00:00:02.960 - 00:00:33.650

(mouse clicking) Good afternoon, sir. How are you? I'm doing good.

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How are you prof? I'm ready for the weekend for sure. These things always happen on Friday. (laughing)

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Yep. It's a good day. It's a good day for it. Let's give a couple minutes

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for our audience to filter in. Lets not give them a minute. Let's just give them seconds. (laughing)

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I try to be a little flexible on timeliness because I know I need that flexibility from others. So I feel that. I'm starting to worry.

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I don't know if we've told people that we plan to turn these into podcasts to distribute to folks who can't be here live, have we said that?

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That's a good question. You know, historians have notoriously bad memories so I, short-term memories at least. So I can't remember

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if we've announced that on the doc talk but you're right. We are working with some undergraduate media fellows on the task force who are busy revisiting recordings of our first three or four Doc Talks and turning them

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into podcasts that we can distribute on our website. So I think last week I did mention that we now have a, webpage on the taskforce.rice.edu website for the Doc Talks.

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So everyone can keep an eye on that site where we will eventually have some great podcast episodes for you to share with friends and colleagues who might not

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be able to make the live discussions along with links of some of the documents that we've been talking about over the last four weeks or so this is our fifth one I think

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so we're in it now. (chuckles) (inaudible) It gives us an opportunity though

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folks who have been with us from the start we'll have, have seen some of this to we always like to pause and thank folks. We're constantly thanking the people

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at the Woodson Research Center at the Fondren Library because they make so much possible. You see us most of the time at these, talks but there are a number

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of undergraduate students and graduate students and now media fellows that we are indebted to who are doing a lot of really good work for the tasks force. Absolutely. Yeah, there's a lot

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of research initiatives underway. And you know, in our second week we heard from some students who came to talk with us about the research they've been doing

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and I'm excited that next Friday, we are hoping to be joined by some undergraduate students as well who have been doing research as part of the racial geography project

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which is a research collective associated with the task force led by our colleague professor Fabiola López-Durán in the our history department.

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Who's also on the steering committee of the task force. So I'm looking forward to having some guests next Friday. If this is your first time joining us

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welcome to our Doc Talks. We do these every Friday at noon. And I'm Caleb McDaniel along with Alex Byrd is the co-chairs of the task force

00:04:02.770 - 00:04:14.770

on slavery segregation and racial injustice. And our aim each week is to talk about a couple of documents. Sometimes we go over a couple and have a few more just

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as a bonus, but our goal is to reflect on some of the documents that we're turning up in our research and share those with the community and give you a little bit of an insight into how historians work

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with primary historical documents. How we think about the questions they raise, the questions they help us answer, how we contextualize those documents

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using other documents from the past. And so we hope that these will both inform you about the task force and also give you a little window into how historians think,

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so welcome. And we're glad to have you with us today. Should I get started Dr. Byrd with the document that I've brought this week? - [Alex]Yeah.

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I started last week So I think it's your turn My turn. Okay. Well I'm up.

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Well, the document that I brought to talk about today actually it takes us back to an event that took place here in Houston, almost exactly a 100 years today a 100 years this week.

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And so I wanna share the front page of The Rice Thresher from October 8. So this would have been yesterday in 1920 a 100 years ago.

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And so the first thing that you probably notice I'm sure when, when you look at this is how different the front page looks from the page that we looked at last week

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and maybe I think some of the The Thresher pages that we might look at later today we're clearly not in the 1980s anymore. As you can see from the masthead of The Thresher

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there was a different, a kind of masthead, there's a giant R in The Thresher that has a little owl seated inside of it. So you can kind of date

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that The Thresher front page is just by looking at the mastheads and see what era you're looking at. And this is also a clearly from 1920, because the headlines are talking about Rice football

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about to kick off its season by facing the Baylor bears which I don't think happens quite as much anymore. does it? No not so much.

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And so on the upper right-hand side of the The Thresher front page, that's what most of the real estate on October 8th, 1920 was given over to the important football dates coming up,

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a sort of preview of the varsity team, a announcement that the first game would be that Saturday. And so the bears and owls would be facing each other. It says the first real grid clash

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of the season may be a bloody one. So there's a picture there of the Baylor bears immediately under the masthead. And then there's an

00:07:07.250 - 00:07:17.890

a larger picture of the Rice football team. And the caption says that that this is a The Threshers candidate for Southwestern champions for the football season.

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And it shows a picture of the captain of the team and also the coach. So there's a lot about the football but that's not actually what I wanted to talk

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about today because underneath that picture of the captain and the coach and the football team, right in front of a a brand new field house that had just been constructed on campus, there's another headline.

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And it says holiday set for Confederate Day. And so I'm gonna zoom in a little bit... Confederate day. What's Confederate Day?

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That's the question that I have about this document. It says that under this main headline holiday set for Confederate Day veterans were to be welcomed

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on the academic court at Rice Friday. And so this would have been on a Friday, much like today, a 100 years ago. And it says that this holiday

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was going to allow students to have time off from class. So classes were being canceled in the morning in honor of the visiting veterans and an informal reception in the academic court

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later in the afternoon that was set to begin about four o'clock . So I'm just going to read a little bit what the article says here.

