00:00:12.910 - 00:00:27.800

This is what happens if you start too close to on time. Well, you know Zoom start time is three to five minutes after start time. Yes. Published start time.

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So let's see here. Well, good afternoon, Dr. Byrd. Good afternoon, Dr.

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McDaniel. How are you doing today? I always love a Friday, even when that Friday comes full of meetings like this Friday. Well, because of the weekend on its way, or because of doc talks?

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It doesn't have to be either, I guess... I usually, I don't count doc talk as a meeting, and, and usually there are less meetings on Friday, but this Friday there, it's, it, it feels like a Thursday or a Wednesday, but it's still a Friday.

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So that's... Yes. Yes. That makes it okay. How are you, how are you feeling? I see you dressed in orange.

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That, that makes me think that something may be happening with the local baseball team. It's true, it's true, big game tonight, so I had to show, show the spirit. I'm looking forward to talking with you today. I know we were talking before we started the webinar about, some days we, we like to

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improvise and just get going, and just dive right in, and other days we're a little more prepared. So where are we on the spectrum today? Are we more of a... I'm gonna be doing some thinking out loud today.

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I'm gonna think some, people are going to see parts of my brain in motion. Well, that'll be entertaining at least. What was the... How about you?

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The manual you were telling me about, go... Yeah, I used to, in college, and one of my first jobs, um, out of Rice, and also one of my first jobs while I was still in graduate school, was with an organization that had a training manual that I have never really put down.

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And it was a training manual, manual entitled "Go, Ready, Get Set." And some days I, in my research, I feel like that is the way I'm still proceeding. Go, ready, get set. That can be a new motto for, for doc talks.

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I think a lot of times we're, we're doing that. Thank you all in the audience for joining us today and being here for this Friday's doc talk. I am Caleb McDaniel, a co-chair of the task force and chair of the history department here at Rice, along with Alex Byrd, vice provost and co-chair of the task

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force as well. And every Friday, as you know, we meet here on Zoom to talk through some documents that we are examining as part of the research underway by the task force. I don't know if our audience knows that the doc talks is, is famous now.

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We, we... I didn't know that I knew. I was, last night, I was giving a talk in the community, and ran into someone afterwards asking me a question who I've never met before, as far as I know, has no real

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connection to Rice. But she knew about the doc talks. So we're getting out there. She had been listening to, I guess, the podcast, and of course, you know that the

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Rice magazine has just come out for fall 2021. We wanna point out to our our loyal listeners that the cover story is going to be, this fall, on the doc talks. Lynn Gosnell and her award-winning staff at the Rice magazine have done a great job of

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summarizing what we're trying to do, and I hope that you'll share that article with others and encourage them to tune in and, and join us on this journey with, with the documents. They did a great job on that spread, I thought. It's a beautiful issue all around, and of course, we especially appreciate the care and

00:05:03.120 - 00:05:19.590

attention they gave to the work of the task force. Absolutely. And I think that the print issue of the magazine is gonna be coming soon, but you can already page through it online and maybe revisit some of our past webinars from last academic year.

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And don't forget too about the podcast series that we have, which takes our live webinars and produces them into episodes along with debriefs. We've released some really good ones in the last couple of weeks, including one, a first for us on the doc talk podcast, a guest debriefer.

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That's the one that we just released yesterday, episode 11, talking about Jenny Petit, and we had joining us in the debrief, Giovanna Bassi from the art history department, who is a member of the Racial Geography Project, sharing some additional research and documents that she found about Jenny Petit since the time that we talked

00:06:04.830 - 00:06:17.550

about her here on the webinar. So really encourage our audience to go to the website and listen there to episode 11. Should we dive right in and get started? Let's, let's dive right in.

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Well, I was a little bit divided about the document I wanted to talk about today. I considered continuing with Jack Shelton, who we talked a little bit about last week, and I've been spending some time in the Woodson Research Center, seeing if I can find out some more information about his employment history here at Rice, and been

00:06:39.870 - 00:06:59.610

turning up some interesting things, but I also wasn't sure that I was quite ready to talk about it on this episode, so I thought that instead I'd take a little bit of a detour that might connect with some of our past discussions here, and it came when I was paging through issues of the Rice Campanile.

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I was looking for images of Jack Shelton in the pages of the Rice yearbook, and I found a lot of images of Shelton in the yearbook, but I was particularly interested in trying to figure out if we could put some dates around the time that he spent at the Rice Institute. That, that was the piecing together of the narrative we were talking

00:07:22.740 - 00:07:44.760

about last year, last week, excuse me, and the last year of his life was 1937. He passed away in 1937, we know that. So I was spending some time in the 1937 volume of the Rice Campanile, and I found a page that I thought I would share today as my document.

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So let me pull up the 1937 volume here on my screen. Are you seeing a yearbook page there? So what you can see here is a collage of, of photos, different photos. This is very common in most issues of the Campanile, that after the, the individual

00:08:05.990 - 00:08:27.890

student pictures and the rosters of the different athletic teams or the different organizations on campus, you would see some collages of sort of casual, candid, everyday photographs that were taken on campus, and sometimes they have captions that tell us a little bit more about what we're seeing, sometimes they don't have captions.

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But is there anything on this particular collage page, Dr. Byrd, that, that catches your eye, or...? There, there is, in the upper right-hand corner, but because I am in my mid fifties, just to ensure, I'm going to turn video off and, and lean in.

