00:00:05.780 - 00:00:19.140

I got no water, man. It is just a bad setup for me today. Things could go really wrong. It's a busy day on campus for sure.

00:00:20.660 - 00:00:36.880

Owl Together. Owl Together is happening, and families are here and Homecoming's going on. Which one of us is to blame for not getting this on the Owl Together schedule? Is that my fault or your fault?

00:00:41.660 - 00:01:00.320

Well, we are on the cover of the Rice magazine now, so hopefully that will start to spread the word about the doc talks to our, our alumni community. I think that the print edition is not yet out, is that right? I haven't seen it.

00:01:00.320 - 00:01:19.690

I haven't seen it. So I think once, once that starts to hit the, the mailboxes, then, then perhaps we'll, more people will learn. And also our audience, which I see is beginning to file in, we're always grateful to have you here with us on the doc talks, and hope that

00:01:19.690 - 00:01:45.430

you'll invite others to come join us each week on Fridays at noon. We're here every single week talking about documents, talking about the docs as history docs do, which is with a lot of questions, a lot more questions sometimes than answers, as we continue our research and our work with the Task Force on Slavery, Segregation, and

00:01:45.430 - 00:01:59.390

Racial Injustice. And I'm excited, I always look forward to Fridays with you to do this work together. Hey man, me too. I've realized this week that, you know, we normally, there's some conversation that

00:01:59.390 - 00:02:12.980

leads up to the week, I walked to, walked into my office today and I realize, I don't think I've talked to Dr. McDaniel this week. This is, this is odd. It's been a, it's been a busy one for sure.

00:02:13.010 - 00:02:32.000

Lots of things going on. And next week's gonna be busy too, for the task force, because on Friday we have our next campus-wide event, which is a Zoom webinar, a lecture by Davarian Baldwin. I think the title is Race in the Ivory Tower .

00:02:32.710 - 00:02:50.060

And let me see if I can find the link for that quickly. Don't wanna take up too much time, but I wanna make sure that our doc talk regulars have it on their calendar. You don't wanna miss this, this lecture, so let's see who will get to it first.

00:02:50.180 - 00:03:05.370

I think I got it. Okay, here it is. So be sure to put that on your calendar and spread the word about that lecture as well. It's next Friday, a week from today, at 6:00 PM central time. So we hope you'll be able to join us for that lecture.

00:03:06.180 - 00:03:20.310

Should we jump into the documents for today? Let's get going. Alright. What, what did you bring to talk about today? So I've got, I've got a few docs.

00:03:21.420 - 00:03:49.560

I know we used to try to have one. I've got, I've got several around a theme, and I thought I'd start with this quite interesting and lovely picture from the 1980s, the mid 1980s. In case you don't remember what the 1980s looked like, this is it.

00:03:49.950 - 00:04:11.240

And I thought I'd start just with a quick game for our audience, and by game I just mean it will only last 5 seconds. And what we have here is we have a picture of six figures. I'll go ahead and tell you that they're undergraduate students at the university.

00:04:11.880 - 00:04:34.830

There are three women seated and three young men standing. Two of the young men have their hands on the shoulders of the women behind whom they are, they are standing. There is a piano in the background.

00:04:34.950 - 00:04:57.960

The three women are seated on a bench, and behind them all is a velvety black curtain. The three women are dressed in lively colors, one in a pink dress. I wanted to say fuchsia, but, but it occurred to me I don't know what color fuchsia is.

00:04:57.960 - 00:05:28.350

It's, but one is in a bright pink dress. These are party dresses, one in a, a sparkly blue dress, and one in a purple dress with, looks to be white, white, lacy trim, all just very wonderfully attired. The three men are all in suits or parts of suits.

00:05:29.190 - 00:05:47.040

The men on the outside, one has a grey suit on with a red tie, and the one on the far left is a brown three-piece suit. And the gentleman in the middle has a slender tie and is wearing a, a suit vest, but we don't, we don't see a suit coat.

00:05:47.670 - 00:06:08.400

And so, and these are all African American students at the university. And so, I'll just start with, do you know these folks? For the people in the, in the audience, and you can populate the chat with guesses if you like. When I look at it, I know, I know three of them.

00:06:09.060 - 00:06:30.540

So I can look at and say I know and went to school with two of them and know a third quite, quite, quite well. And my, the second picture I'll show is of the, one of the young women from the, the first picture.

00:06:30.540 - 00:06:53.190

And we can tell now that this is probably some type of theatrical production, because she is featured just a little off center. It's a black-and-white photograph, but you can also tell that she is spotlit, and so you see her mouth open as if she's declaiming or singing.

00:06:54.390 - 00:07:19.380

And she's very nicely, a very nice silhouette of her on that back curtain. And so just a really fabulous photograph. So what we have stumbled upon is some type of play or production, obviously. What's remarkable, if I just page back, is that, if this is the cast, right, if this is

00:07:19.380 - 00:07:44.640

the cast of the production, one of the interesting things about this production of, of, at Rice, is that the primary cast looks to be all African American, all African American actors and actresses. And we didn't have any guesses, or at least not that I see.

00:07:44.640 - 00:08:16.660

I'm terrible at chat though, so if they came in, I might not have seen them. I'll go ahead and, in sum of the surprise, one of the students represented in these two previous photographs is our own Tamara Siler, Rice graduate and longstanding staff person in the Office of Admissions at Rice University.

