00:00:52.840 - 00:01:07.850

I guess we can give people a few more minutes to- Yeah. Come in. Hope everyone is having a good Friday. We look to have made it to the end of the week.

00:01:29.460 - 00:01:38.930

I feel like lighting has changed a little. I like it, but I feel like it's changed. Yeah, it's richer. I've got the windows open, is that,

00:01:38.930 - 00:01:52.500

or the blinds open, maybe that's... I need all the help I can get when it comes to lighting, see. Okay, well,

00:01:59.260 - 00:02:11.180

are you ready to get started? I'm ready. Let's go. Well, welcome, everyone for our third Doc Talk. We're so glad to have you joining us here today.

00:02:11.180 - 00:02:20.740

This is the third in a series of events that we'll be doing throughout the fall as the co-chairs of the taskforce on slavery, segregation, and racial injustice.

00:02:20.740 - 00:02:30.380

The purpose of these Friday Doc Talks is to share with you some of the research that the task force is doing and talk about some specific documents,

00:02:30.380 - 00:02:41.670

historical documents that researchers with the task force have turned up, and to think about them live on camera and show maybe a little bit how historians

00:02:41.670 - 00:02:50.860

process historical documents and think about them what sort of questions they help us answer, what questions they raise. And as you'll see, a lot of times the sources

00:02:50.860 - 00:03:01.410

that we find raised more questions than they immediately answer for us. And so part of what we're doing on these Doc Talks is, I guess, modeling a kind of informed befuddlement

00:03:01.410 - 00:03:13.660

as we wrestle with these documents and see what we can make of them. So we're so glad that you're joining us to talk about them. Another purpose of this, Dr. Byrd,

00:03:13.660 - 00:03:26.920

is when we go back into the sources and the documents, one of the things that enables us to see is the deep historical roots. A lot of the problems of racial injustice

00:03:26.920 - 00:03:44.920

that our society is still wrestling with today and what a week to be done about systemic racism in the United States and in our own local communities. So the last couple of days were a little,

00:03:44.920 - 00:03:58.100

right a little slower for me to move around to wake up and ponder. I was late getting started today because I just got stuck on the internet

00:03:58.100 - 00:04:20.680

trying to educate myself on search warrants and the times in which they can be served for the most part and was just initially surprised, but then not surprised that there are actually hours

00:04:20.680 - 00:04:42.170

related to doing reasonable search and seizure, but in our country here recently, what's reasonable in terms of reasonable hours in the cases of searching or declaring to be searching

00:04:42.170 - 00:04:59.870

for controlled substances, those rules don't actually apply. And so those warrants can be served at any time and that just got me thinking just what would I do in the places that I've lived and still lived

00:04:59.870 - 00:05:17.520

if someone knocked on my door at 12:30 in the morning and said they were the police, right? How would I respond here as a citizen in Texas, in Houston, Texas with my family?

00:05:17.670 - 00:05:31.500

Might be doubtful if they really are the police if they're knocking at 12:30. Yeah, I would, that would be me, I would be suspicious, but I've maybe, I'll just say that would be me,

00:05:31.500 - 00:05:48.450

I would be suspicious. But it's the ways in which reasonableness is been defined recently, has been structured in such a way that there are certain types of warrants

00:05:48.450 - 00:05:59.910

around controlled substances that just raised questions for me about how that came about and who it affects, who it affects most.

00:05:59.910 - 00:06:18.540

And it's great to be at a great university because we actually have work going on in this area and speakers who are coming through, and one actually taking place this afternoon

00:06:20.020 - 00:06:37.410

that Professor Couti has organized a panel discussion called "Which Lives Matter: Race And Policing in France and Beyond." Then if people go to the Center for African

00:06:37.410 - 00:06:47.410

and African American Studies website, they can find a link to that event. And I'm also happy that Paul Butler is going to be here in November.

00:06:48.630 - 00:07:03.790

Also speaking, Paul Butler is the author of several books on criminal justice reform. So these are conversations that are happening and need to be happening all across the country.

00:07:03.790 - 00:07:15.150

I am delighted to be at Rice where they're also happening in a deep and sustained way. I'm looking forward to both of those events and hope that members of our audience

00:07:15.150 - 00:07:30.500

can also attend to this afternoon and later in the semester. So today, we wanna talk about a couple of documents from a longer past, from the 19th century and the 20th century.

00:07:30.500 - 00:07:42.450

We have two letters to presidents today, different kinds of presidents and different kind of letters. Should I get started with the documents that I brought? Yes. So one of the questions

00:07:42.450 - 00:07:56.820

that has interested me since I started to learn about William Marsh Rice is about what he was up to during the Civil War years. We know that in 1863, William Marsh Rice left Houston

00:07:56.820 - 00:08:09.740

where he had been living since he moved here in in 1838. And he went to Northern Mexico to Madame Morris and Monterrey and also to Havana, Cuba. And in the latter years of the war,

00:08:09.740 - 00:08:23.290

we know that he was trading in those places for cotton, he was selling cotton on commission, he was bringing in goods that had been blockaded from the Confederacy by the Union Navy,

00:08:23.290 - 00:08:36.610

and selling them into Texas in 1864 and 1865. So that's known that he was there in Mexico and he was up to those things. But one question that it's always raised

00:08:36.610 - 00:08:50.790

for biographers of Rice is, what does that tell us about his political loyalties? Did he leave Houston because in some way, he disagreed with what the Confederacy was doing?