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Okay, okay, yes, and I'm gonna zoom in for you. I'll try to help out a little bit. I'm assuming that this is the photograph you mean. Yes.

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Yes. So what we have on the screen here is an image of an African American man, young African American man, standing with an African American woman who's holding a large bullhorn. Is that the right word for that? The kind of...

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I don't believe that is the correct term, but it is in the neighborhood. We're gonna use it, it's... Megaphone. Megaphone, a megaphone.

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It's what a cheerleader, I guess, at a football game, might use to amplify their voice. And these, these two people in the photograph are also, at least this partly caught my eye, dressed a little bit differently than the people around them. Do you notice anything about, about what they're wearing?

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Yep, I see them in white gowns with small wings, look to be attached to the back. I think, in some circles, we would, we would say that they were dressed as cherubs, maybe. Cherubs or angels. My, my first thought when I saw this was, had the look kind of like of a Christmas

00:10:09.710 - 00:10:31.550

pageant or something like that. But, you know, the angel costumes caught my eye, but I also was, I have to confess, a little flummoxed, as I'd been going through year after year of the Rice Campanile, looking for pictures here and there of Jack Shelton, who we talked about last week, was

00:10:31.550 - 00:10:54.770

an early black trainer and, and turf man for the Athletic Association, for the Rice football team. And, you know, he was, in most issues of the Campanile that I could find, the only black figure who was appearing in the pages of the Rice yearbook, and that makes sense, because as you and I know and our audience knows, Rice did not

00:10:54.770 - 00:11:17.690

begin to desegregate until the 1960s. And so here we are in 1937 with an image in the campus photo collages that doesn't quite fit with that timeline, with that narrative. What are these two angelic figures doing in this yearbook?

00:11:18.330 - 00:11:36.090

That was the question I had and wanted to talk about today, and the first thing I did, when historians encounter a document like this, is you try to see if there's anything on the pages around it that might shed some light. I mentioned that sometimes there are captions right with the images, but then different

00:11:36.120 - 00:11:53.310

yearbook staffs do things differently. It looks like, in this particular yearbook, the captions follow on the next page, and you kinda have to do a little bit of work to go back and connect the different captions with the photos on the previous page.

00:11:53.310 - 00:12:17.040

So this first line says, "Hawg callers at Soph Dance." And when we go back up here, yeah, that looks like maybe a guy who's doing some hog calling on the left here. And then the next caption says, "Rosie's stamp of approval." So I'm thinking that maybe this woman here in the center to the left of the photo we're interested in might

00:12:17.040 - 00:12:36.210

be Rosie. And then the next caption says, "Never get to heaven that way." Never get to heaven that way. So that seems like it might have something to do with this photograph of two people dressed as angels, but that's not much help, to me anyway.

00:12:36.210 - 00:12:49.110

I don't know if that helps you very much, Dr. Byrd, to figure out what's going on here. It's doing something for me. I'm gonna, I'm gonna simultaneously check a date on a movie while, while you do this.

00:12:50.420 - 00:12:58.760

Okay. Curiosity, what movie are you thinking of? Well, do I have to give it away? What if I'm wrong? Going right here on...

00:12:59.090 - 00:13:20.900

Hold it, we'll, we'll check you here in a minute. So, you know, I wasn't sure that that caption told me what I was looking at, so I decided to go back a little bit and see if there was anything I had missed in the earlier pages of this edition of the yearbook, and I did find a page that was a

00:13:20.900 - 00:13:42.000

lot more helpful to me, if I go back to, let me see if I can do it here, page 121, page 121. And this page in the yearbook talks about an annual event on the Rice Institute campus known as the Archi-Arts Ball. Are you familiar with the Archi-Arts Ball at all?

00:13:42.780 - 00:13:56.670

Yeah, but I, that's the, that's the, architect's ball, right? The architectural society would put together... Costume ball. This costume ball, absolutely, so, so we might be in the vicinity, since we saw a

00:13:56.670 - 00:14:17.670

photograph of some people in costumes on that later collage. And what we learned is that this year there was a little bit of controversy. You can't make it all out in the text here in the yearbook, you have to go to the Thresher, I found, to piece this together, but it says that the the ball underwent a

00:14:17.670 - 00:14:39.270

series of metamorphoses. I feel like I added too many S's there, but the ball went through some transformations and "finally emerged this year as Paradise Regained. Objection on the part of school officials led to the abandonment of the original Danse

00:14:39.270 - 00:14:58.560

Macabre theme only a week before the date of the ball and to the subsequent complete reversal in the theme." And "the lateness of the change gave rise to some confusion as to appropriate costumes. Thus, amid dramatically lighted scenes suggestive of an ethereal world beyond,

00:14:58.590 - 00:15:19.920

angels and demons mingled with no trace of self-consciousness." So we can kind of read between the lines here and, and reading against what's in the Thresher about this ball, we can kind of guess what happened. The students had an idea for a theme for the ball that would have centered on Hell and the

00:15:19.920 - 00:15:35.400

devil and demons. School officials had some objections to that particular theme and informed the architectural society they needed to change it up. And I guess some of the students didn't get the memo and still showed up dressed like

00:15:35.520 - 00:16:04.020

demons or devils, while others came dressed as angels, and perhaps we can even see in the background of this picture on the right, which shows some students holding large masks up and depicting, according to the caption, "Watkin," William Ward Watkin, I'm assuming, architect, architecture professor; "Lovett," President Edgar Odell Lovett; and "Chillman."