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It says "the Confederate guests will arrive in cars and will be honored by student yells led by the well-known Shorty. The rest of the afternoon will be devoted to trips

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through the buildings. And it is possible that a, program of some sort including a few short talks may be arranged. All students are urged to be on hand in the academic court

00:09:04.330 - 00:09:17.320

to welcome our venerable and respected guests. The reception at the community house need not prevent a short attendance here." Okay. So that's the article

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And I've got questions, but I know that one of the ways this works is I've got to ask you what drew you to this piece? Well, you know, I'm struck

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by the fact that whatever was happening on this particular occasion was significant enough, at least in the eyes of the Rice Institute to give students off from class in the morning, you know,

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these days in 2020, you know, there there's a shortlist of things that can do that, that would give students off from a class. So it says something to me about the significance

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of this day that students were going to be granted a holiday in the morning. And I was also struck by the references to visiting veterans because it's clear

00:10:13.520 - 00:10:29.950

that there were some Confederate veterans still living in 1920, who are going to be welcomed on campus in the Academic Quad And of course the quad, the Academic Quad in 1920

00:10:29.950 - 00:10:42.310

would've looked some in some ways similar to what it looks like today, there would not have been the Fondren library on one side there just would have been the administration building

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or Lovett hall on the other side of the SallyPort would have been there. There was not yet a founders' Memorial or statue of William Marsh Rice in the middle of the quad.

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But we know from pictures of the time that there were the hedges that are very familiar to us lining the court on the other side of Lovett hall there would have been a parking lot

00:11:03.050 - 00:11:14.400

where cars could park. And so I'm immediately thinking about that when it says the Confederate guests would be arriving in cars and would probably be parking

00:11:14.400 - 00:11:26.590

on the other side of Lovett hall and then would be filing into the Academic Quad So it just sort of caught my attention to kind of imagine what it would be like to have a large group

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of students and presumably faculty and other staff of the Institute there in the Academic Quad with a group of Confederate guests a group of veterans who had driven to campus.

00:11:40.970 - 00:11:50.090

So yeah that struck me and it raised some questions to me about what they were doing there and why a holiday would have been granted

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in order to welcome them. And so, you know, that's the kind of question that I think requires us to go beyond one source, because if all we had was this one article

00:12:06.000 - 00:12:16.450

in the Rice Thresher there'd still be a lot of questions on my mind. I mean, it's a pretty short article and it's referring to things that it sort of takes

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for granted that we'll know, you know there's going to be student yells led by the well-known Shorty. I don't know how well known Shorty is to you

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but he was not well-known to me when I read this article and it also refers to her reception at the community house that the writers of the article are maybe concerned that there's

00:12:39.050 - 00:12:48.470

a scheduling conflict. And, you know, students might wanna go to the perception of the community house. There's obviously a lot going on for the football game

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that's coming up the next day against Baylor, but they're nonetheless being urged to make an appearance in the Academic Quad. And I'm welcome these veterans.

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I wonder if that's a worry, right? If that's a worry in the sense of class has been canceled, right? Class has been canceled.

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We have this very important event. I'm now interested in attendance. Yeah, yeah. That's one question I have too is, you know

00:13:23.490 - 00:13:36.760

all we know from this particular article is that this event was gonna be held, but when we go to the next issue of The Thresher a week later there's not any report on how it went.

00:13:36.760 - 00:13:43.730

Okay. And so it's difficult to know, you know how many students showed up. You know, another question I immediately had is

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if there was a program of some sort including a few short talks, what was said in those talks. Right.

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And who might have been speaking about the Confederacy or about the civil war but unfortunately we don't have a record of what might've been said in those speeches.

00:14:04.740 - 00:14:13.140

So I agree. And you know, it leaves you wondering a lot about the size of the event here on campus, the attendance of the event,

00:14:13.140 - 00:14:21.900

the content of the speeches. I was also struck I went this morning to do a little digging in the (inaudible)

00:14:21.900 - 00:14:37.220

which is the yearbook of the Rice Institute. And when you go to the 1921 volume which would have been the volume covering the academic year from fall of 1920 to spring of 1921

00:14:37.220 - 00:14:52.710

there's a lot of events talked about in the yearbook including Rice is victory over Baylor, which we don't read about in this issue, but there was a big win 28 to zero. There's a lot of attention given

00:14:52.710 - 00:15:06.000

to the football team in the yearbook, but there's no mention that I could find of the Confederate Day, this holiday. So it does raise questions about, you know what the student engagement

00:15:06.000 - 00:15:18.960

with this particular event event was but it does raise the question of, you know, what those guests were doing there and who had invited them who took them on the trips, through the buildings of campus

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you know, to take a tour and see the we can imagine them seeing the administration building or walking through the SallyPort. And so I tried to do a little research to find out

00:15:31.980 - 00:15:43.810

you know, what else was going on in October, 1920. And it turns out that despite this small article here in The Thresher, if you turn

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to the Houston newspapers in 1920, the Houston Chronicle or the Houston post, what you quickly discover is that there was a huge Confederate reunion going on in Houston this very week, a 100 years ago today.

