that raises about which students did the writer of this editorial have in mind, what was their experience like, in fact, and what does this mean that that there were already students at Rice that, according to the editorial, were not white, even though the question of of

00:25:48.970 - 00:26:05.800

desegregation was being put to the students as as a referendum that still needed to be decided? So those are some of the questions that I think we'll have to continue... Great, great questions. Interesting questions, and some of them, I imagine, will be difficult.

00:26:05.800 - 00:26:31.270

We've answered, or we've attended to some of them, right, in the very, in the earlier webinar, and in the, in the podcast that you, that you opened with, right, we attend in a, quite briefly, to the history of Latinx students at the university, and so that would be, that would be one place to begin.

00:26:35.760 - 00:26:53.280

So I take it from your pause that it's, it's, it's my turn. It's a silent pitch, if that, if that is a term, and I'm right along with you today, Dr. McDaniel. I had a lot of ups and downs.

00:26:53.350 - 00:27:22.020

My, my plan today didn't quite work out. What I, what I, what I thought that I would do is I wanted to speak again, as I have been for the last few weeks, on the questions of black faculty and black faculty recruitment at the university, and, and wanted to focus on some progress there in the mid 1980s,

00:27:22.290 - 00:27:44.880

but also to tie some of that mid-1980s progress into the potential relationship between Rice and Houston. And so, and I'm still gonna do that, that first bit, we'll talk about some progress on black faculty recruitment in the mid 1980s, recruitment and hiring.

00:27:45.690 - 00:28:07.740

But I really wanted to be able to tie it in to the history of desegregation in the larger Houston area. And in the mid 1980s--I'm not showing any pictures, I want everyone to know that it's doc talk, so I will show a doc before long--but in the mid 1980s, the, the black

00:28:07.740 - 00:28:36.480

faculty, the number of the black faculty at the university doubled through a program and some efforts by other faculty on campus that I'll attend to shortly. But one of those black faculty members who comes to the university in the mid 1980s also plays a role in the continuing desegregation of Houston schools in the early 1960s.

00:28:37.080 - 00:29:06.450

And, and so I wanted to search for this article that I knew that exists, because I had been in communication with someone who was, who had written about this professor's life in the desegregation of Houston schools and his, and their experience. And so, but I had a bad citation.

00:29:07.620 - 00:29:28.290

And so I was, I was searching and searching, even now that I talk, now that I talk, I think the citation may have been bad in several ways, because I think my year is probably too early. I have a, I have I had a citation for this article that is October of 1961 that that

00:29:28.290 - 00:29:46.380

that talks about this black student's showing up at MacGregor Elementary School and their experience there. But I couldn't find this article in the Houston Chronicle, which was the citation that I had, to save my life.

00:29:47.280 - 00:30:09.990

So I had a citation from October 1961, I search all of October, and then I, and then I start searching beyond October, and then I go to the Post, just in case. You know, sometimes people not from Houston confuse the Post and the Chronicle. It shows up nowhere in either of those papers, though I do get, though there, it

00:30:09.990 - 00:30:40.690

does show up, these two students, I do find these two black students at, at MacGregor Elementary, which is right up the road from us, actually. And then I just do what any younger person would have done at first, which is that I get out of these doggone newspaper databases which are clunky and slow and whatever, and I

00:30:40.690 - 00:31:01.990

just go straight to Google, right. I'm just like, why don't I, why didn't I start there? So I start in Google and just search the author of the newspaper article, and lo and behold, the fourth or fifth hit for that, for

00:31:03.040 - 00:31:16.600

that search is a Rice person, and a Rice dissertation that, don't laugh, Dr. McDaniel... That you directed!

00:31:16.600 - 00:31:39.040

Don't laugh! A Rice dissertation that I directed is the third, is the third hit for this. So I go back to this dissertation and I go in the notes and I see the author of the article that I am, I am looking for.