00:16:04.020 - 00:16:24.630

I'm not sure who that is, but it seems that the students are perhaps poking some fun at the school officials who had objected to their theme. And in the background here, you can't quite make out, but it looks to me like there are some other African American figures in the background here.

00:16:24.630 - 00:16:41.670

And maybe if we zoom in a little bit behind those two students, we can tell a little bit better what they're wearing, and even more specifically, what they're holding. Can you make out anything in the... It looks like a saxophone, perhaps.

00:16:41.910 - 00:17:02.250

It looks like a saxophone or an instrument. And sure enough, if we read on with the rest of this text, we learn that at the Archi-Arts Ball this year, quote, "completely satisfying music was furnished by a colored orchestra." You got it, Dr.

00:17:02.250 - 00:17:08.490

Byrd. Well, I got the film. Okay, I'm gonna read on. Yeah.

00:17:08.490 - 00:17:28.760

The orchestra was "directed by Milton Larkin, attired in the guise of angels fresh from a Green Pastures fish fry. A brilliant pageant presented as its principal characters eight Rice girls in elaborate costumes whose obvious historical derivation was carefully omitted from the

00:17:28.760 - 00:17:44.690

program." So there is a reference again perhaps to some of the, the young women who showed up being attired more in keeping with the older theme than the one that was adopted at the last minute. So you, you said something about a movie, Dr.

00:17:45.380 - 00:18:09.530

Byrd. Yeah. This is, this is exciting news, right, because what the, now I don't have to show my brain working during my part of the segment, I've showed it right now, is that when I saw that costume, it put me in the mind of a film called Green Pastures, which is a film

00:18:09.650 - 00:18:43.160

from 1936 with an African American cast, whose whose, whose plot now escapes me, but I have seen the film, and even more than that, Dr. McDaniel, I have been in a play, a one-act play version of the film, as a, as a high schooler. And so this is a bit of American popular culture, black popular

00:18:43.160 - 00:18:59.280

culture, that raises, raises issues about where Rice students are going, right, to, to consume film. And so this is, this is... They've seen the movie.

00:18:59.280 - 00:19:14.270

This is a great doc. They've seen the movie, clearly, and connecting this with, it I think it's actually, the movie, from what I read, is, 'cause I had to do, I didn't know it off the bat, I had to do a little bit of research on that Green Pastures line.

00:19:14.870 - 00:19:40.790

I think that it's sort of Biblical stories that are presented by African American actors, and so that's the connection to their wearing these angelic costumes. You know, this isn't the first time that we've seen on the doc talks an example of, even before the beginnings of desegregation at Rice, black bands coming onto campus, or

00:19:40.790 - 00:20:00.380

maybe not onto campus, performing at sites off campus, or student organizations. The Archi-Arts ball was held in River Oaks. But what really caught my eye as well in this line was the name Milton Larkin. Are you familiar with Milton Larkin?

00:20:00.800 - 00:20:14.630

I'm done, man. You've taxed me to my limits. Okay, let me, let me try, let me try you out on this. Have you heard the, the name Illinois Jacquet? Illinois jacket?

00:20:14.780 - 00:20:26.920

Illinois Jacquet, or Arnett Cobb, or... Yes! Arnett Cobb, now you're in my neighborhood. I have heard, I have heard Arnett Cobb. Arnett Cobb, or Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson?

00:20:26.930 - 00:20:49.910

Does that ring any bells, or...? I've known a lot of clean heads, but not Eddie. Eddie Vinson and Arnett Cobb and Illinois Jacquet and Eddie Vinson are all legendary jazz musicians who went on to careers in the 20th century that are, really can't

00:20:49.910 - 00:21:12.940

understate how significant they were in the history of big band music in the interwar period, and especially immediately after World War II. But they also had something else in common, a couple of other things in common. All of those great jazz musicians were from Houston, or got their start here, and

00:21:12.940 - 00:21:36.160

something else that they have in common is that they all got their start in Milton Larkin's orchestra. So I'm gonna tell you a little bit about Milton Larkin, who was born not in Houston, but in Navasota, just outside of Houston, in 1910, and he moved to Houston as, as a young

00:21:36.160 - 00:21:51.460

child. His father had died when he was 2, his mother would die when he was 13, and he was raised by his sisters here in Houston. He attended Gregory Elementary School, then he went on to Booker T. Washington High School.

00:21:51.580 - 00:22:07.210

And it was while he was at Booker T. Washington that some of the other local black high schools, Phillis Wheatley High School and also Jack Yates High School, got their very well regarded and renowned music programs started.

00:22:07.720 - 00:22:27.880

Illinois Jacquet went to Wheatley High School and was in a band there that was led by the music educator Percy McDavid, and these bands at Yates and Wheatley and Washington became very well known in Houston for battles of the bands that they would compete against one another in.

00:22:28.030 - 00:22:41.770

And Milton was kind of, Milton Larkin was kind of an older, an older member of that set, because when he went to Booker T. Washington, Washington did not yet really have a musical program like that. He was a self-taught musician.

