00:00:31.460 - 00:00:46.570

Good afternoon, Dr. Byrd. Good afternoon. I recognize that, that sky behind you, but I'm not sure I know that building. Yes, this is a, this is a building not on the Rice campus.

00:00:46.580 - 00:01:10.310

I am coming to you from the university that produces the largest number of African American students who complete medical school. Not go to medical school, complete medical school. So maybe that's a quiz for, for, for folks in the chat, but I am down the street a

00:01:10.310 - 00:01:24.340

little bit. You're at, this is a, this is a doc talks on the road. Yes, this is a doc talks on the road. And the last one of the semester, it would seem.

00:01:25.370 - 00:01:45.840

Last one of the semester, last one of the academic year, and last day of classes here at Rice. So there's a lot of summer energy on campus. But it's always good to be with you, and I'm looking forward to talking about our documents today. And of course, it's always great to have our audience with us.

00:01:45.840 - 00:02:07.500

Thanks for joining us, wherever you are. And my name is Caleb McDaniel, if you don't know, I'm one of the co-chairs, along with Dr. Alex Byrd, my co-host, of the Task Force on Slavery, Segregation, and Racial Injustice. And throughout this academic year, we've been meeting every Friday at noon

00:02:07.530 - 00:02:30.600

to talk about some of the documents that we've been turning up in our research. Part of the charge of the task force is to understand the history of the university with respect to slavery, segregation, and racial injustice, and figure out ways to disseminate that history and our findings, and so what we've been doing in these doc talks is giving

00:02:30.600 - 00:02:48.340

you a window into how historians work, how we locate documents, how we think about those documents, and we're glad that you're here with us. So, Dr. Byrd, since you seem to be a little bit untethered today, is that the right, the

00:02:48.340 - 00:03:00.240

right word? Outside. I'm wondering if maybe we should start with you. I know you don't love to go first, but I would hate for you to lose your battery or your signal and us miss your document.

00:03:00.630 - 00:03:29.280

I think this is a good day for me to go first, because I am definitely untethered, and I'm watching this battery and it was starting to, starting to, to frighten me a little. But hey, a shout out to all the IT people and computer scientists who figured out a way for me to be on Zoom without wireless just because I have a, a cell phone.

00:03:29.280 - 00:03:45.000

It's, it's amazing. So here I go. I thought, Dr. McDaniel, in addition to it being all the last things that you just mentioned, it is

00:03:45.000 - 00:04:19.530

also our last doc talk with our current university president, and our last doc talk with, with the president who, who gave us this job. And so what I thought I would do today is pull up a document that allows us to speak to changes in ways of talking about

00:04:19.530 - 00:04:42.900

diversity on campus, with particular attention to African American students. And so, from the recent past, I'm going to pull up an oldie but goodie from the "recent" past. And so I know you have read the Vision for the Second Century, that, that shorter

00:04:42.900 - 00:05:04.080

document from earlier in President Leebron's term, and I know that you have seen what too many people call the V2C2. And I say too many people call it that because we never got to the point where I felt like enough people knew what it actually meant for us to be calling it the V

00:05:04.560 - 00:05:20.850

2C2. But I'm going to pull up the V2C2, which is the Vision for the Second Century, Second Decade, right. Well, see, that's just it, it's not just two, if it was just two, it, it would make sense, but it's second decade.

00:05:20.940 - 00:05:34.380

And I want to, I'm going to start there, and there are, there are three or four things that I want to do today. Do you see, you see some work going on on that document? Okay, you can see that.

00:05:34.950 - 00:06:03.720

So this is around pages 12 to 14 or so in the V2C2, and it's the section called, "Expand Access, Diversity, and Inclusiveness." And there are a couple of points that I wanna linger over and ask a few questions. And don't worry, they won't be questions that we have to answer, they're just

00:06:03.720 - 00:06:29.190

questions that we'll ponder and then move from there. And folks, you can find this on the, on the Rice webpage if you, if you like. But I, the, I wanna start with an overarching question, a kind of historical question that longtime viewers of the doc talks will have a sense of, and I just wanna

00:06:29.280 - 00:06:57.450

turn us back to 1963-64, so with the admission of Dr. Raymond Johnson, and I wanna ask a rhetorical question about, about strategy, and what was the strategy involved from the position of the university. What were the strategic concerns that informed the admission of African Americans

00:06:57.450 - 00:07:16.590

to the university? This isn't a test question, so I'm not gonna wait for answers. I just wanna pose the question, and, and then I'm gonna give a single answer, which isn't the only answer, but it's a, it's a single answer, and it's one that is supported

00:07:16.590 - 00:07:39.930

by a decent amount of research, and that is, to use the word "research" twice now, and that is that there were moral and ethical concerns, right, that informed the opening up of previously segregated universities, particularly in the South, to African American students in the 1960s.

00:07:40.470 - 00:08:11.040

And then there were also, particularly for research universities, a set of peculiar strategic concerns which have to do with the ways universities are funded and the importance of government-funded research, defense research, science research, etc., that, come the, the early 1960s, was getting more and more difficult for

00:08:11.040 - 00:08:32.340

universities to have access to if they weren't also willing to open up their universities to folks of all races and ethnicities. And so that is one strategic concern. And that's not to say that it's the, this isn't Alex Byrd saying that it's the

00:08:32.340 - 00:08:50.640

overriding concern, Dr. McDaniel, it's just a framing concern that helps us take a look at our document today. Well, as I recall, it is one of the major points that's made in Melissa Kean's book about the charter trial and the desegregation, not just of Rice, but of other