00:08:17.530 - 00:08:49.600

And I've been wanting to show this or to talk about this event for some time. And I'm going to let Tamara go ahead and introduce what's going on by just playing a snippet from the wonderful production Young, Gifted and Black, which was produced by Public Affairs and the Office of Multicultural Community Affairs

00:08:49.960 - 00:09:14.980

back in around 2013 or so, that interviewed black alumni about their experiences at the university. And so we'll listen to just maybe a minute of that, where Tamara will walk us into what was happening in these two photographs. Before you hit play, 'cause I don't, before you hit play, 'cause I don't want you to lose

00:09:14.980 - 00:09:28.240

your spot. Do we have the sound? Did you share the sound? I'm gonna, you know, thanks for asking, because I'm gonna double, I'm gonna double check. I will tell you this: I have no confidence that this is gonna play.

00:09:28.780 - 00:09:42.520

I have zero confidence that when I hit play that it's actually gonna happen. We have tried. We have tried, but I'm... Which is why I have notes as well, right. So I've written here what to say when this doesn't play.

00:09:42.700 - 00:10:02.310

Okay. That's, that's okay. Contingency plan. Here, here we go. I can say that I was part of the first and only all-black production on campus, and that part, I think, was in itself groundbreaking, that no one had ever seen an all African

00:10:02.310 - 00:10:21.950

American show on campus, and to see a show be that good. I was very lucky. So we have a sense of what's happening, right, but if you had seen this back in 2013, you would have been excited, I think.

00:10:21.950 - 00:10:37.020

Our audience is historically minded. But you might not have, you still don't quite know what's going on, because unfortunately, some of the details ended up on the cutting-room floor, right. What, what was this play?

00:10:37.200 - 00:10:52.050

Who was in it? When was it? What was the title, etc.? And we'll rush into that now by looking at the Thresher calendar

00:10:52.770 - 00:11:18.210

from November 1984, and what you see here on Tuesday the sixth, the seventh, the eighth, and the ninth, is Brown College is presenting. Ain't Misbehavin' in the, in the college commons. And so Ain't Misbehavin' is a musical revue of Fats Waller music from the late 1970s, at

00:11:18.210 - 00:11:42.570

least as a, as a Broadway and off-Broadway production. That's where it, where it comes from. And so these, the college, or the, or the, or the students in and around the college, have organized a show for the college, for the, for the university, this bit of college

00:11:42.570 - 00:12:10.680

theater, Ain't Misbehavin'. And so if we continue to kind of move through the weeks of the Thresher during the period of the show, we'll see it continuously announced in early November of 1984, and then in and around November 14, we arrive at

00:12:11.340 - 00:12:34.650

a Thresher review in the fine arts section of, of the Thresher, and the review occupies the first half of the page. The bottom half of the page is reviewing some work then underway by the Houston Ballet. But I wanna focus in on a few parts.

00:12:34.830 - 00:12:50.400

Uh oh, am I as far in as I can get? Oh my god, I am, sorry about that. So maybe you can, if you're on Zoom, you can use Zoom to, uh oh, it's not gonna work, I'm gonna have to, contingency, contingency.

00:12:50.520 - 00:13:10.350

Hold on, hold on. I've got, I've got contingencies, prof. This is a, this is a world of contingency planning, and so I can, I can go to a plan B. I'm feeling mighty Zoom competent at this moment, I do wanna say that, to be able to.

00:13:10.350 - 00:13:22.530

..well, let me not, me not speak too quickly, just in case this doesn't work. Don't jinx yourself. So here we go. Okay, here we go.

00:13:22.830 - 00:13:48.570

How is that? So I want to, I wanna focus in on a few aspects of this review. So, so Tamara, of course, really hits the nail on the head when she talks about, when she talks about the excellence of the program and how it was received, she alludes

00:13:48.570 - 00:14:07.200

to that, she's not speaking for herself there, though I'm sure she is, right, she's also remembering the aftermath of the show. And you'll see this quite clearly in, in the first paragraph of this review, which, I'll stop trying to characterize it.

00:14:07.200 - 00:14:24.120

It's, it's a remarkable start. "College theater was given a new. standard last weekend." I'm sorry, I just had to, I had to react to that. Raising the bar. Raising the bar.

00:14:24.120 - 00:14:46.680

Right, which means at the very least, at the very least, this means, over the last four years, I have never seen anything like this. And it may mean more, but at the very least, it means that. "Brown's fall production, Ain't Misbehavin', is by far the best I've seen this year." The

00:14:46.680 - 00:15:18.720

writer goes on to characterize it as a, as a, as a musical comedy that spans the emotional gamut from happy to sad, describes the, the, the setting of, of the performance, and, and describes, then goes on to describe the performers who are Socar Chatmon, Vera Daniels, Tamara Siler, of course, Will Hines, and Johnny Gibson

00:15:19.320 - 00:15:41.220

. Shout out to Johnny Gibson, who I feel like I actually lived with for two years of my time at the university, so much was he in the room that I occupied at Sid. But to, to continue. The, the characterization of the individual performances here is really remarkable.

00:15:41.220 - 00:16:00.360

And I'll, I'll focus in on Chatmon's, and then, and then run to Tamara's, and I'll skip some, but only be, only in the interest of time. "Chatmon was the embodiment of energy. It is difficult to believe that any person could contain such a vibrant personality in a

00:16:00.360 - 00:16:19.530

mere mortal shell. Her singing reflected this inner power, a strong, crisp voice, and a smile that just pulled the audience along." Tamara Siler is presented as the glue that holds the entire show together.

00:16:19.560 - 00:16:39.840

"Her performance was characterized by both a good voice and comical displays that integrated very well with her companions. While singularly she might not have been the best, it was her combined talents that allowed not only the females but the entire cast to function cohesively.

00:16:40.500 - 00:17:03.580

Will Hines and Johnny Gibson provide a male point of view," the writer goes on to say, and I wanna, I wanna return to this sentence that I'm about to read now. "Mr. Hines was sort of a singing Eddie Murphy, combining a strong voice and a wide range with energy and mannerisms that kept the audience rolling in the aisles.