00:31:39.040 - 00:32:08.050

And then things begin to make sense. The author is someone named Ninian McGowen, and the citation is from the Houston Informer. And then the scales fall from my eyes, and this, this citation that I have begins to make more sense, because the treatment of this desegregation at MacGregor

00:32:08.050 - 00:32:27.720

Elementary is way too formal and conversational in some ways. And so it didn't make sense that it wouldn't have showed up in, in the Chronicle. It's in some ways too conversational and sympathetic. So, but all that for another time.

00:32:27.720 - 00:32:53.830

Now, to get to, to raise a different set of questions and not just belabor the point of my confusion for most of the day. So hopefully you see the Thresher? Good. This is the Thresher from April 25th, 1986,

00:32:57.970 - 00:33:28.720

if I'm reading correctly, and the headline is "Black culture, women's studies program now at Rice." And what happens in this school year, the opening of the 1986-1987 school year, is two new black professors come to the university. And they, they both land in a single department, objectively one of the best

00:33:28.720 - 00:33:53.680

departments on campus in the mid 1980s and today I think, but I'll just bracket that, they both, they both show up in the history department. And this is a really remarkable appointment and achievement for the university because it doubles the number of black faculty on campus from the time from two until four.

00:33:53.680 - 00:34:23.380

To four. And these two new professors are Brenda Stevenson; professor of African American history, blacks in colonial Virginia; and Julius Scott, a historian of the Atlantic world. Just folks who have made phenomenal contributions to, to African American

00:34:23.380 - 00:34:52.780

history. And Julius Scott is the, as a young man, grows up in Houston and is at the center of this desegregation story at MacGregor Elementary that I was unable to bring to you in the way that I, that, that I wanted to, whose father was a minister at Texas Southern University in the early 1960s, which speaks to his Houston connections.

00:34:53.560 - 00:35:12.640

But now back to this article. What it, what it says is that Professor Stevenson and Scott; Stevenson, who's coming from Yale, Scott, who's coming from Duke; each have two-year appointments, teaching in cluster courses on Afro-American culture.

00:35:13.150 - 00:35:35.470

So already that, I hope that raises a question in the, in the minds of some of our listeners, as we begin this piece with, the university has made appointments that double the number of black faculty on campus, but then we end up understanding that both of them have two-year appointments, which, which then raises some questions on what,

00:35:35.470 - 00:35:55.540

what precisely has, has happened. Dr. Boles, Dr. John Boles, our colleague in the history department and also a member of the steering committee of the task force, is quoted in the, in the piece, saying, "We needed to hire

00:35:55.540 - 00:36:16.210

three young instructors. The third appointment is still pending." And speaking to his excitement about their, later in the article, about their, their coming to, to the university. Stevenson's teaching a course that year on African American women's history, and next

00:36:16.210 - 00:36:33.280

fall on Family in the U.S. South. And Scott is offering a course on the "Origins and Development of Slave Society in the Americas," and then later a course on "The Second Reconstruction: The Civil Rights Movement in the United States.

00:36:33.490 - 00:37:00.970

" Dr. Boles described this cluster program that is funded by the Mellon Foundation. It's not mentioned here, but I think this program originates a collaboration between the Houston History Department and then the Dean of Humanities at the, at the time, Allen Matusow, also a member of our, of our steering committee.

00:37:01.690 - 00:37:21.820

And then Dr. Grob, a longstanding professor in the English department, is quoted, saying, "Both black and white students are missing out." He's articulating why this two-year appointment is important. "Both black and white students are missing out.

00:37:22.090 - 00:37:48.370

Black faculty provide additional support for the black students while they, while they may shake out whatever prejudices that may remain with white students, and be a constant reminder that we live in an integrated society." And then the half of the article that is focused on Stevenson's and Scott's coming to the university finishes by saying,

00:37:48.370 - 00:38:11.890

"Current black professors at Rice are Robert Jones in English and George Smith in art history." Now, as we do in doc talk, right, we have, we have some questions and also some things that strike us about the document. And I have some things, right, I have some questions, but I wanna pause, because I've

00:38:11.890 - 00:38:37.780

been talking, and so it'd be good to pause and hear from you, prof, if, if any questions arise from this, this article, or anything that strikes you in particular. Well, because I happen to be in the history department, and so I'm familiar with, with the work of these scholars in a way that I'm not familiar with Robert Jones or George

00:38:37.780 - 00:38:57.160

Smith, who were mentioned at the end, my first reaction is just to wish I had been here at the time when, when Professor Stevenson and Professor Scott were here, because these, these are exceptional scholars of the field that they study. In fact, I was just looking it up to check my memory.