00:08:50.850 - 00:09:06.940

highly selective private Southern universities in this period, that these strategic concerns sometimes were, were foremost in the minds of the people making decisions at the time. And thanks, thanks for that, and letting me off the hook, for anyone who wanted to put me

00:09:06.940 - 00:09:39.250

on the hook. And so, with that in mind, what I, what I want to do in the V2C2 is I want to call our attention to a couple of strategic concerns as articulated by the administration of the university, come, come our current times. And so if you go to page ten of that document, there's a really interesting

00:09:39.940 - 00:10:03.940

strategic articulation of what it means to diversify a student body. And it, and it says here, I don't know if you can see my cursor, but I have it outlined in a kind of pink. "The population of high-school college applicants will remain relatively flat over

00:10:03.940 - 00:10:27.700

the next ten years, and a larger proportion of the population of high-potential college-age students will come from low-income families, including many who are underrepresented minorities. Currently available data suggest that there is a significant 'undermatching;'" I've

00:10:27.700 - 00:10:48.300

circled, that so you can tell we will be coming back to it, right; "that there is a significant 'undermatching' of high-achieving, low-income students with the best undergraduate colleges and university programs." And I wanna pause here for a moment, I see you have unmuted, Dr.

00:10:48.300 - 00:11:09.330

McDaniel, so I wanna give you a time to, to, to make a few remarks before I continue. Well, I was just reflecting on the fact that everyone on campus knows and uses V2C2 even without knowing for sure what it stands for. But I don't know that I've ever heard people around campus using the acronym "HALI"

00:11:09.330 - 00:11:31.800

students. And you notice that I skipped that in my, in my reading. Yeah, it's not, so, this document isn't very old, but "HALI" is not a term that I think has caught on. It's, it's actually one I have never heard said out of someone's mouth.

00:11:31.800 - 00:11:44.390

Have you heard it out of someone's mouth? Never heard it. Or even that, that construction, "high-achieving, low-income." Of course, there's now I think, often you'll hear people talk about first-generation... Yes.

00:11:44.430 - 00:12:09.810

Low-income students. Yeah. So first-generation, low-income, I think is the term that has, that is doing much of the work that at one time someone thought "HALI" was going to do. There's a, there's a presumption, right, that is articulated in "HALI" that is left

00:12:09.810 - 00:12:40.130

unarticulated but assumed in "first-generation, low-income." And that's, that's one of the reasons that may make it a preferable term. So we've got, if, if--one of the things that I think is worth thinking about here is, one, you have a, a strategic concern articulated around

00:12:40.130 - 00:13:03.580

diversity that in the, in a, in a way similar to strategic concerns around a research, but, but this particular one focuses our attention on a certain body of students, right. It raises the strategic concern about, where are we gonna get students from?

00:13:03.590 - 00:13:20.450

Where are the, the markets? It suggests here that there may be markets that are--now I'm heading into territory that I shouldn't head into--there are markets that are more difficult to navigate that might be saturated for universities like Rice.

00:13:20.960 - 00:13:48.920

And the potential for new markets, in a sense, exists in these, among these more diverse students. And, and there's a term here, "undermatching," that, that I think is worth circling and, and pondering, because it's a term that makes the argument that there are

00:13:48.920 - 00:14:10.830

students, there are low-income students, who are high-potential, high-achieving, ready for the best universities in the country, but aren't necessarily applying to or going to those universities. There's a mismatch, an undermatch there.

00:14:11.270 - 00:14:38.510

And I wanna, I'm gonna leave that and come back to it, because I wanna go to a different strategic articulation around diversity before pausing again. And it's a, it's a line that has to do with what it means to recruit diverse students. "Effective," and you'll see this in the second, top of the second column on page 11.

00:14:38.870 - 00:14:58.460

"Effective recruitment of the most outstanding students from low-resource and middle-income backgrounds requires strong outreach and engagement efforts. Such students also often need demanding learning opportunities to supplement what may be available in their high schools.

00:14:58.580 - 00:15:27.130

We should therefore consider creating pre-college, short-term, residential summer programs and position Rice to engage with high-potential students earlier in their exploration process." So now I'm gonna, I'm gonna break for a, a little bit, because when I read these two strategic articulations of why and how the university

00:15:27.130 - 00:15:55.780

should be diversified, I can't, I can't help but think of language that informs the university's efforts in the mid 1960s to diversify. And so far, there are some new words introduced here, but there are also some concepts that are conspicuously missing, though tended to in some ways.

00:15:55.780 - 00:16:12.340

And it's not a test, so I'm not gonna ask Dr. McDaniel what the concept is, 'cause he may ask me in, when it's his document, and I may not be ready. But, but, right, the term that we have returned to again and again is this idea of

00:16:12.340 - 00:16:36.820

what it means to be "qualified," right, what does it mean to be qualified to attend a university? And we see a really big, I think, a really big shift in the language and a really big shift in approach. So in the mid 1960s, the language is saturated with ideas that suggest that people

00:16:36.820 - 00:16:55.060

come out of high schools, and they have done everything that they need to do to "earn" a spot at a great university. And to tell you the truth, from the language from the 1960s, it's not clear to me what universities do with these students, right.

00:16:55.060 - 00:17:20.260

They come highly qualified, and then they do some things at the university. They, they are the, so highly qualified people, and then they leave, right, and there stands. But, but this, this, this language is, is quite different. One, it puts a value on, right, it's a language that values, for the sake of the

00:17:20.260 - 00:17:44.140

university, diverse students. Unspoken here is, right, black students. It's a language that values them for the university, but also talks about obligations that a university should undertake if it wants to compete for these high-achieving,

00:17:44.680 - 00:18:02.740

low-income students. And this is a different idea of what it means, what, what, what merit means, and what qualifications, what, what, what, what the idea of being qualified for something means. I'm gonna pause there, Dr.