00:16:02.270 - 00:16:15.760

And it started earlier in the week. And so the Friday that's discussed here was sort of the last day of this big reunion event. And it was a gathering

00:16:15.760 - 00:16:28.580

of several different Confederate veteran organizations. There was the United Confederate Veterans which was one of the oldest veterans groups. There was also the newer Sons of Confederate Veterans

00:16:28.580 - 00:16:43.380

which is an organization that still exists today. There was, there were some women's organizations associated with Confederate memory, and they all came to Houston for a national event

00:16:43.380 - 00:16:58.880

sort of a big convention or conference. It wasn't the first time they had come to Houston because 25 years earlier in 1895, the UCV had also had a a very large national conference here in Houston.

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So a quarter century later, they returned. And there was a lot of coverage in the Houston newspapers, not just that week but leading up to it as well about the thousands

00:17:11.840 - 00:17:25.630

of people who would be flocking to Houston for this event there were huge tents set up downtown to host them. You know, every store was sort of advertising to the reunion, veterans come in and buy our stuff.

00:17:25.630 - 00:17:38.920

And we welcome you ads, the display the Confederate stars and bars flag. And so it was a giant event and the city this particular week

00:17:38.920 - 00:17:48.550

and this would have been, again the last day of this reunion, there would've been some sort of formal meetings that took place on Wednesday

00:17:48.550 - 00:18:00.090

and Thursday, there was a pageant that was thrown at the city auditorium called Memories of Dixie that had a sort of historic tableaus and scenes of the South

00:18:00.090 - 00:18:13.140

including starting off with the plantation scenes. And then there would have been balls. There would have been social events and dances where these elderly Confederate veterans

00:18:13.140 - 00:18:26.180

you know, in their 80s or 90s were dancing with young Houstonians many young women who apparently had sort of audition to become maids

00:18:26.180 - 00:18:37.920

of honor of the Confederate veteran guests. And so it was a huge deal. I mean there were thousands of these Confederate veterans and their families and members

00:18:37.990 - 00:18:47.690

of these Confederate veteran organizations that had come to Houston. And then on Friday morning, if I can switch over my tab here,

00:18:47.690 - 00:18:59.990

on Friday morning, there was a huge review a huge parade through the streets of downtown Houston. And you can see on the front page of the Houston Chronicle here

00:18:59.990 - 00:19:12.750

that this was front page news and there were photographs that were taken of the veterans lining up along the street. And also very striking

00:19:12.750 - 00:19:30.370

in this particular front page is a photograph of some KU Klux Klan writers rode in their white robes and costume their horses. And they apparently were part of this parade as well.

00:19:30.370 - 00:19:43.720

And some other evidence suggests that this was the first appearance of a KU Klux Klan organization known as a Klavern that had recently formed here in Houston.

00:19:44.110 - 00:19:56.730

The there's of course the origins of the Klan and the reconstruction period but the 1920s was sort of the birth of a second wave of Klan activity all across the country.

00:19:56.730 - 00:20:08.810

And clearly here in Houston as well there was a Klan presence too and they marched down the streets of Houston. And you can see over here on the right-hand side, you know

00:20:08.810 - 00:20:21.350

thousands where they're cheering as the gray hosts pass and review talking about their heroism, talking about you know, the ways that they had defended the South land. And so if we come back to The Thresher,

00:20:21.350 - 00:20:30.560

we can build a bigger picture of what was going on that Friday, you know that students were given off the morning from class. And maybe we could imagine

00:20:30.560 - 00:20:43.190

that some students were part of those thousands... This is what they're supposed to be doing Supposed to go to the parade, supposed to see this. And then after this parade that had happened all morning

00:20:43.190 - 00:20:58.190

there was an afternoon reception at the Rice Institute for the president of the United Confederate Veterans general van Zandt. Who's mentioned here, who would have come

00:20:58.190 - 00:21:14.670

with the other officers of the UCV to the Rice Institute campus and gotten a tour of the buildings and the surrounding campus, again with maybe some short program of speeches.

00:21:14.670 - 00:21:25.290

But we don't know for sure exactly what they did when they got there only that they were hosted there for sort of afternoon reception after this large parade.

00:21:26.340 - 00:21:42.400

So knowing, I mean, and, work like we're engaged in that has taken place at other universities, what happens, right? These programs having, getting a grasp

00:21:42.400 - 00:21:57.400

of these programs can be very important to having an idea of what claims people are making on the space around them and how they're associating the spaces that they're occupying

00:21:57.400 - 00:22:12.530

with the arguments that they hold. Yeah. Good example of that. It would be, you know, I think our webinar in the summer when we heard from several historians

00:22:12.530 - 00:22:25.140

about monuments movements and racism on campus, one of the statutes that was discussed was the statute of Silent Sam, the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

00:22:25.140 - 00:22:40.230

And one of the turning points in the way that campus thought about the statue of Silent Sam this Confederate soldier on campus was the discovery of a speech that a man named Julian Carr had given

00:22:41.090 - 00:22:58.670

at the unveiling of that statue in Chapel Hill that quite explicitly defended White supremacy and sort of described reconstruction as a failure. And so there was a very vivid scene

00:22:58.670 - 00:23:15.810

of him describing the torture of an enslaved woman and sort of celebrating that at the unveiling of the statue. Well, it turns out Julian Carr, that Julian Carr was here at this Houston reunion in 1920, you know

00:23:15.810 - 00:23:24.610

was he part of the group that came to the Rice Institute? I don't know. Would hhe had been one of the ones that would have given a speech?

