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Good afternoon, Dr. Byrd. How are you today? Good afternoon, Dr. McDaniel. I am fantastic.

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There's nothing I love more than tree pollen and, and low humidity. Now, I really love low humidity, and I love it when tree pollen spoils my low humidity, because, you know, that keeps one agile. Yes. It's the, you know, the universe has to remain in balance.

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You can't have everything go right at once, so. Well, at least, at least we have a lot of fresh young faces on campus today. There's the Owl Days happening again in person, so that's been exciting to see. Indeed. And I got to present at Owl Days at 10:00, and I featured some of our work at a

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presentation in which I was joined by three of our wonderful colleagues. But the panel was on our commitment to a powerfully inclusive community. And so that, that got me started. And speaking of Owl Days, when I when I look around my screen, I see an owl, a visiting

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owl, in my, in my office. Oh, wow. Well, that's especially exciting. I wanna welcome also all of our guests in the audience today.

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Glad that you are here, and we're glad to see you, of course, every Friday at noon at this same Zoom time and place for our doc talks. I'm Caleb McDaniel, the chair of the department of history and the co-chair of the Task Force on Slavery, Segregation, and Racial Injustice.

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And what we do every Friday is gather here to talk about some of the documents that we are examining as part of our charge to explore and to share the history of Rice University's entanglement with slavery, segregation, and racial injustice. And of course, I'm joined here by my colleague, Dr.

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Alex Byrd from the department of history, and I think he also wants to share with us some exciting updates about our next task force campus-wide event. Absolutely. And so I want to put into the chat now the details of our conversation with Catherine Clack that is coming up next week.

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And so if you follow that link, those of you in the audience, it will take you to all of those details. And as I have been doing for the last couple of weeks, I will preview some directions that we'll be taking in that conversation during my portion of the doc talk, but of course,

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Catherine Clack has been here 40 years running what is now the Office of Multicultural Affairs, and so that, that will be a very informative and compelling conversation. I would say probably there are few people at Rice who have been working harder to create

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that powerfully inclusive community that you just referred to than Catherine Clack, so I'm really excited to hear what insights she has to share with us at that conversation. But that's for, or later this month, and today, we, we, we gotta get down to business. We've gotta talk about some documents, because that's, that's what we do here.

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And we also want to let our audience know that our doc talks podcast is slowly coming back to life. We have a new episode that has been posted to Spotify or Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts, and we want to encourage you to subscribe if you have not already to our podcast, which you can find at taskforce.rice.edu/doctalks.

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So should we have a doc talk? Let's go ahead and get started. Let's, let's do it. What, what do you have for all of us today?

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Well, you know, I got an email recently from, from the benefits office here at Rice that it's almost open enrollment season. I'm sure you got that email as well. And some of our audience may or may not know that we're not the only task force around

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these days. There's also a task force, a committee, that's been working on the ImagineOne system that has been rolled out here at Rice. And just for the sake of posterity, since these doc talks are being recorded, I want to note for future historians that this has been a major development on campus, the

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ImagineOne rollout, but one of the things the benefits office said is that there's apparently a feature of ImagineOne called Journeys, and you can log in to ImagineOne and click on certain panels and you're taken on a journey through the different benefits that you have to choose from.

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So I like that word, I think that's kind of what I've got today for the doc talk is we're gonna go on a journey. This is one of those multiple docs talks, if that's okay with you. So I wanna start the journey with this issue of the Rice Thresher from November 13th,

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1947. The top story in the Thresher on this particular date was, a delegation of Aggies was apparently meeting "with Rice leaders to promote a better relationship between the schools," which, if you study the history of Rice and A&M in this period, I think you would agree that a better relationship was, was needed.

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So that was the big news that week. There was also a little story down here below the fold about Phi Beta Kappa initiating new members on campus, which I thought was, was kind of nice, because this afternoon, I'm told, Phi Beta Kappa is holding its latest induction ceremony of our,

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of our new PBK members. But the item that I wanted to zero in on on the front page here is in the lower left hand corner, and it's a, just a brief news item about a new publication, a new student publication that is going to be appearing soon.

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And the headline says, the "New RI to be More Serious Than 'Owl.'" And the story begins, "This year's first issue of RI, the new magazine of Rice Institute, which has replaced the Owl, will be on sale in the Sallyport sometime before November 21st." Now, the audience might not be aware of these, these publications, 'cause they don't

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exist anymore, but I do have, in my office, some bound volumes from the library of some of these earlier student publications. The Rice Owl, which you can see here, dates back to the 1920s. The first volume was published in 1922.

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And, I'll just kind of flip through here, if you can see, this was a front page of a Valentine's Day issue of the Rice Owl. But what most of the Owl was taken up with was very short poems and jokes. If I weren't holding a book here, I could put some scare quotes around that, because some

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of them were not so funny. There were, were sketches, titillating if the students could get away with it, in the Rice Owl, and so the Thresher is telling us here in 1947 that this new magazine, which is taking the place of the Rice Owl, was going to be more serious than that.