00:18:02.740 - 00:18:21.370

McDaniel, so you can add... My, my mind, as you were talking, flashed to a document that I don't think we've discussed on the doc talks before, but one that I found in the papers of a professor here at Rice in the early 1970s, late 1960s.

00:18:21.580 - 00:18:45.670

And in 1970, he wrote a letter of recommendation for one of the first African American students at Rice who was going on to graduate school, and I couldn't help but note down the language that he used about the student. He described the student, quote, as a "fair student, in the lowest third of comparable

00:18:45.670 - 00:19:03.580

students in several of my classes, and as a student in general at Rice. I have known him for three years as an advisor and feel some of his difficulty is in the inadequate secondary education provided for him in Texas." There's that kind of gesture towards preparation.

00:19:03.580 - 00:19:29.920

But then, what I was thinking about as you spoke is the last line of that paragraph is very different from what the V2C2 is saying, because the, the writer went on to say, "Other students I know have the same problem, but they have been better able to overcome it than has this student." So there's, there is a sea change in, in, who,

00:19:29.920 - 00:19:46.670

where does the obligation lie to overcome that kind of, quote unquote, "inadequate secondary education?" And in that 1970 letter, the obligation still clearly rests on the student to overcome that. Yeah.

00:19:46.670 - 00:20:13.360

And here there's a shifting, I think. A sea change, right, I think a tremendous shifting, and, and one of the things that I think is interesting is that we see hints of this change, right, hints of this change exist in documents that we have examined earlier in the period.

00:20:13.450 - 00:20:33.700

And I think one of the things that is interesting is to go back and see whether those hints are anything else, right, whether they're more than hints. But, but I'm reminded of Raymond Johnson's letter to the president about what it means to recruit, or what it will and should mean to recruit and support black students, and

00:20:33.700 - 00:20:56.530

there's a, there's a resonance in that letter that connects to what is now the very strategic idea that the university puts forward about how, what it means to be a great university and to move forward as a ... A little, a little bit, a little bit later than, than, a little bit later than Dr.

00:20:56.530 - 00:21:12.100

Johnson pointed it out, though. A little later, which, right. You see, I was just trying to skate past that, Dr. McDaniel, I just wanted to raise it as something to go back to and consider.

00:21:12.250 - 00:21:34.520

But you have put, you have put the, quite the fine point on it. And I think, right, it, it, it raises the, one of the questions it raises is, how do we get, right--'cause Dr. Johnson was right, right, and I think this portion of V2C2 is clearly right.

00:21:34.700 - 00:21:53.070

And so one of the questions for historians is, how do we get to "right" sooner, right? How do we get more people to right sooner? My battery is really taking a trip, so I'm going to, I'm gonna go quickly over what I thought was the third matter, and folks can just go to that themselves.

00:21:53.070 - 00:22:23.000

On page 11 of the V2C2, there's a very interesting concern with what types of investments the diversification of the student body and the faculty along with it require, right. That, just like, just, just like labs need investment in order for the research to

00:22:23.000 - 00:22:49.250

get done, the diversification of the student body requires investment, and requires the university to have a certain posture towards financial risk that I think is really powerful and compelling language here. And I wanna quickly run up to a last point that I just wanna make and leave quickly,

00:22:50.510 - 00:23:20.000

because at the, at the very beginning of this section on expanding access, diversity, and inclusiveness, I think the, the language speaks to the ways that strategic concerns at the foundation of what the university is inform and sometimes trouble, sometimes create apparent conflict.

00:23:21.290 - 00:23:49.730

And so just to, just to underline it quickly, the overarching concern when it comes to expanding access to diversity and inclusiveness in our latest strategic plan speaks to that "problems are better solved and innovation's more creative when we infuse the learning and research environment with scholars, students, and

00:23:49.730 - 00:24:16.840

staff who represent a wide range of life experience and perspectives across all disciplines." And I don't think, right, that's kind of no longer up for argument, right, the power of diversity in problem solving. But the previous sentence is one that is, must not be neglected, right, what does it

00:24:16.840 - 00:24:40.570

mean to bring together people who are quite different? And, and so this part of the V2C2 also raises, what are some of the difficulties that arise in the free market of ideas that a university strives to be when you bring people of different racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds together?

00:24:40.570 - 00:25:05.790

It will create some discomfort, to put it mildly, right. To put it in another way, it will create some offense, right, it will create some real interpersonal issues and problems that, that need to be dealt with, or need to be addressed, right, understood, heard.

00:25:06.280 - 00:25:20.400

So I'm gonna stop sharing now because I feel like that will help me save some battery, and I just wanna say that if I disappear, I'm gonna pop back on on my phone if my computer goes out. And I just, I just wanna end with...

00:25:22.240 - 00:25:38.620

You're not gonna leave me hanging, are you gonna come back? I'm gonna come back. I'm gonna come back on my phone or on my iPad. Okay. I just wanna leave, in these next three minutes since we spent some time in the V2C2,

00:25:38.620 - 00:26:04.120

I do wanna talk about some changes that this type of thinking has helped to inform over the past 18 years or so, but really particularly since we've spent some time on the Gillis administration and now ending with the strategic plan from President Leebron's administration, right there, we know that there are some real significant

00:26:04.120 - 00:26:23.260

gains in the black student population in that time, right, at, in Gillis's, in Gillis's administration, the percentage of the student, undergraduate student body that is African American reaches the highest mark it has ever reached at the university, ten percent, right.