00:23:24.610 - 00:23:34.620

If there was a small program. Another question that I think clearly from the the evidence and The Thresher, we don't have evidence to answer that yet.

00:23:34.620 - 00:23:48.390

And that digging helps really contextualize everything we're looking at Carr funds, what starts, I think is a dormitory ends up as a classroom building

00:23:48.390 - 00:24:06.990

at Duke university and the understanding of later, right? Like long after Carr's demands, one of the understandings of his place in the civil war is kind of a boy soldier, right?

00:24:07.210 - 00:24:18.600

A young man. And so the inclination right? Was to treat his service and the Confederacy to contextualize it

00:24:18.600 - 00:24:32.020

in precisely that way, but the digging right? And the further contextual relation and the finding of the of this speech really changes the way folks think of things at UNC.

00:24:32.020 - 00:24:44.780

It also, there is no Carr building at Duke University. Any more. Yeah, yeah. I think it's, yeah, that's a good example of why this kind of research is important

00:24:44.780 - 00:24:55.600

and it can sometimes take a long time to defined evidence that's that's relevant. You know, I still have a lot of questions about this particular incident.

00:24:55.600 - 00:25:08.670

You know why would the Confederate veterans have been brought to the Rice Institute campus, you know, on one level maybe that's not entirely surprising because we know

00:25:08.670 - 00:25:20.390

that there were members of the board of trustees of the Rice Institute who were themselves Sons of Confederate Veterans, not necessarily members of the organization,

00:25:20.390 - 00:25:37.180

but whose fathers had fought in the Confederate Army. And yet, as far as I can tell their names, don't come up in the lists in the Houston newspapers of officers in these organizations, or, you know, people who were there

00:25:37.180 - 00:25:43.730

in the front lines, giving speeches about the Confederate veterans, you know, president (inaudible)

00:25:43.730 - 00:25:51.640

doesn't appear to have been you know, on the parade stand. In fact, I think he was out of town while this reunion was taking place.

00:25:51.640 - 00:26:03.100

So on the one hand, it's not surprising that they would come to the Rice Institute, but you know, you kind of wonder who invited them or who facilitated that reception.

00:26:03.100 - 00:26:24.070

And, you know, I know that there was a daughter of, one of William Marsh Rice's brothers, Jonas S. Rice who brothers or nephews I may have that may have that wrong who was selected as a maid of honor for one of the Sons

00:26:25.300 - 00:26:36.790

of Confederate Veterans officers during this reunion. You know, so there are these like sort of little connections between the Institute and the reunion but I think one question I have is how

00:26:36.790 - 00:26:49.320

to flesh out the extent of those connections you know, because there's, on the other hand, there's the testimony of silence in a way the fact that this wasn't in the

00:26:49.320 - 00:26:53.960

(inaudible) and, you know they're as you say there seem to be kind of a worry

00:26:53.960 - 00:27:03.610

that maybe students wouldn't show up to this reception. It might embarrass whoever had arranged for this to take place. And so, yeah, I think it leaves me

00:27:03.610 - 00:27:14.780

with a lot of questions about what their presence here on campus signifies and you know, what might have been said. And we know what was said at the reunion events,

00:27:14.780 - 00:27:29.140

you know and what was said at the reunion events was clearly related to our charge. You know, there were veterans defending White supremacy and downplaying the role of slavery

00:27:29.140 - 00:27:39.950

as a cause of the civil war and applauding Robert E. Lee and, and Confederate generals and complaining about how, you know too many Southern schools were teaching Northern textbooks.

00:27:39.950 - 00:27:53.240

You know, it gave me a flash of recognition even to today about complaints, about the 16, 19 project, you know making its way into public school curriculum. That was a big issue for these Confederate veterans groups

00:27:53.240 - 00:28:03.750

that they thought the South wasn't getting a fair shake in the schools. And so we know all of those things are being said at these reunion events, and then we know the veterans pop

00:28:03.750 - 00:28:16.420

up on campus, but what does that mean about the Rice Institute? Was this just a thing that, you know Houston city leaders participated in, just because

00:28:16.420 - 00:28:28.380

of the size of the event? I mean, you kind of had to, you couldn't ignore this huge event that was happening in the city, or does it tell us something about the view

00:28:29.280 - 00:28:40.790

of Rice Institute, faculty, or leaders about the history of the civil war and the South was there any sympathy, I guess, would be the word there for the kinds

00:28:40.790 - 00:28:54.430

of things that were being said at the reunion events And, and I guess you are also interested in have to be interested in applying all those questions to the,

00:28:55.660 - 00:29:09.070

way that the paper juxtaposes the Confederate veterans with this second Klan. Right? What is the, how do city fathers and civic leaders and folks

00:29:09.070 - 00:29:22.360

at the university also react and respond to this? Well, that's a great question. And I think it's a good setup for maybe some future weeks when we'll turn to

00:29:22.360 - 00:29:32.760

that particular question, but I don't wanna take up more time on my document, cause I'm really interested to hear what you brought to discuss today. All right.

00:29:32.760 - 00:29:41.490

Well, you, you say that as if you've taken up too much time but we've been doing this enough that you just, you nailed it. You, you handed it off at 12:30

00:29:41.490 - 00:29:50.910

which I think is usually precisely our aim. I'm gonna use that to give myself an extra scoop of ice cream tonight. Okay, good.

