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Happy Friday, Dr. Byrd. Happy Friday, Dr. McDaniel, welcome to the end of the week. And the end of the semester almost.

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We got only one more Friday of classes if you can believe that, next week. I can believe it. And I am looking forward to it.

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You're ready to receive it. That's right. Well, it's always good to be with you on Fridays and to talk about some of the documents

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that concern the research that we're doing as co-chairs of the Task Force on Slavery, Segregation and Racial Injustice. And last week I hope that everyone was able to join us

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for the outstanding conversation we had with staff from the Woodson Research Center in Fondren Library who made I think a good pitch to take over this Doc Talk from us next year.

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What do you think Dr. Byrd? You know, at the beginning I was really impressed with it and I thought, "Yes," but then at the end, I thought,

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"Well, maybe they actually are trying to take it over." And then I wasn't so sure, like I wanted to give it to them but I wasn't sure that I wanted it taken from me. Well, you know, we'll have to resolve that I guess later

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but certainly they brought a lot of insight to the work of archivists. And we're so grateful for everything that they've been doing.

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And we have another, I guess, a coup attempt maybe today with some wonderful student researchers who are joining us to talk about research that they've been doing related to our work.

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We're joined by Drew Sanders from the history graduate program, a PhD student in his second year. Is that right, Drew?

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Say hi to the folks. Hi, folks. We also have Emily Lampard who is also a PhD student here in the history department and her first year at Rice.

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Yeah, howdy, Dr. Byrd. She's already learning the local lingo here in Texas. And then finally we're joined by Ben Schachter, who is a junior undergraduate here at Rice

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in the history department. Ben, you wanna say hello? Hello, everyone. And all three of these students are going to be talking

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with us today about research conducted last semester in the History 535, which is a seminar that was affiliated with the work of the Task Force, and basically asked the students in the class

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to select a topic, to investigate that topic, and question as thoroughly as they could. And then to write a research paper that was presented at the end of the semester to the whole class

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and that you can find actually archived in the Woodson Research Center. If you talk to some of those archivists from last week, you can take a look at some of the outstanding work

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that was done by students in this seminar. We're so grateful to all of you for being willing to continue that work this semester and join us to talk today about your findings.

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Why don't we go ahead and jump right in? So by previous agreement we decided that we would look at these documents in chronological order. And so we're gonna begin at the very earliest end

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of the scope of our work as a Task Force and that brings Ben to the center stage. And so, Ben, I'm gonna pull up the document that you brought to discuss today

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and you can tell us a little bit about this source. Let me get my, oops. What I learned this, okay, it's working. So I don't have to talk while it goes.

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Save it, save it. So I guess I can jump right in. The document that we're looking at today ages from March of 1855.

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And it's an entry in the Fort Bend County, which is a little bit west of where we currently are in Houston. And it's from the Fort Bend County probate record,

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which is the court where estates of deceased people were handled or negotiated. And the page that we're looking at today is an inventory and appraisal of the John N. Randon estate.

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And the reason why that's relevant to our work here at Rice is that John N. Randon was the first husband of Charlotte Maria Baldwin who then went on to marry Frederick Alan Rice

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who was the younger brother of William Marsh Rice, founder of Rice University. And Frederick was also a founding board member of the Rice Institute.

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And on this page, among other properties such as land, horses, bales of cotton, there are 35 enslaved people named and assessed a monetary value.

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Taken collectively their monetary value is $16,300, which if we index to 2019 dollars is more than half a million dollars worth of holdings. And this document is really important

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because it offers us the names of 35 enslaved people as well as small tidbits of information about their lives. Thanks, Ben. So we're looking at, we've seen some documents

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like this in previous Doc Talks where it's a sort of a large ledger book and it's all in cursive script handwriting by a clerk, I assume from Fort Bend County who would have been annotating

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all of this. So can you tell us a little bit more about what a probate record is? And you mentioned that this involved an estate,

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so why would Frederick A. Rice be appearing before this probate court? Do you have any sense of why we would have this document in the first place?

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Yeah, so a person who owned a large amount of property such as John N. Randon would have passed away, his widow, so in this case, Charlotte Maria Baldwin, as well as any other parties interested

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in the holdings of his estate would have appeared before the probate court where the probate judge would have handed down rulings essentially about how the people who were now in charge

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of administrating the estate would have gone about their activities. And so when Frederick Allen Rice married Charlotte Maria Baldwin, he also appeared

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before the probate court with her and was appointed as an administrator bonus non, which is the legal term for what happens when the administrator originally of the estate is no longer in charge.

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So when the reigns were passed over to Frederick and he became the administrator, he became in charge of running the estate, which in this case included a cotton plantation

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in Fort Bend County and the 35 enslaved people who were held as bondsmen of that estate. So in taking over the estate he also took over the reigns of enslavement.

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Ben, you indicated at the start that one of the things that is important here is that you have the names of the people who were held captive and forced to work on this estate.

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And I wonder if you could talk some from a technical, historical perspective about why that's important as a historian, and the ways that having those names could be valuable?