00:26:24.880 - 00:26:45.970

And, and, and over the past two or three years or so, we've, we've reached that again, among the domestic population, like ten, eleven percent of the domestic population of our undergraduates is, is African American. That should raise some questions about how we count people and why we count them

00:26:45.970 - 00:27:02.320

differently, but it's also due, I think, some quite considerable reflection, particularly when we, when we talk about absolute numbers. Quick guess, Dr. McDaniel, it's rhetorical, so you don't have to guess, about how many black students at

00:27:02.320 - 00:27:22.800

the university in 2004? Less than 200. See, I wanted to give you, you don't even have to guess. Around, around 200, right. And in 2021, right, there are double that number, about, about double that number.

00:27:24.900 - 00:27:49.710

About 400 black students on, on campus. Not a huge percentage change, but we know, you know, there's a decent amount of fluctuation. But, but, a question asked is what do those absolute numbers represent? How do they, do, do they make possible a different type of experience on campus for,

00:27:49.710 - 00:28:07.850

for black students? If we talk about black faculty, even just since 2015, I'm not even gonna do percentages because they're too outrageous, right, but in 2015, there are ten black faculty, tenured and tenure track.

00:28:08.180 - 00:28:24.010

I should include others, but this is a good way to begin to see. About ten African American faculty. We've done doc talks when there were, I think two, right, two we've done black faculty talks when there are two.

00:28:24.010 - 00:28:53.090

So ten in 2015, we're, we're around nineteen, around nineteen now. So again, a fairly large absolute change and a percentage change that's, that's just ridiculous. If you had to count, this is a real guess for the chat, how many African Americans in the higher administration at the university in, pick your year, what year

00:28:53.120 - 00:29:03.800

do you wanna pick, Dr. McDaniel? I'm gonna go 2004. What do you think? Hmm. What are you defining as "upper administration?"

00:29:04.880 - 00:29:28.380

I'm gonna say the president, the vice president, provost, vice provost. I'm even willing to go associate vice president. Okay. I'm gonna say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go with one, two? Yeah. I mean, so, I didn't even write it down, I put a question mark.

00:29:28.450 - 00:29:31.970

Yeah. I think it's zero, though, Dr. McDaniel. Well, I guess I'm, okay.

00:29:33.740 - 00:29:41.330

Right... ...believe that, but when you lowered the bar of, of what counted as upper administration, I thought, I thought of some people. Well, see, I didn't lower...

00:29:43.540 - 00:30:13.490

Uh oh. That may have been the end of Dr. Byrd's battery life. Let's see if he drops off. Okay, well, I'm going to forge ahead while Dr.

00:30:13.760 - 00:30:27.980

Byrd hops on his phone, which is I'm guessing what's happening now. If you're just joining us, Dr. Byrd is on the road today, and so he is working on a low battery for his laptop and a connection to his phone, so he'll be back with us in just a second.

00:30:27.990 - 00:30:45.110

He's left us all hanging on a cliffhanger to know how the numbers in the upper administration have changed from 2004 to today. So we'll have to ask him when he gets back on. But in a way, this, this works out well, because what I was going to talk about for my

00:30:45.110 - 00:31:02.780

doc talk, at least in the beginning, was a little bit of the process that would be familiar to Dr. Byrd, but might not be familiar to all of you, the process of going to the Woodson Research Center and doing the kind of archival work that, that we're doing as, as

00:31:02.780 - 00:31:14.990

task force researchers. And so I just want to start by showing you a picture that I just snapped this morning as I was leaving the Woodson Research Center, where I've been spending quite a bit of time this semester.

00:31:15.080 - 00:31:37.070

And you can see here a single cart, and it's got a little sign labeled "task force" here, because this is one of several carts in the Woodson Research Center that has boxes that task force researchers have requested to comb through and try to find documents relevant to, to our work.

00:31:37.730 - 00:31:48.130

And I see Dr. Byrd coming back on his phone. Are you there? Are you there? I am. Can you hear me?

00:31:48.160 - 00:32:11.200

I can hear you. You left us hanging, we were, there was a cliffhanger, all we heard was, was zero, zero black administrators in 2004. So give us, give us the, give us the, the punchline before we move on. Well, the punchline was, if we include associate provost, then we get more than

00:32:11.200 - 00:32:20.680

zero. Okay. If, if we don't, then we have zero. And when we get to the, the fall of 2021, we have a handful.

00:32:20.680 - 00:32:36.540

Got from zero to about five. Well, thanks for sharing that document. I think there's clearly been significant change you've shown us, not only in the, the strategic vision, the language that we use around these important topics, but also in,

00:32:36.540 - 00:32:49.430

in the real gains that, that have been made over the last nineteen years. And so thank you for, for sharing that. Can you see my screen, or are you able...? I'm good, yeah, I see some Hollinger boxes, I'm ready.

00:32:50.390 - 00:33:07.490

Hollinger boxes. Thank you for using the, the, the technical term. I was just explaining to our audience that this was a picture I took just this morning in the Woodson Research Center, and it's one of many carts like this that have boxes reserved for myself, for Dr.

00:33:07.490 - 00:33:29.690

Byrd, for other researchers on the task force, to come in. And, you know, you can see that this is, this is only one cart, and each one of these boxes is full of file folders and papers like these that I'm showing you here. And I have to say, I don't know if this is ever your, ever your experience, Dr.