00:29:50.910 - 00:30:06.700

And I'm going to use it as one of my, many excuses for Friday pizza in your honor. So I'm gonna be in The Thresher again today and on a related subject.

00:30:06.700 - 00:30:22.240

And I almost forgot to share, I'm sorry. I need to share my screen. Okay. So hopefully that's working. Is it?

00:30:22.240 - 00:30:30.920

Do you see The Rice Thresher? I do A very different Rice Thresher masthead again. Right. Now we have a very, I mean, I wish I was

00:30:30.920 - 00:30:44.540

an art historian I would have, or a designer. I would have the words to explain this quite different masthead it's kind of spare and modern, I think justified

00:30:44.540 - 00:30:50.610

(inaudible) There's a big blank space there for a QR code. I didn't know they had QR codes... (inaudible)

00:30:50.610 - 00:30:56.170

Yeah. well, that's me. I'm sorry. (laughing) But there is a fascinating right?

00:30:56.170 - 00:31:07.600

Use of white space in the masthead which has now been placed in the top third of the paper, right? It's not actually at the very top.

00:31:07.600 - 00:31:21.540

It's situated more toward the middle. If this issue of The Thresher was a house. I wouldn't mind living in this house. This is my kind of house.

00:31:21.540 - 00:31:33.770

(chuckles) But, and you can follow along just like last week I have the URL. So you can take that URL in

00:31:33.770 - 00:31:42.040

or you can use your camera to follow that QR code to see what we're gonna do. I'm cheating. We're always cheating now

00:31:42.040 - 00:31:48.800

we're gonna run through I have two documents that I wanna share or two issues of The Thresher. I might have three documents.

00:31:48.800 - 00:31:54.970

Don't count this one. Okay. This is just the setup. But what what brought me to the....

00:31:54.970 - 00:32:13.100

What I wanna discuss today is this short piece this news piece in the 72 Thresher about the BSU planning, a King Memorial day. I'm intrigued and maybe some of you are as well.

00:32:13.100 - 00:32:22.540

That it's the BSU, right? We want to mention that again from last week, the original Org.. Black Community Organization, it, the

00:32:22.540 - 00:32:38.570

name that it takes on is the Black student union. I'm intrigued about the celebration of King Memorial day which has a long history at or at least a celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

00:32:38.570 - 00:32:56.550

has a long history at the university. But those of you who have participated or know about these celebrations might find the date a little right? So this celebration is happening in April.

00:32:56.580 - 00:33:13.340

And so of course, one of the easy questions at least easy for a historian, I guess of Afro America is why this April celebration when at least in contemporary times, Black students

00:33:13.760 - 00:33:30.920

at the university have celebrated recognized King at the beginning of the year? What interests me, just like last week is I'm interested in and what we can take

00:33:30.920 - 00:33:47.840

from news stories that are meant to do one thing. What can we take from them in order to get at the texture of Black life on campus. And this does some really good work along those lines.

00:33:47.970 - 00:34:00.980

The Blacks Student Union has planned a whole day of events, right? From 2:00 PM in the afternoon till 1:00 AM in the morning, the next day.

00:34:00.980 - 00:34:14.390

So there'll be a representative from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. They could have chosen more radical organizations at this time in the early 70s.

00:34:14.390 - 00:34:24.870

This is more of an establishment Black civil rights organization. It's Dr. King's it's the organization that Dr. King helped to found.

00:34:24.870 - 00:34:41.520

And so there'll be a speech at 2:00 PM from someone from SCLC at 4:30, there'll be a panel. And what I think is interesting about this is it gives us a an eye on to how Black students at Rice are drawing on

00:34:41.520 - 00:34:54.620

are connected to the larger community in Houston. I've underlined Curtis Graves here because he's the only one who The Thresher has decided needs no introduction, right?

00:34:54.620 - 00:35:07.950

Everyone else is kind of explained Curtis Graves is just Curtis Graves. So one of the things that I think folks should be interested in is why does Mr. Graves get this kind of introduction

00:35:08.860 - 00:35:19.410

and everyone else's is described. There's a band that's playing in the evening called Black Blood, and they'll they give a concert, a kind

00:35:19.410 - 00:35:31.870

of sit down concert at 8:30, at 10:00 PM they give a that they'll play for dancing. I'm interested. I think one of the things that this

00:35:31.870 - 00:35:46.650

shows is that there's an opportunity and a cost involved in community right? The, this takes some planning leading up to the day of the event, but also

00:35:46.650 - 00:36:03.700

it swallows up an entire Saturday, right? Of the folks who are involved, which is something to consider. What does it take to build at this time?

00:36:03.700 - 00:36:14.620

They would use the word minority community on campus but it, also begs the question about the types of costs, right? So all of these events are free and open to the public.

00:36:16.350 - 00:36:29.440

So I wonder is Black Blood playing for free? It's a nice slides little group. I mean, is it, are they cousins of some Rice students on campus houses?

00:36:29.440 - 00:36:34.350

How's this being paid? They're gonna play to 1:00 AM. That's doing some work That is doing some work.

00:36:34.350 - 00:36:47.040

And, just as an aside, one of the things that Dr. McDaniel and I have been talking about is the kind of traditions of live music on campus associated with Black students at the university.