00:08:50.790 - 00:09:00.250

Andrew Forest Muir, who we've talked about before on these Doc Talks, was a historian here at Rice, who wrote some of the early biographies of William Marsh Rice.

00:09:00.250 - 00:09:13.800

And he claims that, he claims, (clears throat) excuse me, that William Marsh Rice was a unionist. If you look up the entry in the Texas, the Handbook of Texas History that Muir wrote,

00:09:13.800 - 00:09:26.670

that's the word he uses to describe William Marsh Rice that he he didn't side with the Confederacy. And of course, we know that there were Texans who raised questions about secession.

00:09:26.670 - 00:09:42.140

One of the most famous ones is the governor of Texas in 1860, Sam Houston, who opposed secession and tried to urge those who are calling for secession to calm down

00:09:42.140 - 00:09:54.330

and not take precipitous steps to leave the union. So it's conceivable that someone like William Marsh Rice could fall in that category. But I've always been a little curious

00:09:54.330 - 00:10:04.950

about the evidence on which those claims are based because I've seen that said multiple times that Rice was a unionist or that he didn't support secession

00:10:04.950 - 00:10:17.930

but hadn't really found a lot of documentary sources given that he was in Mexico for part of the war, it's difficult to track what he was doing. And then, very recently, I think it was last week,

00:10:17.930 - 00:10:34.100

one of the researchers who's been working with us in the Woodson Research Center on the task force found a document that I'd like to share with you today. This is what people came for, the document.

00:10:34.100 - 00:10:42.850

Documents, that's why it's a Doc Talk. Well, yeah. This is a document that doesn't exist in the Woodson Research Center.

00:10:42.850 - 00:10:55.180

It was found on a website called Fold3. So anybody who has access to the Fold3 website can certainly look at this. It's connected to ancestry.com,

00:10:55.180 - 00:11:05.350

so a lot of people use these sorts of documents to do family history. But what's great about Fold3 is it includes digitized versions of records

00:11:05.350 - 00:11:17.400

that live at the National Archives in Washington, DC, and particularly records that have to do with military history. So you can find records of if your ancestor

00:11:17.400 - 00:11:29.780

fought in the Civil War, you might be able to find something about them mustering in, you might be able to find where they fought. You can also find things like pension applications

00:11:29.780 - 00:11:44.290

that were made by widows of Union soldiers to Washington, DC to be paid after the death of the soldier in their family. So there's a lot of sources on here. And the document that we found last week

00:11:44.290 - 00:12:02.330

comes from a collection of records that are amnesty and pardon applications being sent to the president of the United States in 1865, who, after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in April

00:12:02.330 - 00:12:14.270

was Andrew Johnson. Andrew Johnson became the president. And so what you have here on the screen is an amnesty oath. And I've looked at this a lot myself, Dr. Byrd,

00:12:14.270 - 00:12:23.510

but when you see it, what do you notice that you would want to share with our audience who's listening in? Well, it's got some what looks

00:12:23.510 - 00:12:42.940

to be some pre-printed aspects to it. It's got a large headline amnesty oath, and there's a line in which the folks who are giving an amnesty oath

00:12:42.940 - 00:13:01.210

get to fill in their particular details about who they are and where they're from in this case. Sorry. Sorry, in this case, (laughs) what we have is an amnesty oath

00:13:01.210 - 00:13:13.950

being signed by none other than William Marsh Rice. And so it says, "I, William M. Rice, citizen of Harris County, do solemnly swear in the presence of Almighty God,

00:13:13.950 - 00:13:24.610

that I will hereafter faithfully defend the Constitution of the United States and the union of States thereunder and that I will in like manner, abide by and support

00:13:24.610 - 00:13:34.540

all laws and proclamations which have been made during the existing rebellion with reference to the emancipation of slaves, so help me God."

00:13:34.540 - 00:13:47.700

And then it has, after that sort of pre-printed part, William Marsh Rice's signature. And then underneath that, there's a certification signed by the Chief Justice of Harris County,

00:13:47.700 - 00:14:02.880

noting that he observed William Marsh Rice sign this amnesty oath on the 23rd day of August, 1865. So what interested me immediately given the questions that we were raising

00:14:02.880 - 00:14:17.930

about the loyalties of William Marsh Rice is here is Rice applying for amnesty, pardon from the United States government and swearing that he will hereafter faithfully defend

00:14:17.930 - 00:14:28.530

the Constitution of the United States. And that immediately raises the question of, what about heretofore? Does this somehow imply that William Marsh Rice

00:14:28.530 - 00:14:41.040

had supported the rebellion, and now is requesting amnesty? But I also knew when I saw this that before we rush to that conclusion, we have to think a little bit about

00:14:41.040 - 00:14:54.390

where these amnesty oaths came from. As you noted, these are pre-printed documents and that's because a lot of people were taking these amnesty oaths in 1865