00:22:41.770 - 00:23:08.830

He picked up the trumpet and he learned how to play it really well, but he clearly had the skill of bringing people together and showmanship, because in 1936, he started a band, an orchestra, that featured Illinois Jacquet, Arnett Cobb, Eddie Vinson, Wild Bill Davis, others, that, later in the 1940s, went on to play and be in great demand across

00:23:08.830 - 00:23:26.430

the country on the traveling circuit in the south, where territory bands would, would go around to different states and clubs. They played in Kansas City, they were heard there by the famous boxer Joe Louis, who invited them to come to his club in Chicago and play there.

00:23:26.440 - 00:23:47.860

From there, they went on to New York City, where Milton Larkin was backing Ella Fitzgerald and Sammy Davis Jr. Maybe these are getting to some names that our audience members will know, and that all started right here in Houston in 1936, when Larkin started his orchestra, which, if you

00:23:47.860 - 00:24:10.560

were paying attention to the issue of the Campanile that we were looking at, was only a few months before Larkin's orchestra performed, apparently in these angelic costumes, at the Archi-Arts Ball in River Oaks for Rice Institute students as part of this Paradise Regained theme.

00:24:12.040 - 00:24:35.080

So that's a little bit about Milton Larkin, and I think maybe you can see why I got so interested when I saw his name, because he was really a legendary figure in the Houston music scene. And I bet you would love, I listed all of those musicians out, and some of them you knew, like Arnett Cobb, the, the Texas Tenors really got their start in this

00:24:35.080 - 00:24:46.510

period in the mid 20th century. Would you like to hear a recording? You don't even have to finish the sentence. I put my thumb up after you said "hear."

00:24:46.510 - 00:24:57.050

I bet you would like to hear a recording. I would too. Problem is, there's no recording. Sorry to do you like that, Dr.

00:24:57.050 - 00:25:15.590

Byrd, but there's no recording of the Milton Larkin Orchestra from this period. In fact, sometimes, some jazz historians refer to them as one of the best bands never to be recorded. We have all kinds of, of textual evidence that they were hugely influential on a whole generation of musicians.

00:25:16.130 - 00:25:40.550

Dizzy Gillespie, they were competing with the Count Basie Orchestra, but they were not recorded. And as I was doing a little bit of reading about that, I found different reasons for that, but one of the reasons, according to Larkin himself, was that he did not want to accept the lower rates of pay that were often offered to black musicians in

00:25:40.550 - 00:26:03.000

the Houston area to record their music, and so he played all of these live shows but didn't get recorded, and he also was operating in the 1930s, of course, in a segregated city, and so that affected not only the rates of pay for recording, but also the the kind of gigs that he could get.

00:26:03.510 - 00:26:28.360

In fact, I'm gonna show you one other document, if you'll indulge me. Are you able to see a magazine? Okay. So this is from the Houston Metropolitan Magazine from 1990, and at this time, Milton Larkin had just turned 80 years old, and he had returned to Houston after his

00:26:28.360 - 00:26:53.230

career elsewhere and became a local music educator and activist. In fact, he started a non-profit organization to help educate youngsters in learning jazz, and he also went around to different nursing homes and hospitals in the medical center performing for senior citizens, and he formed a nonprofit to help bring music to

00:26:53.230 - 00:27:17.500

some of these underserved communities in the city and gained a lot of recognition here in Houston and nationally for that very important work later in his life, and he was interviewed here by a local music historian for the Houston Metropolitan Magazine, and he recalls that in the 1930s, there were some white musicians who liked to come and listen

00:27:17.500 - 00:27:36.220

to the Larkin Band, including a man named Ed Gerlach, who grew up in Livingston, Texas, went to Texas A&M, went to Sam Houston State, and became a tenor sax player who loved Arnett Cobb. And according to this interview, Gerlach would follow the Larkin Orchestra wherever

00:27:36.220 - 00:27:57.190

they went, including the El Dorado Ballroom in the Third Ward, where they often played, and it says here in this interview, I'm just gonna quote here, that "Gerlach and Larkin became close friends despite the rigid color line of those days." And this is an interesting quote from Larkin, he says, "When you're born into something, you don't

00:27:57.190 - 00:28:14.960

know the difference until you experience another way. A person who's never been segregated wouldn't understand. When I did the broadcasts from the Aragon Ballroom," another local Houston establishment," I hoped that it might become a regular job, but that didn't work out.

00:28:15.470 - 00:28:37.590

The white kids got too familiar with us. The owner called me at my break and told me how wonderful the band was. But he was afraid to try it." And then it goes on to talk about how Gerlach continued to try to go to the El Dorado Ballroom, but he noted that in those days, socializing was

00:28:37.590 - 00:29:00.830

very, very separated, and it was difficult for him sometimes to get into the places where he could hear his musical heroes play. So that raises all kinds of questions for me, then, going back to the Archi-Arts Ball. This was an event where clearly there were some objections by the school officials to

00:29:00.830 - 00:29:17.000

the theme of the dance, although reading that later interview and hearing that the, the owner of the Aragon Ballroom was a little worried about the over-familiarity of white students with the band in these segregated spaces. He objected to them playing there.