00:36:47.040 - 00:36:55.640

Can I geek out for a second? Yes, please. I saw, we were talking about last week and I can't remember if it was

00:36:55.640 - 00:37:03.680

on another Martin Luther King Jr day celebration or it was associate, it may have been associated with Black History Month that Bubbha Thomas and the Lightmen

00:37:03.680 - 00:37:15.720

plus one played pub in the 70s and... Because you're geeking out. You going to have to say more than that, right? If you don't know, you need to look up Bubbha Thomas

00:37:15.720 - 00:37:30.930

and the Lightmen, a legendary jazz funk band based here in Houston, actually, Mr. Thomas passed away earlier this year. And so there was some coverage of his life he's kind of been rediscovered

00:37:30.930 - 00:37:44.070

and they've just put out some really nice vinyl reissues of these albums that the Lightmen put out in the 70s here in, in Houston. So I was pretty excited to see

00:37:44.070 - 00:37:59.950

that he had played here at Rice. And so everyone look out for the Doc Talk, that's going to be all about Black American music and Black American musical traditions at the university.

00:37:59.950 - 00:38:16.100

And it's this idea of costs that, helps bring me to where we're going to go in this next Thresher from three years down the road from November, 1975, same masthead, a marijuana plant

00:38:16.100 - 00:38:29.750

on the, very front page taking up, I think way more real estate than a newspaper that had a lot of news should probably give this... That white space you were talking

00:38:29.750 - 00:38:43.970

about sort of leads the eye directly to this picture. So there's, that's, obviously related to what, folks thought was a really important issue happening that week

00:38:43.970 - 00:39:01.140

around some confiscation of marijuana plants that students inexplicably were displaying outside their rooms, as opposed to inside their rooms. But it's also the time when the university is

00:39:01.140 - 00:39:19.360

nearing a vote on what is called in the day, voting on a minority blanket tax, which gets to the issue of how do, how the building of community isn't free, right? In terms of time and effort.

00:39:19.360 - 00:39:35.290

But also in terms of money. And so we've arrived at a moment where the leaders of the BSU among them, Craig Jackson, who is the co-chairman of the BSU at the time who we heard

00:39:35.290 - 00:39:51.000

from in our webinar last week are making an argument about why this taxes important and why the student body, as a whole should support it. And I'm interested in just running

00:39:51.000 - 00:40:05.660

through some of the arguments that they make for it. And as well as some of the arguments that come out within the larger Rice community against it because it's a continuing work

00:40:05.660 - 00:40:16.690

of kind of addressing what is the intellectual history of the black experience at Rice? What arguments do Black students mount in defense of their interests at the university,

00:40:16.690 - 00:40:29.210

and what arguments did they do they have to do they have to counter and which of these arguments are explicit, right? And which are implicit, which I think speaks

00:40:29.210 - 00:40:44.520

to what it means to just exist on campus at the time what it means to walk out into the space. This minority blanket tax was gonna be a $1 tax

00:40:44.520 - 00:40:58.600

on every student at the university. It was gonna be experimental. So if it was passed it would be reassessed a few years later,

00:40:58.600 - 00:41:11.210

the BSU representatives of the BSU make the argument that their experience at Rice is very much then at Colleen and American experience. But they're using a kind of American argument here

00:41:11.210 - 00:41:20.580

in American political argument is it's not quite taxation without representation, but it's taxation with very little representation is the argument

00:41:20.580 - 00:41:34.140

that they make, but they also are careful to couch it in ways that that gives some due to the larger Rice experience. So you see here that Guillory

00:41:34.140 - 00:41:41.920

and Jackson make this argument quite strongly but then they also say that don't get us wrong. We like (inaudible)

00:41:41.920 - 00:41:50.760

right? There's some things that y'all are doing on campus that we enjoy too. But there are there's very little of that.

00:41:50.780 - 00:42:04.760

And the powerful argument at the center is that, look, there is a Rice experience right? That the university logs but for minority students on this campus,

00:42:04.760 - 00:42:20.580

they do not have access. They do not have access to that same experience. Sorry, I'm fascinated by the level of detail in this editorial,

00:42:20.580 - 00:42:38.820

they move on to make arguments about what they want to do in the coming year down to listing the movies they want to show at their film festival. We also get kind of verification that

00:42:40.080 - 00:42:58.980

this annual Memorial event celebrating Dr. King, but happening near his, the date of his assassination is some work that the BSU has taken up as part of its work on campus.

00:43:01.160 - 00:43:16.470

And we see in the same issue, the, what Black students are engaging, what they're, what the arguments are that they're engaging on campus. And I'm just gonna take about three minutes to do this.

00:43:18.000 - 00:43:28.480

So The Thresher, what, do you think Dr. McDaniels? So the essay is the essay comes out fairly strongly for this. There's an essay committee who has recommended it.

00:43:28.480 - 00:43:39.630

I'm hiding my screen. What do you think The Thresher is gonna say? Is The Thresher gonna come out for it or against it? Ooh, I don't.

00:43:39.630 - 00:43:48.030

That seems like a loaded question. (chuckles) You know, the arguments to me seemed pretty strong, so I don't see why

00:43:48.030 - 00:44:04.860

Thresher would not support a $1 a blanket tax. But I also know from my own experience at Rice how contested every cent of the blanket tax can be. So I'm not really sure where to come down on this.