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And if you like, if you also want to talk in a broader sense about how names and naming can be important in this work. Sure, so I would say one of the evils of slavery was the way in which it attempted to reduce human beings

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into commodities and into factors of labor or factors of financial transactions. But one of the things that's demonstrative about this document is it shows the ways

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in which that regime failed, because these were people. These were people with individual identities, individual lives, desires, who sometimes resisted their enslavers and their will.

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And a person's name reminds us in the very first place that these were people, these are not commodities. So when we see names like Dely, like Melinda, like Vicey,

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we're reminded very personally that the bales of cotton that came from this plantation were picked by people. And they were picked by people who were there against their will and were laboring against their will.

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We also see some indications, Dr. McDaniel, I think, has his cursor over a girl named Peiss right now where there's a mark next to her name that says diseased. And that reminds us of the very human aspects

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of enslavement, that if someone became diseased, they no longer were the profitable factors of labor that their enslavers might be hoping for. So this ledger, I think demonstrates something

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that historians of slavery come across a lot, which is that the enslaver's attempt to marginalize people into the bounds of a ledger are never successful. And the stories of the people that were enslaved

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spill over those lines. Can you give us any examples of stories like that, that this document might reveal? You pointed out Peiss, but are there other stories

00:11:08.380 - 00:11:23.880

that you've been able to follow using this document? I guess, is this the only document like this that we have or is it possible to connect it to other documents to help understand these experiences?

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Yeah, so that's another important aspect of people being named is that it allows us to connect multiple records and hopefully get a more vivid and fuller sense of what these people's lives were like.

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So one example would be the enslaved woman named Dely who appears here. So this actually was not the first inventory of the John N. Randon estate where names appear.

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In fact, in 1853, Charlotte Maria Baldwin, Randon's widow filed a first probate, a first inventory I should say, where most of these names appear as well.

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And Dely is one of them. And we'll notice her assessment is tied to another woman, Malinda, and taken together their monetary value is placed at $300, which is rather low,

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which leads us to think why was their monetary value quite so diminished? And other records following emancipation when formerly enslaved people were now recorded

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as citizens of the United States. So they began to appear on the census among other records, show us that Dely was in fact an old woman, an elderly woman at this time,

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which lines up with a lot of scholarship on the monetary value of enslaved people that says that after their peak productive years or their peak reproductive years, in the case of women,

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their monetary values were diminished greatly. So we learned that actually at this time Dely was likely already in her 60s, and she's a fairly remarkable case

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'cause we're able to trace her longevity following the end of slavery all the way into the 1880s. And we see that she was born in fact in the 18th century. So this is a woman who would have witnessed a huge number

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of landscape shifting historical events, the Emancipation Proclamation and Juneteenth, but also the end of the international slave trade and the rise of the interstate slave trade.

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Fascinating. What kinds of questions does this document, you've told us a lot about what it can tell us about enslaved people that worked

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on this plantation operated by Frederick A. Rice as the administrator of this estate, are there questions that you still have that this kind of document does not fully answer?

00:14:02.240 - 00:14:15.650

You know, you mentioned earlier some of the ways that slavery effaces the identity and experiences of the people that are represented on this ledger sheet. Are there any questions that you're still trying

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to answer using these documents in your research right now? Absolutely., there are many. One notable aspect of this document that jumps out right away is

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that there are only first names offered, which represents a serious challenge when trying to connect records across multiple, trying to connect one person

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across multiple different documentary records. Because for instance there are many people named Charley who were once enslaved. There are many people named George who were once enslaved.

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So that's a serious challenge when we're trying to maintain the integrity of these people's identities to know which George are we talking about in a certain document.

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So that's certainly a challenge that I'm still encountering. Another issue is one of handwriting. And the fact that these sources were sometimes recorded by different people over time.

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So someone who appears their name to be Maryann on this document, on another document it might actually appear to be Maria. And so determining when we have a case

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of continuity and when it's a different person entering the historical record can sometimes be quite the challenge. There's also all sorts of questions about the circumstances

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in which this document was created. One thing that you and I have discussed, Dr. McDaniel is that the monetary evaluations through these people appear to be fairly low

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for the contemporary time period. So does that demonstrate that there was some sort of physical disability that was impairing these people's values,

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or is this rather a case of the enslaver, Frederick Allen Rice and the appraiser artificially lowering these values perhaps in order to reduce the tax burden of the estate?

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So there are all sorts of questions that definitely still remain when we're trying to look into this document and see what we can learn from it.

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Fascinating. And I think it does spotlight the difficulty even of answering what might seem like a simple question. You started off by saying 35 enslaved people

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were represented in this document, but even if we were to try to say how many people were enslaved by Frederick A. Rice on the Fort Bend County plantation over time,

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the questions of identity and tracking names over time relate crucially even to that basic question of numbers. And so I appreciate all the work you've done

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to address that question and see how and to what extent we can answer it. I really wanna underscore for our audience that this document, this probate record is not one

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that previous historians of the Rice Institute or the Rice family, as far as I know, have ever been aware of prior to Ben's work this academic year. And so there's really been, I think, a huge step forward

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thanks to your research and our understanding of this aspect of our work as a Task Force. So thanks for sharing this with us. And I wanna remind the audience that if you have questions

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for Ben you can also put those questions using the Q&A button at the bottom of the window. And at the end of our presentations today we'll be sure to take some time to answer

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any questions you might have about this document or the other ones that we're going to be discussing. So why don't we move forward just a little bit in time to Drew's document and,

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Drew do you wanna tell us a little bit about what document you brought to discuss today? Yeah, absolutely. So I brought a letter from the Confederate governor

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of Texas, the last governor of Confederate Texas to E. B. Nichols, who was in charge of the state cotton plan, the plan to sell cotton for the state government to supply more material

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and other things. So this is a letterpress volume. This contains outgoing letters from the governor. There is a special ink used in a process

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of taking a written letter and pressing onto the page so that it's reproduced here. So this particular letter, back to the concept, the idea of handwriting, it's sort of difficult to read

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but I have a transcription here that I can read for you guys. It is, yeah, that is the one. So, "To E. B. Nichols.