00:38:57.790 - 00:39:21.520

Professor Stevenson, who's now at UCLA, is currently a visiting professor at Oxford University. I say visiting professor, but she's actually the, occupying the inaugural Hillary Rodham Clinton Chair in Women's History at Oxford University, which gives our listeners, I think, a sense of how distinguished Professor Stevenson went on to

00:39:21.520 - 00:39:43.780

become in her career, but was already, I think, even at this moment, early in her career. So that's kind of my first reaction, is just to geek out a little bit about the idea of Professors Stevenson and Scott being here at the same time and thinking about all the ways that must have really enriched the department and the curriculum of the history

00:39:43.780 - 00:40:01.730

department. I think the other thing that comes to my mind then is a question similar to our discussion about Professor Rose Brewer, who we talked about, was that last week, no, two weeks ago. Two weeks ago.

00:40:01.760 - 00:40:26.390

Two weeks ago. Who was perhaps the first black woman faculty member here at Rice, a visiting professor in the sociology department. And so we raised some questions even then about why that visiting professorship did not end in a longer-term appointment, which I think is something we don't yet have all of

00:40:26.390 - 00:40:44.810

the answers to. There's a similarity here in the fact that these professors were brought onto campus in a visiting capacity through the funding of the Mellon Foundation. But I also noticed that we were talking about the, Chandler Davidson and the

00:40:44.810 - 00:41:02.210

Sociology Department and Social Sciences playing a leading role in that earlier moment. But here, at least from the perspective of this article, I'm struck by the the role of the School of Humanities. I don't know, I guess it was the school at the time.

00:41:02.220 - 00:41:12.200

Yeah, it was a school in the mid eighties. Yeah. The Dean of Humanities and Dr. Boles, Dr. Grob, the English department, the art history department, the history

00:41:12.200 - 00:41:36.170

department. So there seems to be a concentration of of work and interest in humanities. And so it raises questions about, was there a shift over time? I mean, it's kind of hard with such a small sample size, if we're being really frank and honest here, to talk about larger patterns of recruitment, but it does raise that

00:41:36.170 - 00:41:53.970

question in my mind as we, as we track black faculty recruitment over time, at different moments, do different divisions or different schools or different departments play leading roles in that effort? Yeah. Great, great questions.

00:41:54.240 - 00:42:15.680

Absolutely, really good questions. And some, of course, that, that, that we need to pursue. And I'll add a few more that, that come to mind for me based on how how the article unfolds, right.

00:42:15.690 - 00:42:46.710

I think there are, there, the article should raise for us some questions about the black experience of faculty on campus, right. I think there are some subtle hints that that need to be explored, right. In Professor Grob's testimony for why this cluster hire is so important, he lays out

00:42:47.940 - 00:43:14.460

a couple of points that that contrast to, I don't mean contrast in they disagree, but they speak to different parts of the faculty experience at a university. Dr. Boles, when he's discussing some of the importance of the program, focuses on scholarship and focuses on the importance of the Mellon Foundation grant that, though it's

00:43:14.460 - 00:43:22.710

not explicit here, it looks to have given Dr. Stevenson and Dr. Scott a reduced teaching load. They're only teaching one class per semester.

00:43:23.610 - 00:43:43.950

And so Dr. Boles underlines the fact that this brings in young outside scholars and gives them a light teaching load to let them develop a good tenure track. Right, so he's speaking to the, the, providing these two scholars with time to, to

00:43:43.950 - 00:44:10.920

focus on their research, though, though it's not captured explicitly in the quote. But then Grob takes on a different tack and talks about the importance of the, the work for kind of service, the service that it will provide to the university, but also underlining, intentionally or not, what might be a distinctive capacity that that

00:44:10.920 - 00:44:37.620

black professors might be expected to serve in. That supporting black students, but also playing a special role, at least as articulated here, in, in shaking out the prejudices in, in white students, which, I would just like to respond, sounds like a big job, right?