00:14:54.390 - 00:15:10.880

largely because Andrew Johnson in May of that year had announced that he would extend a general amnesty and pardon to anyone who was a participant in the rebellion as long as they would swear an oath of loyalty

00:15:10.880 - 00:15:24.940

to the government, and particularly agree to abide by the abolition of slavery. And this made a lot of Radical Republicans and their allies, I say radical, I mean, maybe we wouldn't really consider

00:15:24.940 - 00:15:37.450

that very radical but some people at the time said that they were Radical Republicans who believed that the rebellion should not be so easily forgiven. And they were worried that Andrew Johnson

00:15:37.450 - 00:15:51.460

was being far too lenient with the Confederacy by simply just allowing anyone to sign one of these oaths, saying, "I promise I'll abide by the Constitution of the United States from here on out,"

00:15:51.460 - 00:16:03.400

and then they're fine, no prosecutions, no being hauled before a court, no confiscation of property beyond the loss of the people that they had enslaved.

00:16:03.400 - 00:16:14.670

And so there are a lot of Republicans who thought Johnson was being way too conciliatory to the Confederacy. It seems, if you, and this is, I guess,

00:16:14.670 - 00:16:33.220

part of the question that we're raising is trying to get at what the meaning of this is, right? So if I was a business person in Harris County postwar, what would be the reason I wouldn't sign an amnesty

00:16:33.220 - 00:16:48.920

or almost whatever it said? That's part of why I want to get back to my to my life. How closely would I read this? And would I really be struggling over signing?

00:16:48.920 - 00:17:02.490

I think you're right in it. And I think many people signed them just to basically on CYA policy and make sure that their property would be protected,

00:17:02.490 - 00:17:12.290

that there wouldn't be any question raised about their political loyalties. And Rice, this case, there was another reason though why he would have gone through this process.

00:17:12.290 - 00:17:27.350

And that's because even though Johnson did extend this general amnesty to most of the people who had participated in the rebellion, he also listed, I think it was about 14 categories of people

00:17:28.730 - 00:17:42.680

that were accepted from that general amnesty. And these people would have had to apply personally to the president for an individual pardon. And so an example of this might have been anyone

00:17:42.680 - 00:17:53.860

who held a confederate office during the war, leading officials in the Confederate Army, they couldn't just sign this if, they had to actually apply for pardon.

00:17:53.860 - 00:18:06.720

And one of the categories also included anyone in the states of the rebellion who owned taxable property in excess of $20,000. And one of the reasons for that

00:18:06.720 - 00:18:21.080

is that Johnson's own theory of the rebellion was that many people in the Confederate States he thought had been misled by rich, elite leaders. And so he saw himself as the defender

00:18:21.080 - 00:18:32.910

of the common White man in the south. And he wanted to take it to the wealthier elites in the states of the Confederacy. And so we included that clause.

00:18:32.910 - 00:18:43.830

He even made some gestures in the spring of 1865, made some people think that he was going to confiscate property and even divide up large plantations,

00:18:43.830 - 00:18:55.770

and give those away to small farmers. That didn't end up happening. But in August of 1865, William Marsh Rice might not have known that.

00:18:55.770 - 00:19:10.720

And he may have been concerned that if he didn't do this, his property might be targeted. And sure enough, if we turn the page here on this document, what we find is that behind this amnesty oath,

00:19:10.720 - 00:19:23.560

there's a letter written in William Marsh Rice's own hand directly to His Excellency, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States of America. And in this letter, Rice spells out why he's writing.

00:19:23.560 - 00:19:38.190

He says, "I'm 49 years of age. I'm a native of Massachusetts. I came to Texas in 1838. I've been a citizen of Houston down to the fall of 1863 when I left for Mexico."

00:19:38.190 - 00:19:50.790

And he explains later on in the letter that he's writing because he falls under the $20,000 threshold. And a lot of the people, as you go through this collection

00:19:50.790 - 00:20:02.550

and read people like Rice who were applying for pardons, they always were at great pains to say, "Yes, I own $20,000 but not a penny more." They didn't wanna show how much they actually owned

00:20:02.550 - 00:20:18.240

because they were worried that Johnson might confiscate or break up these large property people in the south. What interested me about this letter, though, were two phrases in particular.

00:20:18.240 - 00:20:28.050

One of them is that Rice says, "I left for Mexico," quote, "to avoid the oppressive tyranny of the Confederate government."

00:20:28.990 - 00:20:44.490

And then on the second page of this letter, Rice says that he had acquired before the war, before the rebellion considerable property consisting of real estate, merchandise,

00:20:44.490 - 00:21:03.800

bills received, lands, slaves in amount far exceeding $20,000. When I saw that line, last line, in particular, I was stunned to see that, I'm not surprised to see that,

00:21:03.800 - 00:21:17.440

but stunned because we don't have a lot of documents where Rice himself is commenting directly on his views of slavery, and how he thought about the people that he enslaved.