00:29:17.000 - 00:29:38.930

So it kind of makes you wonder if that played any role in the objections of school officials to the Archi-Arts Ball in 1937. You know, it also raises questions about what happened to Milton Larkin's orchestra in later years, because we can find out in the Rice Thresher that Ed Gerlach, the white

00:29:39.170 - 00:30:04.580

saxophonist featured in that interview, frequently came to Rice to play for various bands in the, for various dances in the 1940s and '50s, and essentially what some of the music historians in the city say is that many of these white fans of the territory bands learned how to play the music so well that they could be invited by local

00:30:04.580 - 00:30:23.210

institutions, white institutions, to play those dances without having to cross the color line. So maybe that could play have played some role in, in the shape of Milton Larkin's career. But I, thanks for letting me geek out a little bit, I was just so amazed to see that

00:30:23.210 - 00:30:51.800

in 1937, this really historic figure in the Houston music scene played a Rice Institute student ball and then was depicted, because I think that's him, in that photograph in the Campanile. To me, it raises a lot of questions we've already talked about, about the place of black people on campus and in the imagination of Rice students even before

00:30:51.800 - 00:31:13.760

desegregation, whether that's from movies like Green Pastures or seeing bands like the Milton Larkin Orchestra play. But of course, the fact that we don't have a recording of this band is also a tragic reminder of the impacts of segregation on that era of Houston history.

00:31:15.900 - 00:31:30.880

We have, we've, we've got to get ourselves, maybe as we get deeper and deeper into the Woodson, you never know what we might find. We might find more. We need to go back.

00:31:31.090 - 00:31:39.190

Well, no, I'm looking for a recording now. Ooh, a recording. Ooh, yes. I mean, wouldn't, wouldn't, wouldn't, wouldn't, now wouldn't that be great on doc talk?

00:31:39.310 - 00:32:00.730

There are some recordings of, of Larkin playing in the, the '70s and '80s and '90s. Okay. And I encourage audience members to look those up because in his later years, he died, I believe, in '97, '96 or '97, and in the last years of his life here in Houston, he

00:32:00.730 - 00:32:23.890

was, he frequently performed on, on the local music scene. In fact, when I was looking for instances of his name in the Rice Thresher from the 1930s, I got a lot of hits from the 1980s, because in the sections of the student newspaper in the '80s that advertised local concerts that students might want to attend, there were

00:32:23.890 - 00:32:46.300

notices of Milton Larkin playing off campus in the '80s. And there's also a lot of interesting stories about his efforts to build up this non-profit organization that took music around to local areas and local senior citizens centers and nursing homes and, and hospitals, and his struggle, to be honest,

00:32:46.300 - 00:33:10.690

sometimes, to gain funding and resources and support for that effort. And it just kind of makes you think a little bit about a counter history or what might have been had a place like the Rice Institute, which clearly brought in bands like Milton Larkin's to perform at these dances, had done more to support these jazz

00:33:10.690 - 00:33:28.990

musicians in the 1930s and 1940s and beyond. Great stuff. Great stuff. You told me I was going to be excited about today's document, and I really was. I appreciate that.

00:33:28.990 - 00:33:38.350

I'm excited, I'm excited to hear about, about, about yours. Let's jump right in. Well, let's see. Let's see what, what happens. I think there is a good connection.

00:33:38.350 - 00:34:04.930

I think thematically, we're, we're very well connected today. And as you said, we have spent a not, a not inconsiderable amount of time over the past few weeks talking about blacks at Rice before desegregation. And we have also attempted to, to do a couple of other things related to that.

00:34:04.930 - 00:34:34.600

And one, we've been kicking around this term every now and again of a, of a desegregating institution, and what that means post 1964 for Rice making or testing out the argument, right, that desegregation is a, is a process that moves forward from '64, and we might actually still be in that moment, and if we are, what

00:34:34.600 - 00:34:57.740

does that mean? But, but just as we look some moving forward, I think we can't help but also test that concept out in the past, right, pre-1964. So though the breaking of the charter represents an unquestionable moment of

00:34:57.790 - 00:35:20.710

desegregation, is this, are there other moments pre-1964? And we'll see, or we've also just seen with with Larkin's band playing at Rice, the other thing we've been doing is really getting into the nitty gritty and the substance of what segregation was, right.

00:35:21.400 - 00:35:49.510

What it wasn't, right, was "black people and white people never came together in the South," right, that's one thing that's clear on, on Rice's campus, right, and so we're, I think pre-1964, one of the things that will be really interesting moving forward is looking at these interactions between blacks and whites on Rice's campus and near Rice's

00:35:49.510 - 00:36:17.860

campus and interpreting those as, seeing them as segregated moments, but I think also sometimes finding pre-1964 moments that might fit into this history of desegregation, right, these, if we were doing, if we were doing Reconstruction history, right, we'd be, borrowing a term from Professor Rose, on rehearsals for reconstruction, right, are

00:36:17.860 - 00:36:39.970

there rehearsals for desegregation at, at Rice? We've been, we've been tending to questions like that. And I'm gonna head back into that territory today. And like last week, I wanna start up the road at my, at my grandmother's alma mater

00:36:40.120 - 00:37:09.850

and home place, though we will get to Rice, right, we're gonna start at Prairie View again in March of 1951. And so what I want to start with here today, if you can, if you're seeing the issue of the Prairie View Panther, I hope.