00:17:03.600 - 00:17:26.580

Mr. Gibson was the tall, deep-voiced ladykiller. He possessed an inner strength," etc., etc. The writer goes on to praise the the band and everything about the play. The director, the staging, etc.

00:17:28.050 - 00:17:52.350

So this is a remarkable document for me for a couple of reasons. And one is it fits into some of our larger treatments of blacks in the imaginations of students at Rice University. This one in quite a different way, though.

00:17:52.350 - 00:18:21.930

And in, and it also, it doesn't, it's not only representative of that theme, it also opens up a whole new theme at the, at the university, and so it's important to me for those two reasons, is that it allows us to begin to use, from the moment that black students arrive on campus and begin to build a kind of artistic and community library

00:18:21.930 - 00:18:48.030

or performances on campus. We, we, we now can begin to contrast and compare some of their work with previous work, because, depending on how you use the term "black theater," right, there has been black theater on campus for some time at Rice, long before there were black students.

00:18:48.540 - 00:19:19.090

This document is also important to me because I think it's a critical precursor to using the arts as a form of community building on campus, so, for, for those of you who are familiar with shows like Soul Night, which is basically an African American centered artistic revue on campus, no one involved in it would use the word "revue,"

00:19:19.660 - 00:19:32.110

but... Your age is showing, your age is showing. That's a word for old people. Okay. Soul Night and Africaye, a similar African-focused

00:19:35.830 - 00:20:04.570

affair, that are just two marvelous examples of, of student talent and hard work on campus. This, this college production is in a way a precursor to that, and so that's what's exciting about it. There are some things that are curious about the treatment of the, of the play, and of the

00:20:04.570 - 00:20:23.440

review in the Thresher. And I think also there are some things that are missing, right, there are some questions that come out of this presentation that, that aren't directly addressed in the, in the article.

00:20:23.440 - 00:20:47.010

And so I want to spend a little time addressing those things. But before I do, doc, is there, is there anything that comes to mind for you in terms of questions or concerns that you would be interested in raising about this piece? Well, I think it's fascinating, and it does connect, as you said, with some of the themes

00:20:47.010 - 00:21:07.380

that we've already discussed in other doc talks. One of the, one of the places my mind went when you highlighted the line about Eddie Murphy was our conversation about Green Pastures a couple of weeks ago, or maybe even last week, time blurs, which raises questions about how Hollywood depictions of

00:21:07.380 - 00:21:33.950

African Americans on screen influenced the way that, that people on campus were encountered and understood and represented in Rice student publications. I think, and by the way, I love the show Ain't Misbehavin'. When I listened to the original Broadway soundtrack, it was on CD rather than on, on

00:21:33.960 - 00:21:50.880

vinyl, so I can't really say I wore it out because you can't really wear out CDs. But, but if it had been vinyl, probably would have been worn out, 'cause I love Nell Carter in the show. But what's interesting about the show, and I notice here in the review that it calls

00:21:50.880 - 00:22:12.930

attention to it, is that the actors are playing themselves. They're performing themselves on, on stage, and that just raises a lot of interesting questions about how that changes the dynamic between performer and audience. When the audience is rolling in the aisles because of Mr.

00:22:12.930 - 00:22:29.040

Hines' performance, what does that mean? What are they laughing at? These are some of the things that we can't see in the review itself. It's one of the silences in the document, which is some of the details about, about the

00:22:29.040 - 00:22:46.620

performance. Thanks, thanks for that, prof, and that gets precisely at, I think, some of the questions or what's missing in, in the document. And so, look, you saved me some time.

00:22:46.620 - 00:23:18.240

So now the, the only other thing I'm going to address is just how, right, the way Tamara Siler characterizes the, the experience and the play in To Be Young, Gifted, and Black, and the way it is characterized and presented here, are almost, they're not even two sides of the same coin, right, they're, they're as if they're not

00:23:18.240 - 00:23:36.300

meeting at all. And so one of the things that's there, one of the silences in this document that's interesting to me is that the, the review doesn't treat this as a, there's no mention of it being an all-black production, right?

00:23:36.570 - 00:24:00.510

Not "right," I didn't read the whole thing out loud to you, but there's no mention of it being an all-black production. There's no attention to the place of the black students or the experiences of the, of the black students in, in presenting this work, what it meant to do this work at the

00:24:00.510 - 00:24:26.130

university, and part of the contextualizations around black culture or part of our treatment of black culture through time at the university has been the, the work and call of black students for black art on this campus, right, and in the early seventies, it's a call for support and funding to do some of this work and to bring

00:24:26.130 - 00:24:45.930

others to do this work. Here in the mid '80s, in 1984, we see some of those calls being answered, right, the college is supporting this, students are supporting it with their, I think it's four and three dollars, to, to, to enter the play.

00:24:46.800 - 00:25:10.470

And it's not unimportant that this is college theater, right, that it's supported from the funds of the college. If you listen to Young, Gifted and Black, and I imagine folks on our call have, But you should relisten to it, that, that college connection becomes even more important in

00:25:10.470 - 00:25:37.470

some interesting ways when we hear how Tamara describes her relationships on campus, particularly with faculty, and the very nice things she has to say about being supported by Professor Aresu, who is the magister of Brown College at, at her time. And so this Ain't Misbehavin', and the unknown story of it's coming together, right,

00:25:37.470 - 00:26:03.060

we have these threads that we need to pull on about a relationship between students at the college and the inclinations of Professor Aresu. Tamara, in Young, Gifted, and Black, contrasts the behavior and the kindness of her college magister, the magister at Brown College, with some other behaviors from other

00:26:03.060 - 00:26:20.580

faculty on campus. And so people like Dr. Boles, John Boles, who's a member of our task force steering committee, and Professor Aresu, who is the magister at Brown at this time, Tamara calls out for special mention.