00:21:17.440 - 00:21:27.390

And here we have, in his own hand, his acknowledgment that slaves were a part of the considerable property that he had amassed before the war,

00:21:27.390 - 00:21:41.400

and that he thought of those people in the same category as real estate, merchandise, bills receivable lands, part of the assets that he had amassed in amounts far exceeding $20,000.

00:21:41.400 - 00:21:55.830

So I think this is a very significant document to found to see Rice in his own words, acknowledging the economic significance of enslaved people in antebellum Texas.

00:21:56.860 - 00:22:12.160

So I know one of the things we do here is we ask questions and we don't necessarily hold each other to answering them in in the moment. But one of the questions that I have

00:22:12.160 - 00:22:30.840

about this letter stems from the form preceding it. And that is, I'm curious if in the community of merchants and business folks in which comprised Rice's circle

00:22:30.840 - 00:22:51.020

if whether there's a form to this kind of thing, if there are things that one says and where and how Rice's letter follows that form? And where and how it departs from that,

00:22:51.020 - 00:23:04.940

departs from that form? That's a great question 'cause I think there were lawyers who were helping wealthy people compose these letters. You wanted your pardon to be successful

00:23:04.940 - 00:23:15.900

especially if you own more than $20,000. And so there would have certainly been talking amongst friends and business partners about sharing ideas about the best way

00:23:15.900 - 00:23:26.470

to ensure that this would be successfully received. Since I have it here in this collection, if you go to the very next document, there's a similar letter

00:23:26.470 - 00:23:37.490

that was submitted by AS Richardson, an application for pardon. And he's interesting because he was a lawyer in Houston, part of Rice's circle,

00:23:37.490 - 00:23:51.230

and was also one of the first members of the board that chartered the Rice Institute. So when William Marsh Rice in the 1880s and 1890s was planning to start his institute,

00:23:51.230 - 00:24:02.280

Richardson was a member of that board. He died before Rice, the institute ever opened its doors. And so he's in some ways, a footnote in the history of the institute.

00:24:02.280 - 00:24:14.820

But that's one petition we could look at to compare, was Rice saying things that other people weren't saying? Or were there things that other people were saying that he wasn't saying?

00:24:14.820 - 00:24:25.850

I think in some of these documents, you find people going on a greater length to justify their support for the Confederacy? I don't think you find a lot of people

00:24:25.850 - 00:24:39.620

saying that they left Houston to go to Mexico to avoid the oppressive tyranny of the Confederate government, that stuck out to me as well. But I have a lot of questions about that phrase

00:24:39.620 - 00:24:51.590

when I look at it because there's multiple ways that we could interpret even that seemingly very clear statement about opposition to the Confederacy.

00:24:51.590 - 00:25:06.560

One thing we could say is that we have to consider the nature of this source that again, if Rice is trying to win a pardon, it would behoove him to say some really critical things

00:25:06.560 - 00:25:20.650

about the Confederacy to prove his loyalty, to prove his amnesty appeal. And we know from other parts of the letter that he bent some facts when it suited that purpose.

00:25:20.650 - 00:25:31.940

He says later in the letter that, "Although my means and commercial facilities were ample for blockade running, I never engaged in it either directly or indirectly,"

00:25:35.410 - 00:25:44.350

which is not true. (laughs) We have other evidence that shows he definitely was in Mexico selling goods around the blockade.

00:25:44.350 - 00:26:00.720

So we could say, is the line about the oppressive tyranny of the Confederate government in that same vein? Is it an effort to appeal to Johnson? Another possibility is that maybe Muir was right,

00:26:00.720 - 00:26:18.740

maybe he was a very reluctant resident of the Confederacy, and maybe he did have some unionists sentiments, it raises the question for me if that were the case why he remained in Houston until 1863.

00:26:18.740 - 00:26:33.420

He didn't flee the oppressive tyranny of (indistinct) before then, even though he also had the means and commercial facilities to do that if he had wanted to return to his native Massachusetts.

00:26:34.530 - 00:26:46.900

There's a third possibility that's intriguing as well, if you look at some of the other pardoned documents especially by other merchants like Rice who went to Mexico during this period,

00:26:46.900 - 00:26:57.840

a lot of them talked about a controversy that was going on in Texas in the fall of 1863. In other words, at the very moment that Rice left for Mexico when there were tensions

00:26:57.840 - 00:27:11.200

between the Confederate government in Richmond and the state government in Texas and a lot of the controversies revolved around the efforts of the Confederate government,

00:27:11.310 - 00:27:24.900

the Confederate state to try to seize more and more of the property of residents in Texas to help in the war effort. So one of the ways they did that was trying to,

00:27:24.900 - 00:27:37.040

for example, impress the labor of enslaved people and force enslaved people to work on roads and railroads and fortifications and to do that without paying

00:27:37.040 - 00:27:51.890

the owners of those enslaved people any wages for their work. And that upset a lot of slaveholders in Texas in 1863 who believed that the law gave them untrammeled authority

00:27:51.890 - 00:28:04.020

over the people that they enslaved. And they also viewed those people as assets, as Rice does in this letter as well. So they didn't want to risk the loss of those assets

00:28:04.020 - 00:28:17.090

working far away on on military fortifications. So that was one part of the conflict. Another part of the conflict was cotton because the Confederacy had a plan to buy cotton

00:28:18.070 - 00:28:28.140

and then sell it around the blockade to fill the coffers of the Confederacy. But they wanted Texas planters to accept Confederate currency for their cotton.