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I have your favor of the second instance, including William M. Rice's certificate for $5,000, 1,500 of which you've collected yourself. John Bremen was called on for the 3,500 due

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on the certificate and did not pay. And I have no satisfaction as to when he would. We need more funds to pay interest as I wrote you a day or two since,

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please do not delay in furnishing them. I am having plates constructed for the bonds and be prepared to issue them in a week or two. I shall then commence in doing so.

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The bond will be very neat and safe. Considering the times, I am glad that there was a prospect of having this cotton matter closed as for Williams and furnishing forward.

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I believe it's asked them delay no further." It just says, "I'm sending along a copy of the letter that I sent to this other person, John Williams." So we need a little context here

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if I can give a little bit of background. So during the Civil War Texas was away from the center of gravity of the fighting and as such plantation owners in Texas continued

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to use enslaved people's labor to grow cotton. And so there's a large amount of cotton in the state. The problem is that there is no way to export it out of Confederate ports because of the Union blockade.

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So the economies, the industrialized economies are counting on cotton. They have none, they're willing to pay high prices. Inversely the people of the Confederacy rely

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on imported manufactured goods, they're willing to pay high prices. So there's this problem of sort of double inflation looking for a middleman.

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And so the city of Matamoros, Mexico, which is right across the Rio Grande from Brownsville becomes this port that's used by people in Texas and the Confederacy

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to export cotton and import goods. And I was researching what William Marsh Rice was up to during the Civil War. And the only thing I had to go off of at first was

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that he went to Matamoros. And so the fact that he went to Matamoros alone tells us a good amount, because this is not a place that you would end up by accident,

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the cost of living was extremely high because of all the inflation. So the question is, is he down there as a private individual doing import export business,

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or is he working for the Confederate government, or is he working for the state government? And so when I found this letter, here we have in the handwriting

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of the final governor of Confederate Texas, William Marsh Rice's name showing that he is participating in some degree in helping the state government. Drew, can you, in part of your description of the letter

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and contextualizing it, you said Matamoros was a place used by members of the Confederacy to avoid the blockade. And I wonder if you have any information on the nature or if there is such a thing on the nature

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or existence or description of what might be called a Confederate community or Confederate society in the town? Definitely, yeah.

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So there are a lot of descriptions of the nightlife going on there, accounts from travelers talk about groups of Confederates spending time there

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but also distinct groups of Texan State Military officials. So both the Confederacy and the State of Texas wanted to control the flow of cotton through there. So there were essentially competing presences,

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but yeah, there was ultimately a community of Confederates in the city that remained there after the war ended. There was actually a sense of the Confederates

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were gonna remain there and continue business as usual. Actually hoping that the French would be able to take over Mexico and they'd be able to continue their slave regime there.

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So it wasn't until the Juárez administration really starts to kick out Maximilian that these Confederates would grudgingly go back to Texas. Drew, at the beginning of our Doc Talk series

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we did discuss another document related to this history. It was a petition that William Marsh Rice sent to president Andrew Johnson in 1865, basically asking for amnesty under the terms

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that President Johnson had outlined. And in that document Rice talks about going to Mexico and that he left Texas to flee the what he called the tyranny of the Confederate government.

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And then here you're showing us that there is some evidence that William Marsh Rice's certificate for $5,000, whatever that means, had been passed to Governor Pendleton Murrah through E. B. Nichols.

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I'm just wondering if you can shed a little bit more light for us on what all that means. Does that indicate that Rice was, what does that tell us about what Rice said

00:24:46.710 - 00:24:53.250

in that amnesty petition? Because we looked at it at the beginning of this Doc Talk series, and now you've done all this additional research

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and I'm wondering if this document or others can help us answer the question of what that phrase meant and what William Marsh Rice's connection

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to the Confederate state government may or may not have been? Yeah, so that was kind of the background. So the question of what was he doing during the Civil War?

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The underlying question is, what was his stance on the war? So for my research, I believe that the Confederate tyranny

00:25:21.050 - 00:25:34.190

that he's referring to was a real thing. The Confederates threatened to impress all cotton in Texas and then to sell it exclusively at the benefit of the Federal Confederate government.