00:33:29.690 - 00:33:47.060

Byrd, but some of these boxes I was looking at this morning are actually boxes that I have been through before. And I hate when when this happens, you know, you check off boxes, you go through the finding aids, you make sure you've looked at all the ones you wanna look at, and then you

00:33:47.060 - 00:34:14.420

find yourself having to go back to those same boxes, which sometimes, in the case of the Woodson Research Center, means having to request that those boxes be brought from off campus at the Library Service Center storage facility, and a shoutout to the dedicated staff who transfer these, these boxes on carts back and forth, as us, as we historians

00:34:14.420 - 00:34:34.190

sort of try to figure out what we're doing and what we need and which boxes we need to see, one, two, three, or maybe four times. I say I hate when that happens, but actually it's a natural part of the research process, because when you're going through a box like this at a first pass, there may be documents

00:34:34.190 - 00:34:54.320

that you just skip right past because they talk about people's names or they're talking about a date that, your first time through, means nothing to you. And it's not until you find, in some other Hollinger box, maybe in another collection, maybe it's in the Woodson or maybe it's in the Library Service Center or maybe it's in

00:34:54.320 - 00:35:13.940

the Rice Thresher or the Campanile, you start to realize that, whoa, that person's name is important, or that date is important, so I'm gonna have to go back to the box that I went through before from around that same time and see if I can find more about that, that person that I would have skipped past the first time.

00:35:14.180 - 00:35:31.700

And that's what I was doing this morning. I was going back over some boxes, and I'm not gonna share with you the, the, the document that I was looking for, because I'm still trying to figure things out, and even though this is the last doc talk, we'll just have to wait until the next time we're

00:35:31.700 - 00:35:52.910

together to share some of the fruits of that, that revisiting of boxes. But if there's, if there's sort of one thing that redeems the research part of research, it's that sometimes you come up with something on the second pass that you weren't even going back to look for, and you just noticed it for the first time and you missed

00:35:52.910 - 00:36:08.780

it, or you missed it the first time and you noticed it this time, and it raises some new questions for you. And so that's what I'm gonna share with you today is, is a document like that that I found literally this morning, this is hot off the presses, and I know I've improvised

00:36:08.780 - 00:36:26.720

before, Dr. Byrd, but I was all, I had a plan to, to talk about a different document entirely, but when I found this this morning, I thought, you know, it wouldn't be a doc talk if we didn't throw caution to the wind and just looked at a document in real time together. So are you ready to go?

00:36:26.720 - 00:36:43.010

Is that okay? Okay. Let's do it. So this document I'm gonna share comes from, you can see it here on the screen, box 88. There's a lot of boxes in some of these, these collections, box 88 of the early Rice

00:36:43.010 - 00:37:05.270

Institute records. And it came out of this box here, and it's folder eight so "88.8" means folder eight. And you can see in the context that this box, most of the folders are labeled B, B, B, and L, which is another acronym that's probably not as familiar as V2C2, letters and

00:37:05.270 - 00:37:25.280

papers, 1904 to 1906. Then the next folders, September 1906 to December 20th, 1906. And they also have this marking that I'm not quite sure, we'd have to ask the archivist what it means, "Attic File 18092." It probably is a reference to where these files

00:37:25.280 - 00:37:49.000

originally were found, or maybe they had a different ordering system once upon a time, and they've been re-catalogued and they've been reorganized chronologically into these folders. But that's just to give you a brief snapshot of what archivists confront and what researchers encounter when we come into the Woodson and are going through folders.

00:37:49.000 - 00:38:13.420

So this is from folder eight of Box 88, which I've been through before, but totally just flipped right past this letter, and I almost did this morning too. In fact, I got to the second page of this letter before I decided, wait a second, let me go back and look at that first page again.

00:38:13.870 - 00:38:25.820

And this is the second page here. And I'll tell you why I went back in just a minute. What, what, what sent me back was the letterhead. So you can see that this is a handwritten letter.

00:38:27.140 - 00:38:38.240

It's written in cursive. And it's preprinted stationery, so at the top it says "Houston, Texas," and it has a blank for the date, and then it says "one nine zero..." I'm not seeing the letter, prof.

00:38:38.720 - 00:38:46.950

You don't see it? No, I'm still looking at these files. Oh, okay, let me try again. Now you're...

00:38:46.950 - 00:38:55.320

I was screaming it, but I was muted. Now I see it. Okay. Thank you for stopping me. I was just gonna go right on talking.

00:38:55.320 - 00:39:15.240

So you can see that what we're looking at here is a letter, handwritten in cursive, it's clearly been folded up at some point, and at the top it has some letterhead, and it's preprinted stationery, so it has "Houston, Texas,' and a blank for the date, and then "19 zero" with a blank for the last digit of the year.

00:39:15.920 - 00:39:37.590

And at the very top of this letterhead is a Bible verse. And it's kind of, it's kind of hard to read, because it's got these two holes punched at the top. Originally, these kinds of, this kind of correspondence would have been bound together in a binder that would have had two brads or clips at the top, and so we can't

00:39:37.590 - 00:39:57.060

read the whole Bible verse, but it looks like it's the Great Commission from Matthew 28. "Go ye therefore and teach all nations." And this, we learn right below that, is stationery from the office of the Reverend N.P. Pullum. N.P.

00:39:57.060 - 00:40:13.910

Pullum. And the address of this office is 1319 Andrews Street. Okay. And that's the, the, the thing that on this second page of the letter, remember, I had flipped right past the first page. Can you see the first page here?

00:40:13.910 - 00:40:29.890

I flipped right past the first page, and then I sort of stopped and said, wait a second, Andrews Street? 1319 Andrews Street is a significant street in Houston history. Do you know why, Dr.

00:40:29.890 - 00:40:46.750

Byrd? Now I'm gonna put you on the spot since you put me on the spot. I don't, but I, I don't at all, but, well, okay, we're, I forgot, we're, we're on the spot. We're on the spot.

00:40:46.900 - 00:40:56.050

I went to school, so it's familiar, the name is familiar to me. Yeah. And, but it's not familiar from the north side. Right.