00:44:04.860 - 00:44:19.040

Well The Thresher respects the student association but The Thresher also reports to the student association. So there's gonna be some interesting interesting work here.

00:44:19.040 - 00:44:33.250

The Thresher is against it. And even though they relay I think somewhat positively the results of student of say, association report

00:44:33.250 - 00:44:51.040

in support of the minority blanket tax saying that it's an example of affirmative action and they're using affirmative action in a sense I believe that it is not yet weighted

00:44:51.040 - 00:45:00.560

down with some of the connotations that the the term affirmative action is gonna have later. You wouldn't use affirmative action in the way they're using it in the 80s

00:45:00.560 - 00:45:10.760

I think in The Thresher to make a positive argument but they say it's a pretty good example of affirmative action. But the essay is also making the argument

00:45:10.760 - 00:45:25.200

that this is for that this blanket taxes really for the enhancement of the White middle-class majority at the university. So that they make an educational argument that this benefits

00:45:25.200 - 00:45:40.820

that this is really for the larger population. So we have an example here of what maybe professor Derrick Bell would call interests convergence, right?

00:45:40.820 - 00:45:55.430

That there's this convergence of a wide interests at the university with minority interests. But as we move on, when they go to, to say, why they're why they're against it

00:45:55.430 - 00:46:07.090

they begin to use this language of a special this would create The Thresher argument, the special protected class on campus that would wouldn't report through

00:46:07.090 - 00:46:17.820

the proper channels unlike. And this is where the thresher situation comes in. The Thresher has to justify its budget to the essay. And so one of the things that curious about,

00:46:17.820 - 00:46:26.750

well will these minority groups have to justify what they're spending. And then later did I say I was talking for three minutes, just give me

00:46:26.750 - 00:46:43.820

give me one more minute and I want to shut it down. And this idea about special interest is articulated I think more fully, but also with a little more bite in a letter to the editor that accompanies this.

00:46:43.820 - 00:46:56.730

And I think this especially speaks to the larger environment that black students building community in the seventies have to navigate. So again, it sets out the black student initiative

00:46:58.470 - 00:47:11.760

on campus as a special interest attack supporting some groups over others would be totally unfair says the writer of one letter to the editor. It would in fact, set a dangerous precedent

00:47:11.760 - 00:47:27.150

of the required support for special interest groups. So interesting to contemplate. But what happens toward the end is we see a move toward a characterizing

00:47:27.150 - 00:47:45.460

Black student community work on campus in a somewhat, I think could be read as a somewhat unflattering way. So the writer then begins to argue that building community

00:47:47.660 - 00:48:01.160

on campus does cost money. And particularly for minority groups, he sees that it would be difficult, but what's required under these circumstances is not taxation of this way

00:48:01.160 - 00:48:12.300

but it, but it's hard work. If folks worked harder, if students in the Black Student Union just were more committed to getting the job done,

00:48:12.300 - 00:48:24.870

they could raise this money easily and not depend upon, you know, putting their hands in the pockets of the larger community at Rice. Preying On the guilty conscience of the Whites

00:48:24.870 - 00:48:37.170

Yes, that's where it gets really interesting in that last paragraph. A person or group must give something before it can receive something in return.

00:48:37.170 - 00:48:47.610

And this case what is required is dedication from the members of the groups, dedication to worthwhile cause, the answer to these groups problems does not lie

00:48:47.610 - 00:48:58.370

in preying on the guilty consciousness of Whites or in simply having the needed funds handed over the answer lies in dedication. If the support is worth getting,

00:48:58.370 - 00:49:12.900

it is worth working for. So we get the beginning of a kind of tapping into I won't say what it's kind of tapping into but we see this quite, I will say we see it quite

00:49:12.900 - 00:49:31.950

fully come the 80s when we start talking about the or debate around wealth transfer programs and what aid to families with dependent children, food stamps, welfare, et cetera.

00:49:31.950 - 00:49:46.120

Well, that also kind of looks back to our discussion in the 60s about the work that a word like qualified was doing, you know, qualified students. And here there's a discussion of worthwhile causes.

00:49:46.120 - 00:50:00.000

If a support is worth getting it's worth working for. So between the lines, there seems to be an implication that some causes are less worthwhile from the perspective of the overall campus community.

00:50:00.000 - 00:50:13.240

It also strikes me, you know, reading that and reading the letter you shared from the BSU officers. I think that they talked in that letter about some of the efforts they had made to hold a film series

00:50:13.240 - 00:50:24.740

but with a little attendance or interest from the rest of the students. So the other side of that coin is to wonder, you know how much support were these efforts getting

00:50:24.740 - 00:50:35.260

from the rest of the campus community? You know, were they coming to the concert where Black Blood was playing and benefiting from that cultural experience or, you know

00:50:35.260 - 00:50:42.730

going to the dance or were they standing at arms length? It kind of raises some questions there. Well,and how do they, how do,

00:50:42.730 - 00:50:52.690

one of the questions that raises for me is how do Black students view this. and I call it a burden because they don't have time to, to find the right word

00:50:52.690 - 00:51:02.270

how to black students view this burden? Right? So even if they accept this argument that that's being made isn't an argument that is also applied

00:51:02.270 - 00:51:16.750

to other events on campus. So what happens if Ron delay is poorly participated in, by Black students on campus? Does that raise the question of whether it's worthwhile

00:51:16.750 - 00:51:31.030

and should continue what happens right? That, it's, I wonder I just wonder how they receive responses to that argument. Well, that's what we're wondering about.