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The people of Texas or rather the slave owners of Texas did not like this, that threatened their profits. And so the state government of Texas developed its own plan that was a little bit better for the slave owners,

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gave them more of the profits. And so that's the state plan that Rice is involved in. So it's kinda tricky, on one hand he doesn't buy into the Federal Confederate project

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but he is bolstering the state government of Confederate Texas. So in terms of his stance on the war, the way that it kind of broke down for me is like he,

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above all he was interested in making money. He's very comfortable in being part of this network of commerce that's based on being enslaved, the enslavement of people

00:26:27.100 - 00:26:39.970

and the exploitation of their labor. And so while he may have disagreed with these policies of the Federal Confederate government, he was very much engaged in the project of the Confederacy.

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But there is tension there. It kind of speaks to the Confederacy wasn't necessarily as monolithic or as powerful as it may seem, or may seem to us.

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Drew, ignore this question if it's not going to get us anywhere, just say, "That's not gonna get us anywhere," and that will be a fine answer.

00:27:09.750 - 00:27:30.030

But your response about the primacy of economic gain, or that you want us to consider the primacy of economic gain in Rice's decision-making at this point, I wonder if there's, are you helped any

00:27:30.030 - 00:27:46.380

by any comparative perspectives of Confederate planters or former Confederate planters who find them, find themselves in similar situations but not necessarily in Matamoros,

00:27:46.380 - 00:28:07.100

but in places that come under Union jurisdictions? So how are planters responding in Louisiana in the environs of New Orleans, or along the Southern sea coast,

00:28:07.520 - 00:28:22.640

along the Sea Islands, and what types of economic decisions if you're aware of, what types of choices do people find themselves in and what types of choices are they making, economic choices,

00:28:22.640 - 00:28:37.710

are those planters making? If I understand your question, I found some cases where there are people who are fleeing from places like the Mississippi River area, Louisiana,

00:28:37.710 - 00:28:54.580

coming towards into Texas, hoping to grow cotton there during the war. So there is an effort to try to essentially ignore what's going on and continue to make money while they can.

00:28:58.320 - 00:29:12.450

I don't think I fully understand where you're going. Well, I guess, and this may be why the question isn't getting us anywhere, but might not get us. But I wonder if the example of New Orleans troubles

00:29:12.610 - 00:29:24.210

our sense of trying to figure out political loyalties through economic decisions? So I guess one of the things I'm trying to get at, are there loyal Confederates,

00:29:24.210 - 00:29:41.070

who once they find themselves in a situation in and around New Orleans, where the only trade to be had is under, right under Union protection, what are the machinations that people make?

00:29:41.070 - 00:29:55.510

Do they commit their thinking to letter or what have you? And I guess I'm just trying to get a sense as if whether under those different, but in some ways similar circumstances,

00:29:55.510 - 00:30:06.820

we can get a sense of how people are thinking. And whether that might inform in some ways the situation that Rice finds himself in. But let's not go down that road any farther,

00:30:06.820 - 00:30:16.010

let's stop right there. Just on that point, one thing I do wanna say is that because cotton coming out of Matamoros technically wasn't Confederate cotton.

00:30:16.010 - 00:30:27.580

Some of this cotton is going to places under Union occupation, like New Orleans. Some of this cotton is going to New York City. So the drive for economics seems

00:30:27.860 - 00:30:38.690

to override a lot of loyalties at this point, at least in this network I've seen. But I am curious about what happens the other way, particularly in the New Orleans example,

00:30:38.690 - 00:30:52.470

if there's a better option that cut us away from the Confederate cusp. I think it also, yeah, I think it also just underscores that even if somebody is prioritizing economic gain,

00:30:52.470 - 00:31:07.410

there's still various choices that could be made. And that in some of the places like around the Sea Islands that fell under Union control even during the Civil War there were nascent experiments with free labor

00:31:07.410 - 00:31:21.200

and the cultivation of cotton through the payment of wages, for example, those kinds of experiments were happening at the very same time that William Marsh Rice is making a different set of choices

00:31:21.200 - 00:31:35.920

which is to go to Matamoros and continue trading around the Union blockade, cotton that has been grown and cultivated through the exploitation of enslaved labor. So maybe the Northern industrialist who goes

00:31:35.920 - 00:31:48.980

to the Sea Islands and tries to try out wage labor, cotton cultivation and William Marsh Rice, who goes to Matamoros. Maybe they're both motivated fundamentally by economics,

00:31:48.980 - 00:31:59.970

but they're still making different choices. And I don't know if that's one of the things Dr. Byrd hoped to highlight, but it's something that his question brought to my mind.

00:32:01.330 - 00:32:13.480

Yeah, absolutely. I think that that's, for me that comes before the ideology question that this was the decision that he made in terms of how he was going

00:32:13.480 - 00:32:24.360

to exploit the situation economically that he was willing to do, this seems to trump was he a Confederate or was he a unionist? He was a trader in slave cotton.

00:32:26.630 - 00:32:36.040

Thank you for sharing this fascinating work with us. And maybe if there's time in the question and answer we can go back a little bit and ask whether there's any relationship

00:32:36.040 - 00:32:48.760

between Rice's work during the Civil War and the work that Ben has been uncovering in the antebellum period in Fort Bend County. But I want to also make sure we have time to talk

00:32:48.760 - 00:33:01.100

about our third document with our third panelist, a reminder to our audience that you can leave any questions that you have in the Q&A button or in the chat. And we will reserve some time at the end

00:33:01.100 - 00:33:10.600

to come back to those questions. I saw a good one coming in already, so we'll be sure to come back to that. But, Emily, tell us a little bit about the document

00:33:10.600 - 00:33:18.850

that you wanted to discuss today? We're moving forward pretty rapidly in time now. Yeah, yeah. Sorry for the pretty major time jump,

00:33:18.850 - 00:33:38.670

but this is an issue of The Thresher from February 12th, 1916, but more specifically if we scroll down, we can see a particular article which is titled, "E.B.L.S. will give entertainment.