00:40:56.050 - 00:41:13.090

And so I just tell myself that if I know it and it's not a north side street, it must be a Third Ward street. Well, close, close, but, but no cigar today. It's actually from the Fourth Ward.

00:41:13.540 - 00:41:29.350

And you can, and, you know, there's, there's also some other clues here. If we were to look here on the left side, there's two boxes on either side of the reverend's name. On the left side, it says that he's the pastor of the Friendship Baptist Church,

00:41:29.350 - 00:41:39.820

corner of San Felipe and Heiner Streets. So that's getting us in the Fourth Ward. And he also lists some of his other affiliations. He's moderator of the Lincoln Southern Association.

00:41:40.570 - 00:41:59.020

I don't know what that is. He's a member of the Trustee Board, Houston Academy; and National Baptist Convention. And then on the right side, it has a list of the deacons and trustees of, I'm presuming, the Friendship Baptist Church that Reverend Pullum is the pastor of.

00:41:59.320 - 00:42:20.230

So when I saw that that address, and just to be clear, I wasn't a hundred percent sure where it was either, but I thought it rang a bell as a Fourth Ward street, and of course, the Fourth Ward is very significant in Houston history, particularly as the site of Freedmen's Town, an area of the city that was settled after the Civil War by recently

00:42:20.230 - 00:42:36.760

enslaved people, including the Reverend Jack Henry Yates, who established several churches there in the Fourth Ward, and I think, although I'll have to check myself on this, had a home on, on Andrews Street. I'm not a hundred percent sure of that.

00:42:36.940 - 00:42:54.280

But that was one reason why I paused, because it seemed like it was ringing a bell to me. So I went back to the first page. I could have easily missed this the second time, but I went back to the first page. And here we have the date at the top, December 1st, 1906, of the letter, and we

00:42:54.280 - 00:43:05.730

know who it's addressed to, it's a letter addressed to Mr. James A. Baker. In the city. Of course, Captain James Baker; although it doesn't use his, his honorific here, it's just Mr. James.

00:43:05.730 - 00:43:29.840

A Baker; was the chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Rice Institute at this time. And I'm just gonna read you the first few lines here, or probably a pretty fair amount of this letter, and we can talk a little bit about what it might mean. So Reverend Pullum says, "Dear sir, this comes to inform you that I am the colored

00:43:29.840 - 00:43:46.670

minister that was up to see you a few days ago about buying all of the old brick." And maybe you could help me here, Dr. Byrd, with this word. I think it says "clamps," but I don't know enough about brick manufacturing to know if

00:43:46.670 - 00:43:57.430

that is a term. Does that look like "clamps" to you? It looks, it looks like "clamps" to me, but don't ask me what brick clamps are. Brick clamps, I don't know. Well, we know that these were... Oh, but now I have a guess.

00:43:57.440 - 00:44:10.130

Okay, give me a guess. My guess is maybe when you set bricks, do you put something in to space them? That's a good idea, or kind of set the mortar, yeah. I'm just guessing, yeah.

00:44:10.340 - 00:44:18.650

I'll go with it. I don't know. I have a question there. But, but what have we learned so far? We've learned a little bit more about Reverend Pullum.

00:44:18.650 - 00:44:43.010

He was an African American, a black minister, who had come to see Captain Baker a few days before this in December 1906, "about buying all of the old brick clamps or brick kilns;" I have a better idea of what those might be; "at the old Rice Brickyard at Brunner. You told me to see Mr.

00:44:43.010 - 00:45:04.480

A.B. Cohn," who we might remember from earlier doc talks was the business manager of the Rice Institute at this time. So Reverend Pullum says, "I saw him and he said you would have," er, "he would have to see you about it before he would be able to sell them." What's going on here?

00:45:05.560 - 00:45:20.020

Clearly Reverend Pullum has first gone to the business manager to ask about buying some brick, and Mr. Cohn says you're gonna have to go see Captain Baker about this. So I'm gonna read on here.

00:45:20.020 - 00:45:39.320

"I think there are about 400 loads of old brick that will cost us 75 cents per load to get them crushed and $1.50 per load to get them hauled. Then they are worth about $2.50 per load. They will cost us $2.25 to get them to town.

00:45:39.860 - 00:46:05.690

You see, we would clear about $0.25 per load. I offered Mr. Cohn $100 for all the old brick out there. I am willing," and now we're going to the second page, "I am willing to pay $50 of that Monday and the other $50 on or about the 15th inst," which means the next, the next

00:46:05.690 - 00:46:23.400

one, the 15th of the month. Now he's gonna explain a little bit about why he wants to buy this brick. "We want these bats," not a term I typically would use, but brickbats, maybe, maybe that's a little bit more familiar to people.

00:46:23.430 - 00:46:41.920

"We want these bats to put in the foundation of a two-story brick church to be built at the corner of San Felipe and Heiner Streets." Remember that intersection? The Friendship Baptist Church up here on the letterhead was to be at the corner of San Felipe and Heiner Streets, according to the stationery.

00:46:42.850 - 00:47:00.500

But apparently the church had not been built yet. And so Reverend Pullum wants this brick to put in the foundation of this two-story brick church. "I petitioned the trustees through Mr. Cohn to give us those old bricks for our church, but he said it might be some time,

00:47:00.500 - 00:47:16.640

some little time, before they would meet," the Board of Trustees, "and we are needing them now, is why I am willing to pay $50 now. And if they," the board, "feel disposed to give us the remainder, I shall be grateful. If not, I will pay the balance as stated above.

00:47:17.450 - 00:47:30.390

I shall call in Monday to see Mr. Cohn about 10 or 11 AM. Will you please phone him before that time what you wish him to do in the premises? Yours truly, N.P.