00:26:20.580 - 00:26:54.050

And so if we return to one of the themes that we, we've been kind of touching on for the past two weeks, how to tell a story, right, one of the, one of the opportunities here is, is to use Ain't Misbehavin' as a way into five or six really important themes about, about black life at the university.

00:26:54.050 - 00:27:20.830

And just fair warning, I'm gonna return to Ain't Misbehavin' before the spring semester is out, with, with a passion, we'll return. And just as a, as a precursor to some of that, I want to, wanna focus on one of the, one of the last bits in this review.

00:27:21.310 - 00:27:51.340

So if you were counting, if you were counting when you looked at the picture and you heard the, the actresses' and the actors' names, you'll realize, right, from that, from our first photograph, right, that there are three women cast members who are quite prominently, prominently mentioned in the review, and two black men cast

00:27:51.340 - 00:28:04.390

members who are mentioned. Who is, who is this guy in the middle here? Just kind of, I mean, why did, you know, there's always some guy, right? You're trying to get a cast picture.

00:28:05.630 - 00:28:20.170

Photobomb? Is it a photobomb? Yeah. Then you've got, you got this guy in the middle who's just, I mean, is he messing up the cast picture? Is he, he's trying to, I don't, I'm not, I'm not quite sure what's, what's going on.

00:28:20.170 - 00:28:41.300

And of course, because I said I'm not quite sure what's going on, that means I'm absolutely sure what's going on. And so I want to take you to the end of the, of the review, where the writer is calling attention to the wonderful production qualities of Ain't

00:28:41.300 - 00:29:05.260

Misbehavin'. And and the writer in the penultimate paragraph, the last sentence of the penultimate paragraph, gives a shout out to one of the musicians. "A special commendation to Derrick Hall, the pianoman, whose talent was obvious from the first note." And, and Dr.

00:29:05.260 - 00:29:33.910

McDaniel, if you are, if you are inclined to write a history of jazz at this university, maybe over the winter break, it won't be a long, wouldn't be a long project, it'd be a short project. But if you wanted to write a history of jazz at this, at this university, Phil Hall is going to, is going to pop up in several places in that, in that

00:29:33.910 - 00:30:00.370

story. And so I just want to end by sending our listeners and viewers to the Black at Rice series again that the Thresher runs for more information on Tamara Siler, you get these nice bookend reflections on her, reflecting on Ain't Misbehavin' at different periods of her life.

00:30:00.760 - 00:30:25.650

And I just wanna end by following up some on the career of Phil Hall, who is a really important arts leader in our city, an arts educator in our city, and... Much like Milton Larkin, perhaps, that we talked about.

00:30:25.680 - 00:30:44.450

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it raises questions about the arts at the university. Phillip Hall, called Derrick Hall in the, in the Thresher article, is not a product of the Shepherd School at the university.

00:30:44.460 - 00:31:17.170

He is an example of what's possible, right, when you when you show up at a university looking for a fulsome liberal arts education. And so I'll just put into the chat, to get folks ready, for more on the people who comprised this show and the way this

00:31:17.170 - 00:31:41.770

show spoke to or informs or illustrates their later life after the university. But also because later I want to return to use this as a way to dig deeper, this, this play as a way to dig deeper into the black experience at Rice through the experience of, of these six artists.

00:31:42.550 - 00:31:52.950

I'm looking forward to that. That sounds great. Thanks for, for that document. That's, that's a wonderful start. A tough act to follow, that show, it set a new standard.

00:31:52.950 - 00:32:11.970

You set a new standard for doc talk, I think . That was great. And I'm kind of curious, too, just from an archival point of view, where those photos that you shared came from, were they screenshots of the, the Young, Gifted and Black documentary, or...?

00:32:12.990 - 00:32:40.200

Aren't you? Yes, they were, and I get, but I get to give a better answer, right, is that Mouth Watering Media is the company that put together the Young, Gifted and Black documentary, and what, what Jan West, who also helped produce this, what she would ask of people who were being interviewed is, come to the interview, but also to produce

00:32:40.200 - 00:32:58.900

from your personal archive materials that, that will illustrate the story that you're going to tell. That's wonderful. Well, and it kind of, I ask the question partly because of the topic that I wanted to talk about today, which is also a part two, which it sounds like you're,

00:32:58.920 - 00:33:14.870

you're going to be doing later as well. I wanted to talk again about Jack Shelton. Are you able to see his picture on the screen? You may recall, Dr. Byrd, that we, we had a doc talk, two weeks ago I think now, where we

00:33:14.870 - 00:33:44.300

introduced the story of Jack Shelton, who was one of the earliest, perhaps the earliest black male employee working at the Rice Institute, and one of the things that we struggled with in that first doc talk was the challenge of piecing together a narrative about the life of Jack Shelton, And even sort of seemingly simple questions like, when

00:33:44.300 - 00:34:02.960

did Jack Shelton begin to work with the athletics program at Rice as a masseuse, as a trainer, as a groundskeeper? I mean, there were, there were lots of references to the kinds of work that he did in the Rice Thresher, but when did he start doing that work?