00:28:28.140 - 00:28:39.300

And by this point in the war in 1863, Confederate currency wasn't worth a whole lot. And so a lot of planters saw that was a raw deal. And they appealed to the state government

00:28:39.300 - 00:28:51.370

and the governor in Austin developed a different plan where he would buy cotton directly from planters in Texas. And he, instead of giving them Confederate currency, would give them other kinds of currency,

00:28:51.370 - 00:29:01.310

land warrants in Texas or state bonds that were seen as more secure. And there was a lot of conflict in 1863 about that plan as well

00:29:01.310 - 00:29:10.930

because he was trying to buy cotton and take it to Mexico. The Confederacy was trying to buy cotton and take it to Mexico and somewhere, William Marsh Rice is in the middle of all that

00:29:10.930 - 00:29:22.020

helping to sell that cotton in Mexico. So a more complicated possibility is when he says, "I left to avoid the oppressive tyranny of the Confederate government."

00:29:22.020 - 00:29:30.890

One question I have is, is he referring to these new policies that were being rolled out in 1863 by the Confederate government

00:29:30.890 - 00:29:43.180

to invade the property rights as it were of people like himself and the people who were his clients, the cotton planters around Houston with whom he did a lot of business,

00:29:43.180 - 00:29:55.930

including his own brother, Frederick A. Rice? So I think there's a lot that we still have to examine before we conclude how do we interpret this phrase 'cause there's several different possibilities.

00:29:55.930 - 00:30:09.460

I think what we can say for certain is that this is a very significant find for our task force and to see Rice again talking about the people that he enslaved as part of the wealth

00:30:09.460 - 00:30:29.640

that he amassed before the Civil War indicates a lot about how he viewed slavery and what his loyalties were in this particular period. I can't hear you, Dr. Byrd.

00:30:29.640 - 00:30:49.040

Because I'm not, forgot to push the button, especially on the lookout for additional ways to contextualize these two documents and also getting a firmer grasp on his loyalty or loyalties

00:30:51.470 - 00:31:08.400

as it were an essay where they were at any moment in time. Right, right, another question would be to try to figure out where he stood during the secession crisis in 1861

00:31:08.400 - 00:31:16.360

because another thing that interested me, I don't know if I'm allowed to share two docs. Is that is that within the Doc Talk rules? Can I-

00:31:16.360 - 00:31:30.880

This is only the third Doc Talk so we're working on the rules, yeah. Well, as I was puzzling over this last night, I also discovered a newspaper article from 1861

00:31:31.740 - 00:31:43.500

that I can just briefly show you that detailed a mass meeting of Harris County residents in 1861 that was calling on governor Sam Houston,

00:31:43.500 - 00:31:55.710

who we discussed earlier, to be more aggressive in convening the state legislature and maybe taking the step of seceding from the union and joining other states

00:31:55.710 - 00:32:10.590

that were jumping ship after Abraham Lincoln's election in November of 1860. And so, in December of 1860, this mass meeting was held to urge a convention be held in Austin

00:32:10.590 - 00:32:22.190

since Houston wasn't gonna call the state legislature into session to discuss about secession, and possibly recommend secession. And what was interesting about this article

00:32:22.190 - 00:32:40.620

is that William Marsh Rice was on a committee of 21 people who were asked to write up some resolutions that summarize the sentiment of this large mass meeting. And I knew that Rice was part of these meetings.

00:32:40.620 - 00:32:53.410

Muir mentions that in his biography, but what really struck me as I read this document is the resolutions don't really mince words about the threat that Abraham Lincoln's election posed

00:32:53.410 - 00:33:05.240

to property, to social institutions in the south. And in fact, throughout the resolutions, they talk about how danger is imminent, our social institutions are doomed to ultimately-

00:33:05.240 - 00:33:14.170

Our social institutions. Our social institutions, our peculiar institution- Yeah, are doomed. Doomed to destruction under the domination

00:33:14.170 - 00:33:29.860

of "Black Republicanism." And that's an epithet that many southerners at the time, White Southerners lobbed at the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln believing that their policies

00:33:29.860 - 00:33:44.090

on race and on slavery were inimical to slavery and the "Southern way of life." And so to see Rice being part of a committee that drafted these resolutions is also interesting.

00:33:44.090 - 00:33:59.650

You and I know, I'm sure from long experience in faculty life that drafting anything with a committee can be complicated. And you worked together with the other people

00:33:59.650 - 00:34:08.480

on the committee to come up with a draft that everyone can agree to. And you can see a little bit of that in this article because there's, there's statements

00:34:08.480 - 00:34:17.890

like that about the domination of Black Republicanism. But then there's also more sort of cautious statements about how we wanna work in harmony with the state authorities.