00:37:09.850 - 00:37:42.480

Okay, good, Prairie View Panther from 1951, and again, a student paper, kind of brownish in tone, at the, at the moment in 1951. And, and I wanna go through what, what are a couple of things on the, on the front page that, that help us move into some of these questions about a desegregating moment and

00:37:42.480 - 00:38:06.210

what segregation looks like on, on college campuses, this time at a historically black university, and I think we'll find some comparative aspects that we'll, that we'll dig into a little later. We see up here in the upper or the middle left of the paper, students are discussing

00:38:06.210 - 00:38:38.040

academic problems with college profs, which basically covers a, a town hall between folks enrolled in the College of Arts and Sciences at Prairie View. And then in the lower right hand corner, we find in an article about a, a battle of the bands, Professor McDaniel, of high school bands, that is hosted at, at Prairie View

00:38:38.070 - 00:39:04.290

here in the, in the early 1950s. And when you read through this, what you'll find is, so high school extracurricular activities in Texas are now organized by a group known as the UIL, the University Interscholastic League, that was headquartered at the University of Texas.

00:39:04.290 - 00:39:36.930

In the 1950s though, Prairie View served an analogous purpose for extracurricular activities at black schools in the region, and so football games, for example, and band contests, were, were organized by Interscholastic League, housed at Prairie View. And this story is interesting because historic black high schools from the region

00:39:36.930 - 00:39:58.590

are mentioned, and we get to see the winners of this band contest. But, but it also raises questions, continues to raise questions, about what segregation looks like on the on the ground. And one of the things that we see here is, in this last paragraph of this story, is how

00:39:58.590 - 00:40:15.690

this, how this band contest is judged, right. So the, the band director at Prairie View, H.M. Crockett, is, is leading the way in this, in this contest, and the Anderson High School band wins.

00:40:16.530 - 00:40:47.310

but also doing work in judging the bands is the assistant director of the University of Texas Longhorn Band, B.D. Davis, which again is a, is a, helps us begin to think about the questions, right, is this, is this a, is this a quintessential segregated moment, right, or can and should

00:40:47.310 - 00:41:10.440

it be interpreted as a kind of movement toward desegregation? And I won't, I've raised the question, but I'm not going to try and answer it for myself, and I'm not gonna ask you. Instead, I'm gonna rush to an editorial that, if we apply a similar question to, it's

00:41:10.440 - 00:41:39.320

much easier to answer, because what we find here on the editorial page of this issue of the Panther is a letter by the editor of the paper, Joseph R. Lee, about the Texas Intercollegiate Student Association. And the headline here of this editorial says, TISA Membership: Opportunity Knocks.

00:41:39.320 - 00:42:13.870

Now, the Texas Intercollegiate Student Association was an association of, of collegiate student councils in Texas that by 1951 is about two or three years old. And in 1951, the, the question was raised in, in the, in the young life of the TISA, whether they were going to invite African American colleges, the student

00:42:13.870 - 00:42:45.730

associations or student councils from black colleges in the region. And by March of 1951, there is a vote of the, of the TISA membership, and from what I know there, they needed--they're meeting in 1951 at Texas A&M University, and the TISA leadership has instructed the organizers at Texas A&M to call a vote of the white member

00:42:45.730 - 00:43:07.870

organizations. And if ten colleges vote to extend membership to historically black universities in the region, then they're going to desegregate the TISA. So the vote is held. Rice is a member of the, of the TISA.

00:43:08.560 - 00:43:30.490

The student council at Rice directs its representatives to vote in a certain way. I won't say what way, Dr. McDaniel, I'll just say they're directed to vote. The, the vote passes, and so then, Prairie View A&M University and

00:43:31.930 - 00:43:57.290

TSU are invited to join the TISA. Now, what Mr. Lee is writing about in this editorial is after that invitation is extended, Prairie View's answer is, no thank you, at this moment.

00:43:58.250 - 00:44:19.430

This is their initial answer, is no thank you. And so the editor of the Panther, Lee, thinks this is an extraordinary error. This is a mistake. He makes the argument in this editorial that black college students and others had been

00:44:19.430 - 00:44:41.900

working toward this for some time. It represents an extraordinary opportunity, as he outlines here in this three-paragraph enumeration toward the end of the, of the piece. "It will create a close connection between delegates from the various schools, which

00:44:41.900 - 00:45:13.700

will stimulate Christian Brotherhood." And this means more, this, this, this, this phrase "Christian Brotherhood," I think, has some meaning that's not simply religious, right, has a meaning in a, in, in the context of desegregation in the 1950s. And the other two are, at least the second one is a kind of normal justification for any

00:45:13.700 - 00:45:32.990

group that comes together. But the third one, and the paragraph that follows, is, is Lee's remark on what he sees as a kind of heavy-handedness, and a heavy-handed, maybe administrative authority, coming down.

00:45:33.260 - 00:45:51.630

And he can't see any reason for Prairie View not to join the TISA. "I ask anyone," he writes, "to show me a disadvantage." Dr. McDaniel. He also says in that line that one advantage would be to maintain a close contact between

00:45:51.630 - 00:45:59.760

our campus and other campuses. And that's an interesting choice of word, to "maintain." Yeah. That suggests that there already, there already are such contacts.