00:34:02.960 - 00:34:18.110

And what was he doing at the beginning? And, and when did his work at the Institute come to an end? That those kinds of questions are are difficult to answer. And so are the questions that I had about his employment history and how much he was paid,

00:34:18.110 - 00:34:40.790

what were the terms of his work at Rice? And so I've been trying over the last couple of weeks to dig into that a little bit more. And my starting point, which I think I mentioned two weeks ago, was a file that is in the Woodson Research Center as part of the, the biographical or information files at

00:34:40.790 - 00:35:00.650

the Woodson Research Center. This is a first stop for a lot of researchers into the history of the university, because there are, in manila file folders, subject files about people, places, and events, that you can open up and get some, some beginning facts usually about

00:35:00.650 - 00:35:17.240

the topic. And so I started last week with the file in the Woodson Research Center that's labeled, as you can see here at the top, "Shelton," comma, "Doctor," with "Doctor" in quotes, "Jack." Dr. Jack Shelton.

00:35:17.240 - 00:35:44.570

And inside, as I mentioned, there is a photocopy of a eulogy that was written about Jack Shelton and published in the Houston Press in 1950, and there are also some Xerox copies of several pages of the Rice Campanile over the years that depict Jack Shelton, including one that we zoomed in on and talked about two weeks ago from 1923,

00:35:44.570 - 00:36:10.850

which captions him as "Dr.," with "Dr." in quotes, "Jack Shelton," and points out, next to a picture of him looking to the left of the page in his trademark straw hat with a band around it that, usually Shelton had not been placed in the yearbook with the coaches of the athletic teams, but according to the editor in this case, in 1923, he was being

00:36:10.850 - 00:36:33.350

placed there. And so one of the things that that raised for me, I mean, a couple of weeks ago, I said that's, that was not the last time that Shelton would appear in the Campanile, but I was kind of operating on the assumption that that was the first time, as the editor said, that Shelton appeared in the Campanile, because in that folder, there

00:36:33.350 - 00:36:45.710

were only about four or five photocopies of pages on which Shelton was known to appear. And by the way, am I right in saying Campanile? I was wrestling with that earlier. How do you say it? Is it Campanile, is it Campanile?

00:36:46.280 - 00:37:02.060

I mean, I'm asking a Rice alum, so... So, I would like to say, don't, as a, as a, as a, Rice alum from 19-whatever, also someone who barely speaks English. I say "Campanile." That's gotta be wrong.

00:37:02.750 - 00:37:20.210

I was always looking for, where's my copy of the "Campanile?" "Campanile." You know, I got, I got three or four different answers from dictionaries online, so somebody can tell me later what the correct pronunciation is. But I'm gonna keep saying "Campanile," and you can silently judge me and correct me in

00:37:20.210 - 00:37:34.850

the audience if you know that... I want you to go back to "Campanile." I mean, I think we need to have two different ways of saying it on this show until we find the correct answer. Figure it out. Figure it out. Well, today it's gonna be "Campanile," and my doc, since

00:37:34.850 - 00:37:54.100

this is the doc talks, I'm gonna use the Campanile over the entire span of, of, of Jack Shelton's work at the Rice Institute. Because, remember, one of the questions that, that we asked was, can we even figure out when he started at the institute?

00:37:54.100 - 00:38:11.980

There were sort of different stories in the eulogies that were written about him that we looked at a couple of weeks ago. Some said he was there from the very beginning, from the opening of the institute, in 1912, and other accounts said that he came to the institute while Philip Arbuckle

00:38:11.980 - 00:38:29.080

was the football coach, and that he was discovered while working at a sanatorium downtown. After a particularly bruising game, Coach Arbuckle had brought his team to the sanatorium for treatment, and he was so impressed by the work that, that Jack Shelton

00:38:29.080 - 00:38:49.900

did, that he brought him to campus to do regular work as a "rubber" or a masseuse for the athletes on the football team. And those stories typically say that he came around 1913 or 1914, so not right at the beginning of the institute, but a couple of years later, and so I turned to the Campanile

00:38:49.930 - 00:39:13.140

to see if, if I could shed any light on that, that question of beginnings, and it's, it's difficult because the Campanile was not produced until 1916 when the first graduating class of the institute, I think I'm right about that, but that's the first volume of the Campanile, in 1916.

00:39:13.150 - 00:39:32.080

But that edition does include some photographs and some text about earlier years of the institute as well, since it was the first one to be produced, and sure enough, if I go to my PowerPoint here, I'm going to try my Zoom skills to see if they work. Can you see the slide there?

00:39:33.270 - 00:39:53.370

So this is from the 1916 Campanile, and you can see a picture here of the track team in 1915, which was only the second track team in the history of the Rice Institute, according to the text here. But it says that "splendid work was done by the team in spite of many difficulties." And

00:39:53.370 - 00:40:18.990

so we see here on the screen a picture of, let's see if I do my math quickly, maybe 15 or 16 young men who are dressed in, in track uniforms with an owl across the shirt that looks a lot like the owl that we've seen on the mastheads of the Rice Thresher in these early years. And then in the upper right hand corner, we see a man in a bow tie and a

00:40:18.990 - 00:40:38.580

white shirt and dress slacks who we're told from the caption down here is Philip Arbuckle, the coach. And at that time, Coach Arbuckle was a professor of physical education at the Rice Institute, but also oversaw most of the athletic teams that competed in outdoor

00:40:38.580 - 00:40:58.470

sports in the early years of the Rice Institute. But we also see in the middle row, on the left hand side, seated, definitely with the team, but also spaced a little bit apart from the first student on that row, somebody who's not wearing the athletic uniform or a bowtie.