00:34:17.890 - 00:34:29.730

We don't wanna do anything to rash, so we really hope the governor will not make this necessary. But if you want, so it's still a little unclear where was Rice in the mix

00:34:29.730 - 00:34:41.490

as these resolutions were drafted? Is he the one urging a more cautious course? Or is he the one railing about Black Republicans? So, again, I think this document

00:34:41.490 - 00:34:51.420

together with the other one, we start to build a bigger picture, but we need to do more work to contextualize it and see if we can state more accurately

00:34:51.420 - 00:35:01.900

what his political views were. I think what's clear is to say just simply an outright, he was a unionist, is something that we're gonna have to think about revising

00:35:01.900 - 00:35:17.000

as a task force and seeing if we can come up with a more specific and nuanced account. These two documents call for that, right? They seem to call for a little more subtlety.

00:35:19.290 - 00:35:30.260

Well, I'm interested to zoom ahead 100 years in the future from these documents. We had one letter to a president. But you also, I think today wanted

00:35:30.260 - 00:35:43.530

to bring a document in that vein. Yeah, so I've got a letter to a president. Get your cameras out and take a picture of that. That's the panel that's coming up later today

00:35:43.530 - 00:35:57.490

that we spoke about. But so I have a letter from 1965, and the writer is Raymond L. Johnson who's the first African American student

00:35:57.490 - 00:36:10.370

to enroll at the university and the first African, well, I won't I won't go any further than that, the first African American student to enroll at the university and he's writing a president,

00:36:10.370 - 00:36:28.570

in this case, is President Kenneth Pitzer, he's writing in the spring of 1965. The materiality of the letter is interesting that it's we don't use typewriters now,

00:36:28.570 - 00:36:42.420

but we would call this font Courier. It's been rendered quite professionally and attend to 12-point Courier font. You may not be able to see it on your screens

00:36:42.420 - 00:36:58.780

depending on the resolution that you have, but it's written on a find paper that's watermarked, actually watermarked paper so likely a linen or a cotton paper.

00:36:58.780 - 00:37:12.160

Your best paper, this would have been like- At least now, right? Right, this is what we put resumes on now. It's two pages long. It's numbered.

00:37:12.160 - 00:37:34.380

And it's this entering graduate student, right? Writing to the president of his university, and it's speaking to a controversy that Raymond Johnson sees developing at the end of the,

00:37:35.600 - 00:37:49.060

as we're moving toward the end of the alumni suit against Rice's desegregation. And Johnson is raising two main points that I wanna focus on.

00:37:49.060 - 00:38:06.070

He raises more, focus on two main points. One, he's got some questions about the energy with which the university is moving into desegregation and is raising a question about whether they want

00:38:06.070 - 00:38:23.080

to keep Rice out of the news and to keep this transformative moment, kind of tamp down in the public mind, and just move rather quickly into this new existence.

00:38:25.250 - 00:38:42.390

And so which is, I wanna say, it's quite a remarkable thing for a graduate student to raise with the president of the university, right? So he's Dr. Johnson, not yet Dr. Johnson,

00:38:42.390 - 00:38:51.590

but I'll call him Dr. Johnson 'cause that's what I typically call him. Dr. Johnson is raising questions about what he sees as some decisions.

00:38:51.590 - 00:39:05.790

The university has made some policy, perhaps some policy decisions about how to represent this change in the public. And he's concerned because he's heard on one hand,

00:39:05.790 - 00:39:20.820

that now that things are dying down with the suit. It's fine to publicize his place at the university and the coming of additional African American students to the university, he's heard that.

00:39:20.820 - 00:39:37.020

But at the same time, he's heard from officials on campus things that look to be rather about 180 degrees, opposite of that that things have quieted down, but we still, we don't wanna raise too much of a ruckus.

00:39:37.020 - 00:39:51.220

Before this, the argument that Johnson was privy to is that they didn't wanna raise a ruckus about it because the suit was in process so they weren't clear on the eventual disposition of the suit.

00:39:51.220 - 00:40:04.900

But once the university feels like they're in a better place with it, then Johnson is questioning why the caution. Becomes a little clear that the argument

00:40:04.900 - 00:40:18.050

that he's making here once Pitzer replies is that it has to do with whether material in Johnson's presence and articles about him at Rice will appear in the chronicle or the post

00:40:18.050 - 00:40:34.730

or to what degree the Rice thresher will also speak to it. And Johnson is operating under information that the administration, I'm gonna use this term now, this can be a useful term that the administration

00:40:34.730 - 00:40:49.360

is trying to keep this a little quiet. Well, and it's a term he uses. He talks about the administration. I'm struck on the second page too by how he seems to turn

00:40:50.320 - 00:40:59.950

to what is the administration's plan going to be with respect to undergraduate students as they enroll? Well, in this, sorry. Yeah, go ahead.

00:40:59.950 - 00:41:13.040

And this is the second issue, right? And I think it speaks to an issue that is prominent at the time in American life and even grows to greater prominence

00:41:13.040 - 00:41:26.250

is how are we to move? What are the different theories of what happens after desegregation, right? Does desegregation entail simply the drawing down

00:41:26.770 - 00:41:43.120

of the most obvious barriers, right? The university used to not admit Black students and now we're going to admit them. So is that the beginning of the end of the whole thing?