00:44:37.930 - 00:44:58.800

Just like, I know, I know these two, I know their dissertations, they had some pretty hefty and important dissertations, and this job is heftier than the revision of those dissertations. The light, the light, it kind of, it kind of makes you makes you think about the, the

00:44:58.800 - 00:45:16.800

concept of a light teaching load. What are the things that go beyond the courses that are actually on the catalog, and what additional loads or, or work, is there an explicit expectation here that...or maybe not explicit, I mean, maybe here we have Dr.

00:45:16.800 - 00:45:38.670

Grob vocalizing this in the Thresher, but was that explicitly said in the, in the interviews, or in the job letters, or in the, the description of what these, these cluster-hire faculty members would be doing when they arrived at Rice? No, I think that's a great, that's a great set of questions too, and it, and it reframes

00:45:38.670 - 00:45:57.120

my point about geeking out a little bit about the careers that that Professors Scott and Stevenson went on to have. Another question is the role that Rice played in, in launching those careers. You know, did, was Rice a supportive environment in which they could pursue their

00:45:57.120 - 00:46:16.410

research? And, because that's, that's something that Dr. Boles underlines, that Dr. Grob doesn't as much, that there's a service that the university, not a service, but a work that, that the university is doing here by advancing these careers that have been

00:46:16.410 - 00:46:39.750

extremely important in, in their fields, to the great benefit of of students and professors far beyond Rice. Yes. This is, the impact of these two scholars' work has been national and international, and their stories as scholars are just truly remarkable.

00:46:39.750 - 00:47:05.530

And hopefully we'll set that as a tease, maybe we return to it at some other doc talk, but, but, but certainly in in the podcast. You've also set me up well for what, what, what I think I'll do next. To talk about their experience at, at the university, and how they were experienced.

00:47:05.860 - 00:47:36.200

But before I do that, I wanna say, the last thing that I find interesting that I want to, there's, there's a silence here that I think also probably needs to be attended to. "Current black professors at Rice are Robert Jones in English and George Smith in art history." And I wonder, if you continue to read on the article, continue to read the

00:47:36.200 - 00:48:00.530

article about the, the, the ramping up of women's studies at the university, proceeds in more or less the same fashion. But toward the end there is a, is a quote from a colleague on, on campus, outside of these scholars, these scholars and the courses' additional establishment at the

00:48:00.530 - 00:48:20.960

university, that's kind of lacking here. So we, we have an article about black faculty on campus, black faculty are mentioned, these new black faculty are mentioned, but we don't hear from established black faculty, and I wonder if that means anything, and it could mean nothing, but I

00:48:20.960 - 00:48:31.670

wanna rush pass that. We don't hear, we don't hear from the new, the new faculty members either. We don't hear from them. There's a lot of voices here, but not, and maybe that's a question for for us to pursue,

00:48:31.700 - 00:49:00.850

is, to learn more about what they, what they would say about, about this period. Absolutely. And, and the question I wanna attend to now, which is just to point to, is to, is to do something that we've more or less avoided, successfully avoided, on, on this program, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna steer straight into it right now, but

00:49:00.850 - 00:49:20.140

then steer away for the rest of our time in the webinar. So the fall of 1986 is my first year at Rice. It's my very first year at Rice. And so the last question that, that I'll, that I'll leave us with, or two that I'll

00:49:20.140 - 00:49:44.800

leave us with, is one that we both have to, that, that all of us who are doing this work have to balance, right, we are, we are writing histories that we are a part of, right. And I just happen to be a part of this history in a quite specific way, but we are still part of this desegregating university.

00:49:46.090 - 00:50:04.750

This, the Mellon Foundation still exists. It's still doing the kind of work outlined, outlined here in this, in this document. And I, and just, if you give me two more minutes, I want to, I want to give you a sense...