00:33:39.280 - 00:33:53.860

Object to raise money for "Campanile" representation. Various interesting vaudeville stunts will be pulled off." And this is for context I suppose. The EBLS is the Elizabeth Baldwin Literary Society.

00:33:53.860 - 00:34:09.120

And they're the second women's organization that's founded at Rice, the first being the Rice YWCA. And though this is a very small document, I think including the header it's less than 150 words.

00:34:09.120 - 00:34:22.810

And though this is not the first time that the EBs as they called themselves were connected to minstrelsy, though it is the first instance I believe of the EBs charging money, and then opening the audience

00:34:22.810 - 00:34:35.550

to a wider Rice community. This doc helps us to answer a lot of questions and raises even more questions about the connections between racial performance in women's groups

00:34:35.550 - 00:34:47.940

on Rice's campus, potentially various and conflicting gender politics and understandings of like white collegial femininity in the early years of Rice and issues

00:34:47.940 - 00:35:08.200

of belonging and community here on campus, yeah. So I heard you say some words that aren't necessarily in this article, there's a reference to, oh there is a reference to minstrels,

00:35:08.200 - 00:35:19.980

but you mentioned first the reference to vaudeville stunts. I'm just wondering if for our audience you can give us a little bit more context around what minstrelsy or vaudeville stunts

00:35:19.980 - 00:35:35.340

in this period in 1916 might have involved. Yeah, certainly. So whereas kind of, I suppose traditional minstrelsy and minstrelsy here in the 20th century differ is

00:35:35.340 - 00:35:50.530

that this is very connected to kind of Southern nostalgia in this period. And especially from what we can tell from pictures that are in the Woodson is that these are largely women,

00:35:50.780 - 00:36:05.630

especially at these stunt parties that are donning a masculine garb and painting their faces, really performing blackface, as a way to essentially make each other laugh, right?

00:36:05.630 - 00:36:17.550

To entertain each other. So this would include kind of skits or various kind of sketches, and many of them in addition to having,

00:36:17.550 - 00:36:31.680

sorry, like blackface makeup also donned what's called like Negro dialect as well. So yeah. Thank you for that helpful context.

00:36:31.680 - 00:36:45.990

And you mentioned something about that interested me here about the audience for this, who was invited to this and who was involved in overseeing these kinds of stunts at this point in time.

00:36:46.250 - 00:36:56.150

There's a reference I noticed in this article to the president of the Institute that at the request of the president of the Institute the audience would be limited to coeds.

00:36:56.150 - 00:37:09.380

And then after this article you've brought to our attention there's also an article about the YWCA and there too Mrs. Edgar Odell Lovett and Mrs. James A. Baker are mentioned,

00:37:09.380 - 00:37:20.110

so what's going on there? I mean, is there some relationship between the YWCA and the EBLS, or are they two different organizations? Yeah, absolutely.

00:37:20.110 - 00:37:31.370

Thank you for that question. So thinking about kind of conflicting or clashing understandings of gender politics and 20th century femininity here is really important.

00:37:31.370 - 00:37:46.850

The EBLS and the YWCA are quite different organizations when you think about their social and political projects. I think typically we could say that the YWCA is much more conservative, whereas the EBLS

00:37:46.850 - 00:37:57.660

and the EBs themselves tend to be more progressive. Of course, there's limits to kind of what we think of is 20th century progressiveness. But for instance, like the EBs are very dedicated

00:37:57.660 - 00:38:09.580

to women's suffrage and the suffragist movement. Whereas the YWCA is very concerned with kind of like the Social Gospel movement and thinking through, or sorry,

00:38:09.580 - 00:38:22.410

participating in kind of charity outside of campus and a lot of female mentorship which is also important here because as you pointed out, Mrs. Edgar Odell Lovett,

00:38:22.410 - 00:38:34.560

thank you, and Mrs. James A. Baker are on the advisory council for the YWCA and the YWCA is certainly connected to Dr. Lovett in a way that the EBs are not.

00:38:34.560 - 00:38:47.340

And I think we also see that in the fact that also like you pointed out the president of the Institute, Dr. Lovett is the one who essentially steps in and says that the audience needs

00:38:47.340 - 00:38:58.040

to be closed to men. That only women are allowed to view women performing black face. And I think this implies that because he had to step in

00:38:58.280 - 00:39:14.560

the EDs perhaps didn't care, or weren't concerned with how these kinds of performances may have affected their standing as kind of proper white collegial women at the time.