00:47:30.390 - 00:47:50.260

Pullum. Let me just pause there and, and ask for, if you have any reactions, what's, what's going on here in this, in this letter, do you think, Dr. Byrd? Well, when you say what's going on, outside of what, you're asking me for insight.

00:47:50.260 - 00:48:02.140

Yes. What are your reactions to it, or what can we, is this, do you think that this, is this the kind of letter I should have paused at and scanned? I hope you'll say yes, 'cause I spent time doing it, but... Of course you should have.

00:48:02.290 - 00:48:20.510

But I ask you the question. Does it have relevance to our, our work on the task force? Of course it does. I think one of the things, well, one of the things that it has [...] to,

00:48:20.510 - 00:48:47.510

that I hesitate to say, because I don't know how much our audience is aware of all the ways that the university functioned in its early days. But it puts in a different [...] ways and the finances of the university, and in this case, the finances, the material, the resources of the university, were put into

00:48:47.510 - 00:49:09.550

play... So, Dr. Byrd, you're, you're, you're breaking up quite a bit, but I'm gonna pick up where you left off there, that yes, this is obviously a letter from before the institute opened its doors in 1912, but it shows us that even before then, the institute's very

00:49:09.550 - 00:49:32.410

much a mover and shaker in the city of Houston. It controls material, it controls resources, it controls finances, and also before it even opens its doors, and long before black students or faculty appear at the university, there are interactions between the Rice Institute, in this case in the form of

00:49:32.410 - 00:49:52.510

Captain Baker and the business manager, A .B. Cohn, and African American leaders in the community in Houston. So Pullum had come to see Baker, Baker, or he's come to see Cohn, Cohn sends him to Baker, and we don't know from this letter what the outcome of this little communication

00:49:52.510 - 00:50:11.770

was, whether or not the institute did decide to sell him this brick. The last letter behind this, and I don't seem to have it pulled up here, but basically Baker responds to, to Reverend Pullum, and says, whatever Mr. Cohn decides, I'm fine with that.

00:50:11.950 - 00:50:40.360

So Cohn is kind of punted to Baker, and in the end, Baker sort of punts back to Cohn to say whatever the business manager decides to do, if he'll sell them to you, then that's fine. So I think what's interesting about this is it shows a member of the Fourth Ward and this sort of vibrant African American community coming to the institute,

00:50:41.470 - 00:51:00.460

seeking some, some assistance to purchase this brick, and what really, I think, adds to the significance, is not something that would be immediately apparent if all you did was read this letter. This is a, this is a letter where you have to have some additional context about the

00:51:00.460 - 00:51:15.150

people involved, I think, to, to appreciate its full significance. And so what I wanna pull up for you now is another window here. Oops, this one right here. And are you able to see that, Dr.

00:51:15.150 - 00:51:25.800

Byrd? I got it. Okay. You can see that what we're looking at here is a Texas historical marker. Pretty familiar sight.

00:51:26.010 - 00:51:46.920

And it's a marker to the Reverend Ed P., Ned P. Pullum. N.P. Pullum, the minister who wrote to Captain Baker in this letter from 1906. His house in the Fourth Ward, you can see a side view here, is a historic landmark in

00:51:46.920 - 00:52:13.560

what's known as Freedman's Town in the Fourth Ward. And now this house is, is owned, it has been purchased in the last, I think, 15 or 16 years, by the Rutherford Yates Museum that's been working really hard to preserve some of the few remaining structures in Freedman's Town that date back to the late 19th century

00:52:13.560 - 00:52:34.840

that were built by black Houstonians. And you can see the house is at the address, 1319 Andrews Street, which on the stationery we looked at was, was listed as the office of of Reverend N.P. Pullum. But he was clearly, like many of us these days, he was working from home, and he

00:52:35.050 - 00:52:50.440

was trying to build a church at this other intersection. And we read a little bit about him here in the museum's biography of him. He was a native of Alabama. He had moved to Beaumont in 1895.

00:52:50.680 - 00:53:13.960

Then he moved to Houston, and he became eventually the pastor of Bethel Baptist Church, where he replaced the Reverend Jack Yates after Reverend Yates's death in 1897, and he remained a pastor at Bethel until 1903, "when he resigned from the church and soon organized a new church, Friendship Baptist Church, also in Freedmen's Town," and

00:53:13.960 - 00:53:37.980

"he later commented that he paid 25,000 to build this new church." He raised the money and spent his own money to, to build this two-story church that he was describing in prospect in this letter to, to Captain Baker. Now, what's interesting, too, is if we, if we scroll down a little bit, we learn that

00:53:37.980 - 00:54:04.930

beyond his ministerial practice, Pullum was also an active businessman. And in fact, "in 1907, he founded Pullum Standard Brickworks, purchasing a property north of San Felipe between Taft and Montrose, in a section of what is now Magnolia Cemetery, for use as the Brickyard." Now, I don't know, this raises a

00:54:04.930 - 00:54:17.020

lot of questions for me, but I'm just, now as a historian, I'm kind of thinking about, are there, there's connections, there's things happening here. What's happening in 1906? Pullum's trying to build this, this church.

00:54:17.020 - 00:54:36.610

If this timeline is right, he hasn't yet founded a brickworks. And so he needs some brick. And he comes to the institute trying to buy both brick and also, it sounds like, some, some manufacturing equipment, the brick kilns, the brick clamps, we don't yet know

00:54:36.610 - 00:54:56.620

what those are, that were at an old brickyard that apparently the Rice Institute controlled. And I don't know if you notice in the front of this, this picture of his house, but on the streets in front of Reverend Pullum's house, there, there are some bricks laid, and probably you know the significance of that, or maybe some of our

00:54:56.620 - 00:55:17.640

audience have heard of that, Dr. Byrd. Oh, you're muted. In the lore of the Fourth Ward, these are the, the bricks that the freedmen used to pave their, to pave their own streets.