00:50:04.750 - 00:50:19.600

Only two, 'cause I do have to run, so. No, yeah, I know you have to run. Don't worry. I'll keep the, I'll keep the show going afterwards. So do you see people sitting around a table?

00:50:19.960 - 00:50:31.260

All right, let's see if this works. Except for one person standing at the front. Oh, that's, yes. I don't hear it, though. Uh oh, then we may.

00:50:31.740 - 00:50:49.590

We're having the same problem. Let's see what happens? Let's do this. Let's, let's stop share, let's go back to share. Let's share sound.

00:50:58.620 - 00:51:06.140

Still nothing. No, no. We had this problem with, a couple of weeks ago, too. We'll have to figure out... Yeah. I don't remember how we, how we fixed it...

00:51:06.280 - 00:51:24.090

...Our IT team on the YouTube problem. But could you put it in a link? Link in the description? Yeah. Instead I will do this. Instead I will do this, is I will, I will place into the chat...oh, wait

00:51:24.090 - 00:51:29.650

a minute. Oh, you did that to, that needs to go to everyone. Do you hear it? No.

00:51:30.960 - 00:51:58.540

Okay. Well, then I've got to stop it, because I hear it. So I was gonna play the first two minutes of that, and what, it comes from the last thing I did in the before times. The very last thing I did before we stopped traveling and all went home is I went on a

00:51:58.540 - 00:52:23.260

trip to Durham, North Carolina, and Duke University, for a symposium on Dr. Scott's work that was attended by folks whose dissertation committees he had sat on. Now the story is, is coming full circle. So Dr. Scott was my first black history professor.

00:52:23.410 - 00:52:53.530

No, my first black professor, period. And in that link, I'm reflecting on how I experienced that class and what it meant for me, but, but also, I end up at Duke to do my PhD work, where this scholar who was spending two years at Rice when I showed up at Rice was at Duke in the history

00:52:53.530 - 00:53:17.170

department when, when I showed up. So he ends up being quite important in my development there and sits on my dissertation committee. One of the folks who is at that symposium is Herman Bennett, who is a historian at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York.

00:53:17.170 - 00:53:40.810

He's a Latin Americanist, focuses on Mexico, on black Mexico, also a student of Dr. Scott's. And I just mention him because, and now the story is getting too convoluted, but I hope it works. But I mentioned Professor Bennett because Bennett is a, is a student of of Dr.

00:53:40.810 - 00:54:08.740

Scott, and on Monday, or Tuesday, last, I had the good fortune of sitting in on a kind of small reunion of some of our Mellon Mays undergraduate fellows at the university, from the university, two of them who had recently graduated and gotten their PhDs. One of them, Quincy Villareal, who is this semester, this year, at the Clement Center

00:54:08.740 - 00:54:30.130

for Southwest History at Southern Methodist University, and who, who went to graduate school at the University of Texas, but was choosing between going at CUNY to work with Dr. Bennett, or University of Texas, and chose University of Texas.

00:54:30.130 - 00:54:50.590

But I was happy to learn during Tuesday's meeting that Dr. Bennett is the historian that she has chosen to read her manuscript, to do her manuscript workshop while she's at the Clement Center. So we still have these intersections, right, that, that we can trace in Houston from the

00:54:50.590 - 00:55:22.650

1960s, in Rice in the 1980s, that continue into the second decade of this, this 21st century, that I find phenomenal and pleasing to ponder. Absolutely. And I'm gonna make sure to watch that video on YouTube a little bit later. Thanks to all of our, our attendees for being here and joining us with this

00:55:22.650 - 00:55:41.160

conversation. We hope you'll be back next Friday, but most importantly, that you'll tune in next Thursday for the task force webinar. And let, let your friends, your frenemies, everyone you know, be aware that we do this every Friday, and we're always looking to bring more people into the conversation.

00:55:41.160 - 00:55:45.930

So hope to see you next week on doc talks. Have a great weekend, Dr. Byrd. See you, prof.