00:41:43.870 - 00:41:57.730

Or is it simply the beginning? And Johnson is raising the question that historians and social scientists would or some would see later on is,

00:41:57.730 - 00:42:11.380

what's the difference between desegregation and integration or injustice and justice, right, nowadays? Diversity and inclusion. Right, that's where I was headed now, right?

00:42:11.380 - 00:42:22.580

Nowadays, we would use the term, what does it mean now to create an inclusive and equitable place on campus? And that's what he's raising.

00:42:22.580 - 00:42:36.690

And he's concerned because some of the language that he's been privy to is that when people are announcing in public life that Rice is desegregated, they're also announcing that tuition is on its way, right?

00:42:36.690 - 00:42:54.560

And so he reads this as the raising of another barrier and is questioning whether the university is gonna respond strongly to this tuition question and make clear that students in need,

00:42:54.560 - 00:43:08.530

African American students in need, will not find tuition a barrier. And he points out really straightforwardly that few Negro students, I've got, I'm sorry,

00:43:08.530 - 00:43:22.140

this is the, once a day I run into a Zoom problem. I've got windows in front of the document. But few Negro students can afford $1,500 tuition. There is a need for information

00:43:22.140 - 00:43:40.770

about the tuition scholarships that will be made available. So I will drone on in a way that a professor will but it's- Well, and he talks, he also talks about the need for...

00:43:43.470 - 00:43:51.970

He says that there's gonna have to be more than just saying the barriers lower. Right. Actually want students to come because Rice has been segregated

00:43:51.970 - 00:44:05.370

for its entire lifespan, and so teachers in schools were African American students might be attending are gonna see Rice as a place that they want to come unless there's a concerted effort

00:44:05.370 - 00:44:12.500

to change that perception. I think that's really prescient as well for him to see that, as you said, just lowering the barrier doesn't-

00:44:12.500 - 00:44:22.140

Doesn't do it. Illusion, yeah. And I'm positive even though we haven't planned them out this far that we will have, in a Doc Talk and in the future,

00:44:22.140 - 00:44:41.590

we will speak to the ways that professors at the university begin to try and address this issue. I'll say two more things are, where is my clock? Yeah, I'll say I'll say two more things and,

00:44:41.590 - 00:44:54.310

maybe I say three 'cause we gotta get to Pitzer just quickly is that Johnson is navigating, he's also navigating an idea of what it means to come to college that we don't struggle with anymore, right?

00:44:54.310 - 00:45:04.720

So he understands that the university is gonna have to do outreach in order for the breaking of this barrier that have any meaning,

00:45:04.720 - 00:45:12.640

but he's living in a time and working in a university where the whole idea of outreach is actually something people don't do. Students.

00:45:12.640 - 00:45:25.500

Yeah, you don't recruit students. And he actually, he gives a nice nod to that before going on to address the ways that, okay, we won't be recruiting them,

00:45:25.500 - 00:45:43.920

but if we don't do these things, we'll fail. Two questions that I have about this wonderful letter, right, is that, well, you know what, I'll just do it quickly, or I think I will.

00:45:44.960 - 00:45:58.050

We'll see, Pitzer's letter, we'll look quickly at it just quickly, right? And the only reason I'm gonna do that is I just wanna compare the material sense of each slide,

00:45:58.050 - 00:46:08.510

and I want you just- We're doing foUr docs today. Yeah, but all I did was show those. (laughs) I just showed them in order to raise this point.

00:46:08.510 - 00:46:24.410

We may not get to go into Pitzer's answer with much depth, but I want to show how similar they are, right? And one of the reasons I want to show that is because I want to raise questions

00:46:24.410 - 00:46:44.000

about the origins of this document and the resources that it takes to correspond in 1965. And so I'm curious about the ways in which Dr. Johnson's letter represents,

00:46:44.000 - 00:46:58.790

or does it represent a community sentiment? And what community, and how is that, who comprises that community? How many folks read this draft, right?

00:46:58.790 - 00:47:13.500

And do folks contribute to it? I wanna know who types it. Who typed it, right? So CS typed it. Raymond, Dr. Johnson didn't type it, he wrote it.

00:47:13.500 - 00:47:31.570

But it looks, if I'm old enough just to remember what these abbreviations at the end of the letter indicate. So RLJ is the author, but CS was was the typist. I'm curious about who CS was.

00:47:34.610 - 00:47:46.550

And it was Pitzer's answer. I'm sorry, go ahead. Well, I mean, another question when you talk about the community response is I'm thinking about the additional work

00:47:46.550 - 00:48:00.460

in a way that Dr. Johnson was performing here as an incoming graduate student, how was his experience as a graduate student different given that he also felt this responsibility?

00:48:00.460 - 00:48:13.470

I guess, I think we can read that between the lines to address the administration, possibly even at risk to himself. Is it to raise these questions about undergraduate students?

00:48:13.470 - 00:48:24.740

He wasn't able to or at least chose not to, just go about his business working on his mathematics degree. He was engaged in this kind of work too,

00:48:24.740 - 00:48:38.240

and certainly, that's something that remains true at a university like Rice many years after this and up into the present day, there's more work that's happening for many students

00:48:38.240 - 00:48:53.130

than for other students because of these kinds of problems. Well, it's work, even in 1965, that the president of the university expects Johnson to undertake.