00:55:18.650 - 00:55:36.650

That's right. And I'm glad you used the word "lore," or sort of oral tradition, there's a lot of stories about why are there some brick-paved streets in Freedmen's Town, and there's different stories told about it. Some that, that freed people immediately after the Civil War paved these streets with

00:55:36.650 - 00:55:57.090

bricks. Others say in the early, it was actually in the early 20th century, around this same time that we're talking about, that the City of Houston refused to pave the streets in the Fourth Ward, and so the residents themselves paved the streets with bricks. Where they got the bricks, I don't know, maybe from Reverend Pullum's

00:55:57.090 - 00:56:20.100

brickworks, it's right, right in, right in front of his home here. But, but it, but it suggests to me, there's some kind of resonances here between the letter we were looking at and that story of a very dynamic leader in the African American community trying to marshal the resources needed from, from different entities in the

00:56:20.100 - 00:56:45.630

city, to raise the money, to lay the foundation for this church, and it all came down to brick. Now, I'll just close by saying that this house is actually not only significant because it was Reverend Pullum's, but because it's located in Freedmen's Town. It's actually been designated in a UNESCO slavery awareness

00:56:45.630 - 00:57:06.450

project, which, this is from a Houston Chronicle article in 2019, seven different sites in Houston were nominated by the city for recognition by UNESCO as, as culturally significant heritage sites. In this particular picture I've selected, you can see someone standing inside Reverend

00:57:06.450 - 00:57:21.810

Pullum's house in Freedmen's Town. And so that's the document I found just this morning. I'm not quite sure what all to make of it yet, Dr. Byrd, but it illustrates, I think, something about the research process for this kind of

00:57:21.810 - 00:57:44.640

work, that it's quite possible that that letter might have remained there in folder eight of Box 88 of the early Rice Institute records for another fifty, hundred years, however long it had set there before, without being noticed, because, as I said, the first time I went through the box, missed it entirely.

00:57:44.940 - 00:58:15.090

I was back in that folder looking for something else and nearly skipped past it again before I went back to the first page and found this encounter dating from before the Rice Institute even opened its doors in a segregated city that showed contact between two, I think we could say, leading figures in the history of Houston.

00:58:15.330 - 00:58:35.820

Captain James Baker on the one hand, and Reverend N.P. Pullum, who has this historic landmark outside of his home on the other, writing about bricks, negotiating about who can get bricks for what price to build things. And obviously, in our own history at Rice, we've spent a lot of time understanding and

00:58:35.820 - 00:58:55.620

investigating, how did the campus get built, and, and what kinds of work did Captain Baker have to do, and all the other pioneering leaders of the institute, to marshal the resources to build this campus that's, that's displayed behind you there in your Zoom window, Dr.

00:58:55.620 - 00:59:13.720

Byrd. But, but there's also these stories of what it took to build the Friendship Baptist Church in Fourth Ward, what it took to pave those streets, what it took Freedmen's Town to become the historically significant site that it is, and we're getting a little bit of

00:59:13.720 - 00:59:33.990

a window here into Reverend Pullum's work to accomplish something that would, that would benefit his community. So I just find that really interesting and maybe worth, worth pondering and thinking about as we, as we examine this period, the period again before the institute even opens

00:59:33.990 - 00:59:51.250

its doors. The history of the relationship between black Houstonians and the Rice Institute was already, that foundation, if we could put it this way, it was already being laid, in a sense. And I think you dropped off before you found out, Dr.

00:59:51.250 - 01:00:16.510

Byrd, what happened after this correspondence. Yeah, well, I was, I was in the middle of answering your question about significance when my iPad overheated. And so maybe you made this point, and you just made it implicitly just now, is that,

01:00:16.870 - 01:00:52.240

again, is that the institute has a fairly well documented impact in the economic life of the city in the early 20th century that can be traced through the, the board books, right, and here we have a, we may have a different instance of this, right, not, not found in the board books, but, but still, still related.

01:00:53.720 - 01:01:09.680

Absolutely. And, you know, like so many of these documents we're looking at, it raises more questions, and certainly doesn't answer all of them. There is one response to Reverend Pullum from Captain Baker that basically says he's fine with whatever Mr.

01:01:09.680 - 01:01:24.530

Cohn decides. So Mr. Cohn sent him to Captain Baker, Captain Baker sends him back to to Mr. Cohn, and I don't know, I have some ideas of places where we could look to figure out if the sale or the transaction was, was ever made.

01:01:25.160 - 01:01:49.160

But it's interesting, too, that it's right after this letter in 1907 that Reverend Pullum founds his brickworks that's mentioned in this, in this biography on the Yates Museum site. So I don't know whether there's some relationship there between those two dates, but as always, I left the Woodson with, with some more questions, and we won't

01:01:49.160 - 01:02:09.590

be able to address those on a doc talk next week. We're gonna be hard at work, though, over the summer, continuing to do this research and prepare our findings for the Rice community, and we're so grateful to those of you who have come alongside us throughout this year to, to get down into the, the weeds

01:02:09.590 - 01:02:29.120

with us a little bit, and we've benefited from your insights and encouragement and hope that you have a wonderful weekend and summer. Dr. Byrd, safe travels. Thank you. It's been, it's been a wonderful year, and this is an exciting way to end it.

01:02:30.050 - 01:02:35.150

Go charge your phone. Go charge your computer. Okay. Talk to you later. Bye bye.