00:45:59.850 - 00:46:28.650

Some some some communication, some previous communication, yeah. And we know from, I don't know that we have featured any of these documents in previous doc talks, but we know through some, some issues of the Thresher around religious organizations on campus or religious organizations on campus that meet with

00:46:29.880 - 00:46:58.740

other black organizations similarly aligned off campus, that, that, that there is this history of black and white student interaction at Rice, and, and it looks here that it's happening at Prairie View, of course as, as well. I can think of, well, I'll just put it like this, right, if we were in class, I would,

00:46:59.190 - 00:47:21.930

Lee seems like a smart guy, right, this is, and I'm sure the people who decided not to join the TISA, TISA, are probably just as smart as Lee, right, and so what we don't have here is their, their reasons. If we were in seminar, we would, we would ask the folks in the audience to guess at

00:47:21.930 - 00:47:50.340

some of those, right, what, what, what, what might be the reasons. This is, I think clearly, an example of a kind of potentially desegregating moment at that we find in the Prairie View paper here in 1951. And if we run to the Thresher at round about the same time, we find an

00:47:50.340 - 00:48:18.600

interesting, an interesting take on, on this very moment. And I just wanna, I wanna run to it quickly, because what we, what we have here in this letter to the editor from a, an early March issue, 1951 in the Rice Thresher, is a, is a complaint that this issue around the desegregation of the TISA is not being

00:48:18.600 - 00:48:43.710

adequately covered in the Rice Thresher. So we see this editorial, this kind of leading editorial, in the Prairie View Panther, and then a letter from David Miller, who served on the staff of Brady Tyson, who listeners to the doc talk will be familiar with, an editor of the paper who was

00:48:43.710 - 00:49:03.810

renowned for treating national and international issues and also racial questions in the Thresher. But Mr. Miller takes the current editors of the Thresher to task because they're covering what he thinks is superfluous news.

00:49:04.470 - 00:49:29.010

And so Miller's argument here, I'm sorry, I have to lean in. "Recently, the student council instructed its delegates to TISA to vote for admitting Negro colleges to that body. I saw no mention of this editorially in the Thresher." The, the Thresher, the Thresher

00:49:29.010 - 00:49:46.080

editor replies. In your spare time, you should, should go and, and read that. What's, what's, what I find even more striking is in the following issue of the Thresher, the Thresher then does cover the TISA.

00:49:46.080 - 00:50:09.300

So maybe it doesn't work at the Houston Chronicle or the Houston Post sometimes, but writing a stern letter to the editor of the Rice Thresher in the early 1950s, at least in this instance, had an effect. And I raise all of these questions, or at least make this focus on, on this question

00:50:09.300 - 00:50:37.140

around TISA, is because I would lean toward this as being clearly a kind of practice or rehearsal for desegregation at, at, at Rice, and these are the types--now, I don't know where to place the Green Pastures, right, I don't quite know where to place that.

00:50:37.140 - 00:50:52.020

I don't know if that's a rehearsal for, for, for desegregation, but this clearly is one, I think. When I say "clearly," Dr. McDaniel, you know, I'm a historian, so I can change my mind.

00:50:52.350 - 00:51:05.170

I can be convinced otherwise. But at this point, this seems pretty strongly in that direction. And I'm now gonna borrow one of your phrases, if you don't mind. Dr. McDaniel.

00:51:05.170 - 00:51:24.510

I wanted to focus on all of this around students, because, and here I go with a McDaniel phrase, what I'm really interested in and what I really wanna talk about is this . Wait, all of that was preface?

00:51:25.020 - 00:51:44.340

Okay, I guess I... That was just preface! I don't know what we're gonna do with the podcast for this. This may have ruined the podcast. But this is kind of remarkable, right, is in the middle of this March 1951

00:51:45.150 - 00:52:02.850

issue of the Prairie View Panther is a, is a scintillating article about the Science Lecture Series getting underway at Prairie View. I don't know why this didn't lead. I'm not quite sure why this didn't, this didn't lead.

00:52:02.850 - 00:52:31.860

And basically, it's an article that is outlining who's speaking in the spring Lecture Science Series at Prairie View. And what strikes me here is, it lists that there're gonna be some people from the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies that will be doing some of the headlining of this

00:52:31.860 - 00:52:59.880

term's series, of, I'm sorry, of this term's lecture series. But then, quite interestingly, is the folks who fill out and actually dominate the spring term Science Lecture Series at Prairie View. Out of nine speakers in the spring term, Dr.

00:52:59.880 - 00:53:20.320

McDaniel, five of them are scientists from Rice University. I'll introduce, well no, you're about to say something before I go. Well, Rice Institute, but who's... Rice Institute, I'm sorry, yeah.

00:53:22.390 - 00:53:38.680

Just to place is in time. But yeah, that is, that is remarkable, that the department of chemistry, it says, and maybe you were going to tell us a little bit about... Yeah, we've got three or so, or two from the department of chemistry, one person from the

00:53:38.680 - 00:53:55.840

department of biology, someone from the physics department, and a mechanical engineer, all rounding out this group. And so now I'll do what we normally do. I should check the time.

00:53:58.470 - 00:54:19.960

And I'm gonna draw you in a little more, Dr. McDaniel. What are, what are your questions? I know I have a few myself. Well, I wanna know how they received this invitation or how the connection was made to

00:54:20.170 - 00:54:39.100

bring them into the speaker series. Was it something that was, that was driven by this Oak Ridge group, or was it something that was led by the departments themselves? I think I saw in the article that it said the department of chemistry was responsible

00:54:39.100 - 00:55:00.100

for another speaker in this series, perhaps a previous one, and that's a line that you can interpret several different ways. Is it just saying that another speaker came from the department of chemistry at Rice, or the Rice department of chemistry was taking these steps to send faculty to give lectures

00:55:00.100 - 00:55:12.900

at Prairie View? I think it also raises the question of what they said and who attended and what the impact was of the lectures. Yeah. Yeah.