00:48:53.130 - 00:49:06.870

And so in Pitzer's response, he also indicates or he makes the argument that in the public realm where people are pairing desegregation with tuition,

00:49:06.870 - 00:49:21.330

Pitzer makes the argument that is often done either out of ignorance or to embarrass the university. And he enlists, right? So he's Kenneth Pitzer, the president of Rice University

00:49:22.430 - 00:49:37.280

that he's about to catapult or help catapult into a new level and enlist this graduate student in attending to what he what he calls this misinformation, and he hopes that he will work hard

00:49:37.280 - 00:49:49.290

to address it moving forward. Yeah, should we pause and see if there's any questions from the audience about these documents? I see a couple in our Q&A,

00:49:49.290 - 00:49:58.750

but if you have a question that you'd like us to address, you also can click on the Q&A bubbles at the bottom of your screen and type those in and we'll do our best

00:49:58.750 - 00:50:13.740

to address your questions either about this correspondence between Dr. Johnson and President Pitzer or about the first document we looked at. So, one of the questions that was asked is,

00:50:13.740 - 00:50:23.770

did all former slave owners have to sign amnesty oaths like the one that William Marsh Rice signed or only those who had taken up arms against the union initially?

00:50:24.740 - 00:50:36.000

It's a great question and it gets back to what the perspective of someone signing the oath might have been. You probably would have erred on the side of signing

00:50:36.000 - 00:50:52.540

even if you weren't 100% sure you had to, you would sign it, to make sure that you had had your citizenship restored, that legally your property wouldn't be jeopardized. And so we know that thousands and thousands

00:50:52.540 - 00:51:08.280

of these pardoned letters went to President Johnson and some of them were people who were very clearly had taken up arms against the union and had Confederate records of military service and others.

00:51:08.280 - 00:51:21.520

Like William Marsh Rice didn't have a record of taking up arms, but still sign of the oath anyway. Well, we also, I think, we're gonna change our settings.

00:51:21.520 - 00:51:33.010

I wanna get rid of these anonymous attendees. I need to know who these people are when they're providing excellent information. But we have an anonymous attendee

00:51:33.010 - 00:51:45.470

who suggests that he says, just a guess, his wife's name was Claudette. Could she be the typist? And thank you for that bit of information

00:51:45.470 - 00:51:58.910

that we'll now explore, but we're got to change the settings so we can go back to folks, I guess people could still lie, but we wanna find them. Another question that was raised

00:51:58.910 - 00:52:10.970

is about the term Black Republicanism that was used in the resolutions that William Marsh Rice helped to draft in December of 1860. And I don't know off the top of my head

00:52:10.970 - 00:52:21.440

when the first year that that phrase appeared would have been. The Republican Party itself was not that old in 1860 when Lincoln won the White House.

00:52:21.440 - 00:52:37.750

It had been founded only six years before in 1854. But in that time period too, a lot of Americans would have recognized the phrase Red Republicans from the revolutions of 1848

00:52:37.750 - 00:52:51.350

in Europe and Red Republicans were socialists as kind of the parallel to today, these would have been radical activists in Europe who were proponents of socialism.

00:52:51.350 - 00:53:04.100

And so it's likely that in the 1850s, part of what happened with the Republican Party in the United States is that their opponents tried to tar them with the same brush as Red Republicans

00:53:04.100 - 00:53:16.800

to suggest that they were radical revolutionaries who were trying to overturn social institutions as we saw Rice say in those resolutions, but instead of saying Red Republicans,

00:53:16.800 - 00:53:31.520

probably as a commentary on their positions on slavery and civil racial equality in northern states, they attached the term Black to the party and referred to them as as Black Republicans.

00:53:31.520 - 00:53:43.100

So it's an epithet that if you think about today in our own political climate, the kinds of terms that people throw around to attach to the parties that they don't like

00:53:43.100 - 00:53:53.160

or the people on the political spectrum that they disagree with, That would have been the origins of a phrase like Black Republicans in the Civil War era.

00:53:55.520 - 00:54:09.120

I enjoyed today, Prof. These documents are really fascinating. And I'm interested to learn more about Pitzer's response and Dr. Johnson's experience at Rice.

00:54:09.120 - 00:54:20.620

So I know we'll have more to talk about in future Doc Talks. And we hope that many of you who came today will be able to join us again. Next Friday, we do these every Friday at noon.

00:54:20.620 - 00:54:31.190

And next time, bring a friend, spread the word. Let people know that we are doing these talks and opening up a little bit what the task force has been up to,

00:54:31.190 - 00:54:41.020

and we encourage attendance and hope that you'll spread the word and that we'll see you next week. You can also find on taskforce.rice.edu

00:54:41.020 - 00:54:50.570

other information about the task force and ways to contact us if you have questions or additional feedback. Thanks, Dr. Byrd.

00:54:50.570 - 00:54:54.490

Thanks, Prof. See you next week. See you next time.