00:40:59.070 - 00:41:23.160

He's wearing a dark athletic shirt, long sleeves, with a towel draped over his shoulder. And when we look down at the caption of the photo, we learned that this is Jack, in quotes, "Jack," and then in parentheses it says, "rubber," the rubber. That's a picture, the earliest picture that I can find, of Jack Shelton in the Rice

00:41:23.160 - 00:41:45.910

Campanile, referred to only as Jack, but definitely as a rubber, but not with the football team, with the track team that was, that was led by, by Philip Arbuckle. So I think we can say confidently he was definitely there in 1915, and we can also say that he was depicted in the Rice Campanile in the years after as well, in fact, the very

00:41:45.910 - 00:42:07.180

next year, the second edition of the Campanile, in 1917. Now, Shelton is photographed in a collage of pictures associated with the football season. So you can see the first home game of the year depicted at the top, you can see the team, the football players, at halftime on the left, lining up at the line of

00:42:07.180 - 00:42:28.360

scrimmage. And then on the right, there is a picture again of, captioned simply "Jack," in quotes. And there are some similarities between this picture and the one in 1916. We still have the towel draped over his shoulder. Now we see the straw hat that apparently would become kind of iconic in many images

00:42:28.360 - 00:42:40.060

of, of Jack Shelton. But here he's holding a water bucket. And that, I think, hints at the variety of kinds of work that he was doing in the early years of the institute.

00:42:40.690 - 00:43:06.820

The next year, in 1918, now we do see Jack Shelton depicted, this time with the football team. And I find this interesting because much like two years before, he is seated with the team, closer to the students in this case, still with the towel draped over his shoulder, and still listed by name in the caption of the photograph, but only by his

00:43:06.820 - 00:43:29.380

first name, without the, the quotation marks in this case. Here he's just Jack, and he's described as the "Red Cross Man" in this caption. And I think that gets at some of the work that he was clearly doing as a as an athletic trainer, wrapping ankles and bandaging up wounds after the football game.

00:43:29.890 - 00:43:54.610

But he is depicted here with the team, as part of the team, along with the coach, Coach Arbuckle, who's also in this picture again, and the assistant coach as well. Moving on, in 1919, we see him here on the right side of the image, and standing with the team instead of kneeling with the team, but still with that towel draped over his

00:43:54.610 - 00:44:07.750

shoulder. And here he's described with the squad differently in the caption. Now he is Trainer Jack. He's Trainer Jack in 1919. And, and so on we could go.

00:44:07.960 - 00:44:29.980

Here he is in 1920, depicted in a photo collage again, again with his hat, standing on the athletic fields, and named simply Jack, looking at the camera. In 1921, I, I wanted to zero in on this, and I promise I'll get to, to the document I really wanna talk about in a moment.

00:44:30.340 - 00:44:48.400

But I think it's, it's important to see how, how regularly Shelton appeared in the Campanile in these early years. But this one was of particular interest to me because of the document we looked at a couple of weeks ago, where we were trying to figure out why, in January 1921, there was a

00:44:48.400 - 00:45:15.640

Thresher story suggesting that Shelton was leaving his job at the institute, and then a couple of weeks later, it turned out that he was back in his job, and whatever issues there had been had been resolved, by saying that Shelton would only be responsible for doing his work as the rubber and also assisting with the athletic fields because

00:45:15.640 - 00:45:27.550

other help had been found in the gymnasium. Do you recall that, that article that we discussed? Yeah, yeah, I remember that. And one of the questions that we had was, well, was some of the, was it possible that

00:45:27.550 - 00:45:52.000

some of the conflict was over a difference between work done indoors in the gymnasium, in the locker rooms, versus work that would have been done outdoors? And the 1921 Campanile might help us answer that question, although it raises more questions for me, because it's about the construction of the Rice Fieldhouse, which

00:45:52.000 - 00:46:16.000

was new in that year, and we've talked about the Fieldhouse last year on the doc talks, partly because it's the site, the outside of it, is the site of an infamous photograph of, of some students, we suppose, dressed as Ku Klux Klansmen that also appeared in the Rice Campanile around this time.

00:46:16.000 - 00:46:36.430

And here you can see a picture of the Fieldhouse, but you can also see a description of the uses to which the Fieldhouse are being put. And it says at the top here that "Dr. Jack," referred to here for the first time as a doctor in the Campanile, says that he

00:46:36.430 - 00:46:59.070

"has his little room" in the Fieldhouse "for treating charley horses, sprains, bruises and cuts, and other minor injuries, which are the lot of those who would be athletically inclined. There are also places where we'll be installed the electric and Turkish baths, which are Jack's pet panaceas for ills acquired on the athletic field.

00:47:00.000 - 00:47:19.770

It is safe to say that our Fieldhouse contains an equipment equal or superior to any that can be found in the South." So that suggests that, that Shelton was doing some work inside the Fieldhouse, and it doesn't really answer my question of what was going on in those two articles, but it does raise some interesting questions.

00:47:20.010 - 00:47:38.700

It, it helps me a lot, Dr. McDaniel. I think I may have been careening, it helps correct a direction I was careening in from, from last week, concerning the consequences of what, what kinds of space that, that Jack Shelton worked in.

00:47:40.430 - 00:48:05.380

Yeah. And it's unclear whether the, the baths had played a role here, or maybe the actual sprains and bruises, the work of, of doing that kind of Red Cross work, as an earlier Campanile put it. Maybe the institute was bringing on physicians or doctors to do that kind of work, and so, so from here on, he was going to focus only on the massages.

00:48:05.400 - 00:48:25.120

It's a little unclear still what was going on. But what is clear is that space was used by Jack Shelton in this Fieldhouse, and that he had been doing this work for some time. And you can see that in some of the, the next issues of the Campanile.

00:48:25.120 - 00:48:42.470

Again, in 1922, Shelton depicted with his straw hat, his water bucket, referred to as Dr. Jack in the Campanile. And this is all before the image where we started, in 1923, of Dr. Jack Shelton in the Campanile.