00:55:12.910 - 00:55:34.540

And I'm not even gonna, I don't even wanna say my questions, your questions are so good. I wanna hear yours, though. Okay. So one of my questions is the, is the, is the obvious one, right, and that is, what is an impetus, right, in terms of the question of desegregation?

00:55:34.720 - 00:55:56.020

What, what is the, where do these, where does the Rice professors' participation in this work fall? And that's a too-long way of saying that you could be a Rice professor and give these lectures at Prairie View and be a staunch segregationist, right, or, or you could be a

00:55:56.020 - 00:56:14.380

Rice professor and give these lectures at Prairie View and not know what you think about desegregation. And of course, now the last one is obvious. You could be a Rice professor giving these lectures at Prairie View as part of a, of

00:56:14.950 - 00:56:41.190

contributing to a desegregationist moment. And so that, of course, is one of my, one of my questions here, and one of the things that I, that I looked into to kind of see if there are anything that, these are all scientists, right, but does anything else bring this group together, right?

00:56:41.200 - 00:56:55.630

Are they, are they a group of the older faculty at the university who have been here for a considerable amount of time? Dr. McDaniel is skeptical. Probably not. Probably not, but maybe.

00:56:55.630 - 00:57:07.790

You're skeptical of that. I don't know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna follow the evidence where it leads. Let's follow the evidence, of which I've given none so far, just asking questions, right. Are, regionally, where are they from, right?

00:57:08.290 - 00:57:36.220

We, are these folks, are these folks from the, from Texas, these professors? Are they from the southern part of the United, southern part of the United States? And again, question of, are they, or do they represent the younger group? And I've done some poking around on where these folks got their PhDs and undergraduate

00:57:36.220 - 00:57:56.410

degrees, and it, and it doesn't clear things up, right. It just makes it more interesting. So Professor Daugherty, who is mentioned there, got his PhD in 1949. So it's two years fresh, right, at the, at the university.

00:57:56.410 - 00:58:16.360

So clearly a new faculty member, got his A .B. and master's degree at Southeastern Missouri and the University of Missouri and his PhD from the University of Wisconsin. So don't know where he's from, but wouldn't be surprised, border state, right.

00:58:16.660 - 00:58:38.830

But then PhD from the, from the north. Waser, who is a little older, is an associate professor at the time, been six years at the university, got his PhD in 1944 from Caltech. And so we'll have to, we can, we can make some things of that.

00:58:39.280 - 00:59:01.050

The physics professor in the group, Dr. Walker, another brand new professor, Dr. McDaniel, PhD from 1949 from Cornell. So maybe we can do something with that, or maybe not, because his B.A.

00:59:01.050 - 00:59:34.320

is 1944 from Rice, which is gonna be fun to, to look into. And so one of the things I want to figure out is, does this represent some type of commitment, and I don't mean, I don't mean that in too broad of a sense, right, but in the actual moment, is for, for scientists at the university in this moment, does this

00:59:34.320 - 01:00:05.100

represent some type of commitment, some type of communication and extension of previous work on, with their colleagues at Prairie View? And there is evidence from the '40s and '30s of Rice professors serving on external committees at Prairie View, Rice coaches doing workshops at Prairie View,

01:00:05.100 - 01:00:30.390

athletic workshops at Prairie View, and so there is, we've, we've, we've run into this, the other side of the coin. We've spent some time in the past talking about the ways that university professors and staff from Texas Southern, for example, the work that they do on Rice's campus, and now I

01:00:30.390 - 01:00:51.510

think we're opening the door, before the 1960s, looking at some of the interactions of Rice faculty off campus at historically black colleges and universities. So expect more soon. That's fantastic. And that's what I was thinking of when you mentioned our earlier

01:00:51.510 - 01:01:08.850

conversations about TSU and the way that some of the early black faculty members at Rice are brought in from TSU. And so what you've uncovered here at Prairie View A&M raises the question for me of whether there were any similar reciprocal relationships with Prairie View A&M, and if

01:01:08.850 - 01:01:25.710

not, why not? Why, why TSU instead? But this is to me really interesting and exciting, and it really does show what you were reminding us of earlier, that desegregation was not just a moment in time

01:01:26.280 - 01:01:48.650

before which there was no, there were no rehearsals for desegregation, and after which everything was, was done, but it was a longer and more protracted process, and we're, we're able by looking at these, these kinds of sources, to, to help piece together a narrative about that process.

01:01:48.650 - 01:02:02.600

So this is wonderful. Thanks so much for, for sharing your doc. I hope our audience members enjoyed the conversation. I saw in the chat that we had someone who met Milton Larkin and knew him here in

01:02:02.600 - 01:02:26.240

Houston and who also gave you some information, Dr. Byrd, about Illinois Jacquet, which I hope that you'll hang up and go listen to, flying home. I mean, this, one of the, one of the Houston greats, Illinois Jacquet, and again, got his start in the Milton Larkin Orchestra right here in Houston, right here at the Rice

01:02:26.240 - 01:02:37.320

Institute, in a way, one of the earliest gigs, perhaps, that Larkin and Jacquet ever had. Thanks so much, I hope you have a great weekend. Take care. Take care, everyone.