00:39:16.500 - 00:39:32.030

And I think that, sorry, this instance of Dr. Lovett stepping in kind of sets the stage and sets the precedent for years to come within this one moment of him saying

00:39:32.030 - 00:39:47.010

or him being nervous essentially about, again women on stage representing Rice, performing in front of men creates this kind of cornerstone of the female community at Rice,

00:39:47.300 - 00:39:59.280

where this turns into a yearly kind of welcoming stunt party that's hosted by the Women's Council and is participated in by all the various women's groups on campus

00:39:59.280 - 00:40:12.210

as a way not just to welcome students back, but also welcome new freshmen women into the folds of the female community at Rice, all very focused around racial performance

00:40:12.210 - 00:40:27.160

and gender bent performance as well, it is important here. And we can see this continues on for years. In 1920 there's a very famous and pretty hyped up minstrel show put on

00:40:27.160 - 00:40:40.200

by the YWCA, Called the "Dusty Damsels" which there's a photograph in "The Campanile." There's multiple articles about it in The Thresher, and also in the Houston Post.

00:40:40.200 - 00:40:52.020

And it's very much advertised as this kind of novel idea, right? There's this line in the Houston Post that says, "Finally, a minstrel show for girls only,"

00:40:52.020 - 00:41:04.530

or something like that. And then later in 1922 The Thresher advertises another minstrel show which is advertised as by girls and for girls.

00:41:04.530 - 00:41:18.260

So it very much becomes part of this kind of almost echo chamber of performing identity onstage, but also amongst themselves. Hopefully that answered the question.

00:41:22.030 - 00:41:44.720

I'd be interested, Emily, in what your sense of the power of Lovett's prohibition, and whether your sources on the minstrel shows right now are mostly public?

00:41:44.720 - 00:42:04.430

And I guess I'd say are mostly newspapers and whether any of your sources are more private and whether and how they align? I'd also be interested about what you said

00:42:04.430 - 00:42:25.520

that this becomes a kind of central routine in welcoming young women into this community. And I wonder if you would talk anymore about what the place of blackness holds in this routine

00:42:28.910 - 00:42:45.330

that is the beginning of a kind of maturation or very much marking a place of new growth or I would think a place of new growth for these women? That's two questions, I'm sorry.

00:42:45.330 - 00:42:59.110

And, Emily, just so I'm sure, you brought one document? I asked if I could bring more. I was told, no, so, sorry. I'll admit, speaking of that,

00:42:59.110 - 00:43:10.250

this is not the most exciting perhaps document, but I think like I'm talking- I want to just say I disagree and that's all I'll say. I think this document is plenty exciting.

00:43:11.790 - 00:43:20.940

Definitely. Well thinking of documents and sources to touch on your first question. Yes, the majority of these that I looked at,

00:43:20.940 - 00:43:34.630

thinking about, or that I suppose explicitly mentioned minstrelsy were public. Were newspaper posts, but there are, and I can't remember the name of the collection now

00:43:34.630 - 00:43:43.320

so I'd have to go back and look, but there is a collection in the Woodson of these private photographs. And I believe some have been posted

00:43:43.320 - 00:43:52.240

on the Woodson's website as well. But there are these photographs of women at stunt parties, right? So these aren't the large

00:43:52.240 - 00:44:06.810

kind of charged for minstrel performances, these are the smaller stunt parties that I think in a lot of ways are kind of the root or the source, I suppose, of female community.

00:44:06.810 - 00:44:25.240

Ones that are very much hosted within the EBs and within the YWCA and within the pals and the als. Yes, so it is definitely a mix of both, though we have fewer personal instances from this era.

00:44:25.240 - 00:44:37.890

If we move forward in time, there's quite a few scrapbooks that the lit societies put where we can actually see this tradition continues for years. Almost, or well into the '70s, actually.

00:44:37.890 - 00:44:52.720

Yes, so there is that, and then I'm sorry, could you ask your second question again? Sorry, I'm muted. The second question was just,

00:44:52.720 - 00:45:08.630

if you would speculate some on the place of blackness in these rituals that I imagine are meant to mark a moment of growth and maturation for these young women?

00:45:10.090 - 00:45:22.580

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think the sense that I got from this is that these women are juxtaposing themselves against these characters that they're seeing

00:45:22.580 - 00:45:33.400

on stage, that they're performing on stage. And in doing so they're articulating their own identities. Not just their own communities but their own sense of themselves

00:45:33.400 - 00:45:49.810

on a campus that though it always welcomed women, it wasn't always necessarily welcoming to women, I suppose. So they are creating an identity in themselves. And not simply as, or how should I put this,

00:45:49.810 - 00:46:00.270

that they are creating an identity as white collegiate women at Rice. But I think the importance of the minstrelsy here is really this affirmation of

00:46:00.270 - 00:46:14.460

kind of Southern identity as well. Thinking about 20th century minstrelsy as this kind of expression again, of Southern nostalgia and thinking about the ways in which the EBs,

00:46:14.460 - 00:46:25.990

a few months after this particular performance they host a mock election, just a few days before the national election. Because again, they're very dedicated

00:46:25.990 - 00:46:40.520

to the suffrage movement and to women's suffrage. And at this event they open it by saying "The Pledge of Allegiance," singing the National Anthem, and then they also sing "Dixie."