00:48:42.480 - 00:49:05.580

So even though this one and the one previously were the earliest pictures in that info file in the Woodson Research Center, it's clear that Shelton had been appearing in the Campanile from the very first issue of the Campanile. And in fact, I have found images or references to Shelton in every issue of the

00:49:05.580 - 00:49:29.310

Campanile from 1916 through 1929. And thereafter, until his death in 1937, he appears in a couple of issues, but not every year, which is an interesting question in and of itself, what was going on in the 1930s? But he was regularly there, and had become clearly a kind of permanent fixture in

00:49:29.310 - 00:49:53.700

the pages of the Campanile and on campus. As you can see in the 1924 issue, he had a section where he was captioned, "trainer," and described here as "physician, surgeon, rubber, trainer, tailor," and then in a more jocular way perhaps, "Lord High Keeper of the Track, baseball diamond, and gridiron."

00:49:54.720 - 00:50:23.880

And there's a, there's a discussion here of, of Shelton's various work alongside a picture of him not in a straw hat, but in a, in a, in a hat, jauntily posed with his, his right arm akimbo and a long-sleeve, button-up work shirt that's a dark color. What I wanna call attention to here, though, is a shift in the way that Shelton is

00:50:23.880 - 00:50:47.880

described, because in earlier issues of the Campanile, we've seen Shelton posed with the athletic teams, described as a doctor, as a Red Cross man, as a trainer. But in this particular issue, we see Shelton in the text referred to with a racial epithet. The N-word appears here in the Campanile for the first time, attached to

00:50:47.880 - 00:51:09.780

Shelton. And even though the text says, "We all love Jack and wouldn't know what to do if he were not there to tell us," that racial epithet also hints, as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, some of the "guff," to use a term from the Thresher, that Shelton took from Rice students at the institute in these years.

00:51:09.780 - 00:51:35.320

And in fact, the Campanile is open about that. It says in the text here in 1924, "He takes our abuses, and returns them with smiles and willingness." That raises a lot of questions for me of what's shifting here in 1924, and it's clear as we go through the Campanile, that that mixture of sort of a fond

00:51:35.320 - 00:52:04.170

accounting of all of Shelton's work with abuses and guff and racialized terminology continues in the 1920s, and especially in this issue in 1926, where Shelton is depicted again under the caption "Doctor Jack," and is described as "almost as permanent as the institute itself," but again uses that racial epithet, the N-word, to describe

00:52:04.200 - 00:52:29.790

Shelton. At the end of this particular issue of the Campanile, in the back pages of the yearbook, there are also some especially heinous caricatures of Shelton that I think give us a window onto the way the abuses that he was enduring during his work on campus in these

00:52:29.820 - 00:52:46.890

years. And I have to say, Dr. Byrd, I hesitate, we were talking about this a little bit before we went live, hesitate even to, to show some of these images and descriptions of Shelton at the back of the Campanile, but I think it is important to notice the differences between those early

00:52:46.890 - 00:53:11.430

years where Shelton was described a certain way and depicted with the athletic teams and what's going on in these 1920s images, 'cause it helps us capture a broader picture of the history of race on campus at this particular moment in time. But I do wanna preface these by, by noting that, that while they're of interest to us as

00:53:11.430 - 00:53:29.340

historians for understanding this period, they also have a power that can be damaging in the present, and so we wanna handle them with care as we, as we talk about these two pages. One of them shows, in a kind of comical section at the end of the yearbook, similar

00:53:29.340 - 00:53:55.890

to the Backpage in the Rice Thresher today, there's a punning page that refers to the Rice Institute as the "Vice Institoot," Vice, V-I-C-E, dedicated to the consistent pursuit, not of arts, letters, and sciences, but wine, women, and song. And there are officers of the administration of the Vice Institute listed here, and

00:53:55.890 - 00:54:22.530

Shelton is depicted here on, on the right, and described here in the, the caption in this first instance that I've seen of the phrase that pairs the epithet, the N-word together with Shelton's name, to, to refer to him. And there, there's also, a couple of pages after that, a cartoon caricature of Shelton

00:54:22.530 - 00:54:45.300

on a page that's headlined, "Our Family Album," and this is a parody of some pages that appeared in the Campanile in these years showing childhood photos of some of the seniors who were graduating from the Rice Institute in that particular year. But here, the artist has drawn some of the students who attended the institute as the

00:54:45.300 - 00:55:07.620

artist imagines them as children. But there's also a depiction of Jack Shelton, and the caption here again refers to him with the N-word and depicts him eating a large slice of watermelon, referring to a common racist trope from this period in the American South.

00:55:08.040 - 00:55:32.640

And what we see as we move forward in the Campanile is that after that sort of turning point in 1924, every image of him that appears in the Campanile, including the 1929 issue, as he's doing his work, in this photograph he's administering first aid during a timeout in the football game, but the caption uses that phrase, the N-word

00:55:32.640 - 00:55:54.420

together with his first name Jack, to refer to Shelton doing this work. And the same is true in the very last issue of the Rice Campanile, where Shelton is depicted one year prior to his death in 1937. Shelton is shown here again in the photo collage setting, not with the teams, and he's

00:55:54.420 - 00:56:09.510

leaning against a fence by the athletic fields. You can see the grandstands in the background, he has on his straw hat, he's smoking a cigarette and smiling at the camera, and the caption refers to him again with the N-word and his first name alone.

00:56:10.320 - 00:56:32.670

That's a very quick, a too-quick, survey of what I was able to find about Shelton's appearance in the Rice Campanile, and I think it would be worth just reflecting on why it's important for us to go back and look at these images and think about what was going on in Shelton's experience on campus, and I think one answer to that question could

00:56:32.670 - 00:56:55.830

be to think back to some of these earlier images of Shelton in 1919 and 1920, where he's seated with different athletic teams. So here I'm showing you a picture of the basketball team, which we haven't seen before. In 1919, the basketball squad is depicted with Shelton, not listed in the

00:56:55.830 - 00:57:12.360

caption, but clearly sitting, sitting here on the left side of the image. He's got his towel over his shoulder, as he frequently did in these years, and we have a listing of the names of the players that are, that are here next to him. But I'm curious, to the audience or Dr.