00:51:31.030 - 00:51:40.040

I'm wondering what our audience has been wondering about. So I'm gonna look here in our, Q and A and if you have a question for us about about these documents that we've been discussing today

00:51:40.040 - 00:51:53.880

feel free to open the Q and A conversation bubbles at the bottom of the zoom window. And you can drop a question in for us. So it looks like one of the attendees was anticipating your

00:51:53.880 - 00:52:06.110

point about how these arguments foreshadow arguments about government welfare suggest that this can all be handled with charitable organizations you know, have a bake sale or something like that

00:52:06.110 - 00:52:17.530

rather than then, then tax the rest of the student body. The other questions are about the first document we discussed. And again, sort of echoes some

00:52:17.530 - 00:52:27.290

of the questions that we're still trying to figure out. You know one asked who wrote this particular Rice Thresher articles since it was an unsigned article, you know

00:52:27.290 - 00:52:38.340

that's another difference between the 1920 Thresher and the Threshers that you've been showing us is that it's possible to see who wrote these letters and who wrote these columns.

00:52:38.340 - 00:52:51.310

And that's not always clear in 1920, we can go back and see from the company layer from the masthead who was a part of the Thresher but we don't necessarily know who wrote any

00:52:51.310 - 00:53:04.810

particular article in that issue. But there's also a question of whether a high ranking administrator had organized the Confederate Day or written this article, or was it a student?

00:53:04.810 - 00:53:13.480

That's a good question. I don't know if administrators could place an article like that in The Thresher but that's an interesting question to consider too.

00:53:13.480 - 00:53:24.150

I mean, there was, there did seem to be a kind of badgering of students to make sure they used this holiday for the purpose, for which it was given. And it does raise the question of whether

00:53:24.150 - 00:53:35.340

whether an administrator wrote it. But I think then as now, you know, a student journalists I think we're very proud of their work in the student newspaper

00:53:35.340 - 00:53:46.880

and didn't want to seed real estate on the front page I'm sure to administrators. So my guess would be that it was written by a student but it is a good question worth asking.

00:53:48.460 - 00:54:03.860

We have a question about what, whether this celebration continues as, is it a one day celebration because of the veterans are in town? Or does it continue this Confederate Day?

00:54:03.860 - 00:54:13.190

Is it celebrated for other years at the Rice Institute? That's a good question. And one that, that warrants more research. I haven't seen evidence of it reappearing yet.

00:54:13.190 - 00:54:25.650

And so it does seem to be tied to this particular reunion week that was happening in Houston, but that doesn't mean that it was the only time that the Confederacy was invoked

00:54:25.650 - 00:54:41.410

you know, in The Thresher or in campus activities. So I think this particular formal holiday was a one-off but that doesn't mean that there was no discussion of the civil war or the memory

00:54:41.410 - 00:54:51.820

of the Confederacy and any other issues. In fact, this might get us off topic to another document, but earlier that same fall there had been an editorial in The Thresher

00:54:51.820 - 00:55:06.370

about the colors of Rice university, the blue and the gray and sort of reflecting on what that meant in the context of civil war memorization. And so this particular holiday does seem to stood alone

00:55:06.370 - 00:55:23.800

but there was, there are other sources that show that there was a discussion of Confederate memory at the Rice Institute in these years. Well, we've run up to a little past 1255, which is

00:55:24.400 - 00:55:31.240

in the zoom world. We'd like to give you about five minutes to run to your next zoom meeting But before we go.

00:55:31.240 - 00:55:43.310

But before you go, let us remind you to visit our website at taskforcedotrice.edu. You can find information about upcoming events that we have. We had a great webinar on Wednesday with Black alumni

00:55:43.310 - 00:55:55.600

who shared their experiences at Rice. And since that was the first of a two-part series on black at Rice, and the second one is coming up on October 22 and we'll feature current students talking

00:55:55.600 - 00:56:03.610

about the Black student experience at Rice. So we encourage you to find the details about that on our website. You can also find videos of our past webinars events

00:56:03.610 - 00:56:17.360

and soon, hopefully very soon, you'll be able to find podcast recordings of our past Doc Talks as well. Thank you for spending time with us today Well and tell them don't now do not forget what

00:56:17.360 - 00:56:26.330

you told them. Don't forget what Dr. McDonald had told you earlier about next week, next week is not to be missed. Don't miss it.

00:56:26.330 - 00:56:32.560

We've got students coming. Yeah. I thought you were gonna say don't forget to remind them. Don't drive like my co-chair.

00:56:32.560 - 00:56:41.330

Oh, I forgot. No don't drive like my co chair. We would need, we would need a better ending. We'll work on that

00:56:41.330 - 00:56:49.440

We'll work on that in the meantime I hope you all have a great weekend and we'll see you hopefully next Friday at our next Doc Talk.

00:56:49.440 - 00:56:50.810

It's gonna be fabulous.