00:46:40.520 - 00:46:52.550

So they're very much situating themselves as Southern women. And I think they're doing that in part again, by performing minstrelsy and by juxtaposing themselves against these black

00:46:52.550 - 00:47:00.360

and often masculine characters that they're playing on stage. Yes, I hope that answers the question. Thank you.

00:47:04.870 - 00:47:12.860

Fascinating work, and thank you so much for sharing this document. I think there's a lot of further discussion we can have from this document.

00:47:12.860 - 00:47:24.150

I mean, my point about not everything that you were telling us being in the document was in a way to poke fun at our limitations of one document for the Doc Talks,

00:47:24.150 - 00:47:34.590

because it's impossible to understand a single document like this in isolation from the other documents that you've been looking at. That's a recurring theme from the work we've been doing

00:47:34.590 - 00:47:46.510

at these Friday webinars is that if you were to look at this article and only read what it says, literally you might not immediately see how it relates to the work of the Task Force on Slavery,

00:47:46.510 - 00:47:58.300

Segregation and Racial Injustice, unless you know what a vaudeville stunt and a minstrel performance at this moment in time would have included. And of course, you've done the work to look

00:47:58.300 - 00:48:12.470

at other sources that help us get that picture. And also Amanda Focke, who's in the audience, from the Woodson Research Center being helpful as always shared an example of a photo

00:48:12.470 - 00:48:22.640

of one of these stunt parties from 1918 which you can find, anyone who's interested can find in the Pender Turnbull papers in the Woodson Research Center.

00:48:22.640 - 00:48:40.150

And we can share I think the link for that in the Q&A. I was also struck by your eloquent phrasing, Emily that women were, Rice welcomed women but maybe was not welcoming to women.

00:48:40.150 - 00:48:50.730

I think that's a familiar story to a lot of people who studied Rice history. And a lot of work has been done, not necessarily on this specific aspect

00:48:50.730 - 00:49:01.730

of the literary societies but more generally on the literary societies and the work they did to try to create community for women who were admitted, but still struggling

00:49:01.910 - 00:49:16.010

to form community in these ways that maybe now we would certainly see as exclusionary in their own way. But that theme in history is maybe useful too for connecting to a lot of the discussions we've had

00:49:16.010 - 00:49:31.270

on the webinars about the experience of black students once they arrived on campus that Rice welcomed but maybe was not as welcoming as it could have been. And it created the need for these additional efforts

00:49:31.270 - 00:49:41.260

by student communities to build that community, build cultures. I mean, this article reminds me of some work that we've looked at previously

00:49:41.260 - 00:49:54.170

of the black student union trying to raise money because they didn't have as much from the blanket tax. That's in essence kind of what the EBLS is doing here. Trying to raise some money

00:49:54.170 - 00:50:08.150

for representation in "The Campanile." Yeah, certainly. Sorry to keep talking, but no, I think there's definitely this very strong, very tangible connection

00:50:08.150 - 00:50:18.080

between minstrelsy and like a literal sense of belonging here. Again, in being represented in "The Campanile." Thank you.

00:50:18.080 - 00:50:38.590

And the Turnbull papers also I think raise or reraise a theme that begins with William Marsh Rice himself in our work, right? Is what I've been thinking while you have been speaking

00:50:39.040 - 00:50:57.820

about the maturation of Southern women into these ideas of white Southern culture and doing minstrel shows and singing "Dixie" might mean to them.

00:50:57.820 - 00:51:13.190

And I've been thinking of it as a kind of topping off of an education that has moved in one direction for some time, and also maybe a breaking of bonds for white women who may have had different,

00:51:13.190 - 00:51:32.030

had changing types of relationships with African-Americans over time and now needed to know what grown up white, black relations look like in the south. But the Turnbull papers also raise the question

00:51:32.030 - 00:51:50.590

of what it means for folks who come from someplace else to show up here. And Turnbull, it says here comes here from Nova Scotia, which in some ways is quite a different place

00:51:50.590 - 00:52:07.890

from Texas in terms of its history with African-Americans. In other ways it's similar to Texas, I rush to add, but our culturating, it looks like maybe our culturating people from outside of the south

00:52:07.890 - 00:52:23.720

is something that we should also consider. Well, we have a question in the chat from an audience member about the probate inventory which is where we started at the beginning of the Doc Talk.

00:52:23.720 - 00:52:34.710

And it concerns what you were saying, Ben about the last names and the absence of last names in some and then their appearance in the U.S. census. In the transition from the probate inventory

00:52:34.710 - 00:52:47.000

to the U.S. census, what was the last name assigned to Dely who you mentioned earlier? Typically the name of the plantation owner was used in a lot of these census records.

00:52:47.000 - 00:52:58.710

A lot of genealogical research kind of begins from that premise, have you found that to be confirmed in your work, or can you say a little bit more about how you identified Dely over time?

00:52:58.710 - 00:53:08.310

Yeah, so in this case, that is accurate. She's named, she's given the last name of the original plantation owner which would be Randon.

00:53:09.410 - 00:53:20.830

However, not all of the enslaved people of the estate were ascribed to that last name. So one document that's been really important in learning more about this for me is that in 1867

00:53:20.830 - 00:53:33.110

Frederick entered into a contract with the formerly enslaved people of the estate through the Texas Freedmen's Bureau. And on that document we see last names

00:53:33.110 - 00:53:44.830

for the first time entering the historical record for these black people. So Randon is the most commonly appearing last name as you would expect, given that these people were

00:53:44.830 - 00:53:56.200

once enslaved by the Randon family, but there's also a group that has the last name Wheat, there's a group with the last name Blue, and then some other surnames also appear.