00:57:12.360 - 00:57:27.900

Byrd, if any of the names that are listed with the team here ring a bell to you? Dr. Byrd's raising his hand. Go for it. Lovett.

00:57:28.740 - 00:57:39.110

That's a name that's well known. I see on the top row. That's a name that's well known. The top row, second from left, is Malcolm Lovett, H.

00:57:39.120 - 00:57:54.960

Malcolm Lovett, who was one of the first basketball stars at the Rice Institute. He's here again in the picture in the Campanile from 1920, where Shelton again appears with the team, in the third row. He's described as Dr.

00:57:54.960 - 00:58:15.840

Jack, the trainer. And in the first row, the second from the left, we see Malcolm Lovett depicted again. And Malcolm Lovett is a significant figure in the history of the Rice Institute and the Rice University, partly because of his well known father, Edgar Odell Lovett, who was the

00:58:15.840 - 00:58:37.200

president, of course, of the Rice Institute, when Malcolm Lovett, his son, graduated in 1921. And so that's the Lovett, you can see a better image here, a better resolution of this photograph here, that's the Lovett who's depicted here with the basketball team and Jack Shelton standing together with the team.

00:58:38.640 - 00:59:04.530

What do you make of the fact that Malcolm Lovett, who, by the way, would go on to become the board of, the chairman, excuse me, of the Board of Trustees during the time of the Masterson crisis, and various incidents on campus at the end of the 1960s, and also was the lawyer who was most responsible for representing Rice in the

00:59:04.530 - 00:59:25.810

charter trial that changed the charter to begin the process of desegregation at Rice. It's that Malcolm Lovett that was a basketball star in 1919, 1920, and 1921, in these images where Jack Shelton is depicted. Well, it's, it's like a cliffhanger.

00:59:25.820 - 00:59:49.700

You've left us with a wonderful cliffhanger about the direction that that some of this research can and should go. That's, that's my, my first response. The second thing is, I think there is also a tension, we've been in a very male world

00:59:49.700 - 01:00:21.920

here in, in speaking of Jack Shelton and the folks he works with at Rice, but, but one of those slides or photographs that you cautioned us about, I think one day we'll also probably return to, because there, there may be an allusion there to, I may overstate it just a bit, but, but I don't think I'm overstating it by much.

01:00:21.920 - 01:00:39.770

There's a, there's, I feel like there's an allusion there to some gendered violence, and a gendered and violent way of speaking about black women... Yes. That, that, that may have, that raises questions for me about how women and black

01:00:39.770 - 01:01:02.000

women in particular may have been spoken about and addressed in, in, in, in the context that, that you've brought to us today. We definitely need to return to that and give it a lot more context. And I think the editorial from, or the eulogy from 1950 in the Houston Press, also

01:01:02.000 - 01:01:22.940

forces us to pay attention to that, that topic. I think, I think right now, maybe as a placeholder, it's important to just note that this period that we're talking about, when Shelton was at the Rice Institute, overlapped with the lifetimes of key leaders of the university at the moment when the charter was

01:01:22.940 - 01:01:44.030

being changed and desegregation was beginning. I think sometimes when you, when you think about the history of an institution, it's maybe all too easy to think about it in a, sort of just a linear sequence, and as those classes graduate, they leave behind whatever was going on at the Rice Institute in those

01:01:44.030 - 01:02:11.490

earlier years and enter a new era. And yet, Malcolm Lovett is, is a reminder that, that students who were at the Rice Institute during the time, or shortly thereafter, when these racist caricatures and violent ways of speaking about Shelton were in the Rice Campanile, remained connected to

01:02:11.490 - 01:02:27.480

the university and change as well. I mean, I think it's important to note that one question that we could ask is, well, what was the influence, if any, or what was the experience of Lovett at, as a student, at the Rice Institute, interacting with Jack Shelton?

01:02:28.230 - 01:02:49.410

What was he learning or not learning from those interactions, and students like him, that, that would have still been a part of their, their own life stories and their own life histories at the moment when they were involved in these, these major changes in the history of the university?

01:02:49.580 - 01:03:22.320

There, you're, you're inquiring, right, about an education in race relations, to use a somewhat old-fashioned term, at the university, and it's, one of the most affecting presentations I've heard at my time at Rice was a former chairman of the board doing exactly what you've outlined, but, but speaking about the books that he was

01:03:22.320 - 01:03:45.030

assigned and what he read and the ways in which his education in literature began to open up his world, his education at Rice in literature began to open up the possibilities for a fairer, a fairer society. That's a, that's a, that's a good story, right, that's a story that's headed toward a

01:03:45.030 - 01:04:03.480

good ending. We can't be sure what, what story is to be told here. But it's clear that, that education went beyond books. Yes. You see how often Shelton is depicted in the Campanile, you know, referred to in the text

01:04:03.480 - 01:04:27.030

as "almost as permanent as the Rice Institute itself." It opens up a different set of questions about Shelton that aren't just about his employment history, but also about his proximity to students, his interactions with students, and and how that affected both him and those, those students that are depicted in some of those photos.

01:04:27.540 - 01:04:39.750

Great work. Okay, well, we'll, I think, I know we'll have more to say about Shelton and Lovett in future doc talks. We want to thank all of our audience members for sticking with us, I know we've run a

01:04:39.750 - 01:04:43.950

little bit over, but there was a lot to talk about today. I hope everyone has a great weekend.