00:53:56.200 - 00:54:13.140

But in terms of tracing Dely through time, not only was it the last name that was important, it was also the family relations to people that appeared in that 1867 Freedmen's Bureau contract,

00:54:13.140 - 00:54:23.250

because on the 1870 and 1880 census, she shows up in households with people with the surname Wheat, which is again one of the last names that appears

00:54:23.250 - 00:54:34.230

in that Freedmen Bureau contract. But no Rice? Rice doesn't, Rice does or doesn't show up as one of the names?

00:54:34.230 - 00:54:51.050

There is one woman named Diana Rice who is indicated on the 1870 census as being black and is living in one of the neighboring households to Dely Randon, however, I am less sure

00:54:51.690 - 00:55:09.610

that she was formerly enslaved by the Rices than I am about some of the other people we're concerned about. And maybe too, in our last few minutes here, Drew and Ben you could talk a little bit about the extent

00:55:09.610 - 00:55:22.410

to which these two periods and documents connect because, Drew you've told us that William Marsh Rice went to Mexico and was assisting in the trade of cotton out of that port around the Union blockade.

00:55:22.410 - 00:55:30.980

What was Frederick A. Rice doing at that time? And do we know anything about what was happening on this Fort Bend County estate that Ben has been researching?

00:55:34.620 - 00:55:50.620

Well, we have letters that show William Marsh Rice sending instructions to Frederick regarding the kinds of cotton that he should send down. At certain points the transportation difficulties

00:55:50.620 - 00:56:03.120

of getting cotton from sort of central Texas to the Rio Grande was relatively expensive. And so he would send over one letter where he says, "You must send only this kind of cotton,

00:56:03.120 - 00:56:12.970

middling cotton won't sell." And likewise, he sends letters later on in the war telling Frederick about what kinds of goods he's recently imported.

00:56:12.970 - 00:56:28.970

So it seems that Frederick was kind of, from that angle Frederick was kind of a subagent under Rice doing the sort of point of sale kind of deals on one end and the regulation

00:56:28.970 - 00:56:42.370

of the grading of this cotton that is being produced on these plantations. Yeah I would just add that at the same time Frederick was continuing to oversee the plantation

00:56:42.370 - 00:56:55.330

and the labor of these enslaved people who were continuing to pick and refine cotton. And what Drew has mentioned is also bolstered by the probate record, where Frederick at one point

00:56:55.330 - 00:57:08.710

I believe in 1863 or four reports that because of the blockade he's going to be looking for an alternate destination for his cotton and he mentions Brownsville

00:57:08.710 - 00:57:25.110

or Matamoros as the presumable destination. And I think if I'm remembering right, Ben, one of those probate records also shows bales of cotton that are being sold through William Marsh Rice and company

00:57:25.110 - 00:57:36.810

from this plantation. So one of the reasons why the probate records are so important is not only because they give the names of enslaved people, but because they extend across time

00:57:36.810 - 00:57:49.520

from what's the first date to the last date, do you remember? Frederick entered into the record in 1855 and carries out through 1867.

00:57:49.520 - 00:58:01.670

1867? So we have about 12 years of Rice having to report to the probate court the expenses of the estate, how much money he's making from the plantation,

00:58:01.670 - 00:58:14.570

what it's costing the estate to operate the plantation. And so the fact that it covers this period through the civil war helps us to piece together where at least some of the cotton that Rice was helping

00:58:14.570 - 00:58:25.000

to sell in Matamoros was coming from. And it does appear that that some of it was coming directly from the plantation that his brother was operating in Fort Bend County.

00:58:29.010 - 00:58:39.380

Well, we wanna thank all of you for taking time to be with us today on a Friday at the end of a very challenging semester. I know with everything else you have on your plate

00:58:39.380 - 00:58:51.310

we're so appreciative of the work you've been doing to advance our knowledge about the history of William Marsh Rice and Frederick A. Rice, of people like Dely and the Wheat family

00:58:51.310 - 00:59:06.400

and of the 20th century history of minstrelsy and blackface performance in the early years of the Rice Institute and on into the 20th century. So thank you so much for being here

00:59:06.400 - 00:59:16.210

and sharing your research with us. Thank you. Thank you. We always do, we're not bad,

00:59:16.210 - 00:59:25.820

I wanna say that, when we're alone, but whenever student researchers come, our audience is also bigger, Dr. McDaniel. There may be a correlation here.

00:59:25.820 - 00:59:39.610

I think I can pick up on that. We also want to make sure that those in our audience head to our website, taskforce.rice.edu. We had a wonderful event earlier this week

00:59:39.610 - 00:59:52.130

and also one last week that are now posted there. So if you're interested in learning more about the work of the Task Force, go to taskforce.rice.edu and you can see video recordings

00:59:52.130 - 01:00:00.280

of our past programming and stay in touch with us for future programming. Thanks again for being here. Have a great weekend, everyone.