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And so I have here a bound volume of the Rice Institute magazine. The cover might not make you think that it's, that it's more serious, but in fact, the publication did have a very different layout. You can see here, long-form articles, essays that were being written by students and

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published in the magazine. And since it was just getting started, it was gonna be sold while the students who were organizing it took some time to raise funds through the sale of advertisements. But I wanna read a little bit more here about the magazine, because I think you'll

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see some of the reasons why the Thresher thought this was gonna be a more serious publication. It says that "the first issue of RI will have two articles of particular interest to the students and the faculty." One is going to be called, "The Moral Obligations of the Scientist." Still, I think, would be an article of interest to

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students and faculty today. "And some material regarding the race problem." Okay. So that's, that's what this new issue is going to contain. And that got me wondering if we had somewhere a copy of this first issue of the Rice

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Institute magazine. Before I, before I answer that, let me just close here by saying at the bottom of the article, I already talked about this a little bit. Fance Frank, the editor, has told the Thresher "that the RI will sell for twenty

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cents a copy until there's enough money from advertising and donations to cover the actual cost of publishing," and then it's going to be "free to the student body." So now I wanna show you, with the help, of course, of our friends at the Woodson Research Center in the Fondren Library, they were able to pull up and locate in their archives a physical copy

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of this November 1947 issue of RI. And so now what we're looking at is the front cover of this November 1947 issue of the Rice Institute magazine. It says volume two, number one, which might confuse you a little bit.

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There was, I think, one issue from the previous spring, but it had had some trouble getting off the ground, and so this was sort of regarded as, as the first issue. And sure enough, when we scanned this copy, the article that was alluded to in the Thresher appeared very early on page three of the Rice Institute magazine.

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And what we see here at the top is a, is a, is I think a pretty arresting headline in 1947 at the Rice Institute. It says, "RI Presents Both Sides." And then there's a question, "Should Negroes Be Admitted to Rice?" I'm just quoting here this headline at the top.

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So what you see below that is sort of two columns of text. And on the left side of the page, there's an essay that's defending the answer "no" to that question. No, they should not be admitted to Rice. And then on the right side, there's an essay saying yes, yes, there should be a change in

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Rice's admission policy. And below, before you get to those two columns, there's a little note from the editor here, which, by the way, we know who the editor was from the Thresher, the editor was Fance Frank, who's listed here as the author of the the article, defending the

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admission of black students to Rice. But here she kind of gives a little editorial note about why she's decided to publish this exchange between two students on this question. "RI presents two articles," she says, "on the controversial subject of race relationships.

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Although not necessarily representing the attitude of the magazine, they present two sides of an issue that cannot safely or honorably be ignored." And so she says, we're gonna look at both sides, we encourage you to look at the matter carefully, evaluate the facts, and decide what you think on the question.

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So when I saw this, Dr. Byrd, you know, one of the first questions I had was about who these two students were who were writing these lengthy articles on this question. Because as you can see, if I scroll down here, the forum actually spread over several

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pages of the Rice Institute magazine. It's a pretty extensive consideration of this question of whether black students should be admitted. And I know of the names of some Rice alumni from the past and even from this period, but I'd never really heard of these two names.

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Bob King, who takes the negative position in favor of segregation; and Fance Frank, the editor of the magazine who comes out in favor of integration at Rice in 1947. So I tried to do a little bit of research to find out who those students were. As best I can tell.

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Bob King was probably Robert Liggett King, who's from Beaumont. He was a member of the Class of 1949, so that means that he would have been a junior when he wrote this particular essay. And you can see him pictured here with some of his classmates from the 1948 Campanile.

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It was possible to know a little bit, he's right down here, I'm sorry, I should point him out. It was possible to find out a little bit more about Ms. Fance Frank, who's pictured here in the middle.

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She was a member of the class of 1948, so she was a senior as she was launching this new magazine and editing it. And it turns out that after leaving Rice, she moved to Paris and began a career as an internationally renowned ceramic artist.

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And she in fact worked extensively in porcelain and apparently invented some new techniques for a very high temperature casting of ceramics with particular colors. She was later, before her death in Paris in, in 2008, acknowledged in 1996 by the Association of Rice Alumni with a Distinguished Alumni Award.

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You can see her here, "Fance Franck," with her last name spelled a little bit differently than it was when she was a student. But it talks a little bit about how she became a ceramist of international fame and showed her work at the Smithsonian, at collections in Switzerland, at the Hermitage

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Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and was in fact awarded with one of the highest honors from France's Order of Arts and Letters for her distinctive work as an artist. And you can read a little bit more about her in a folder about that award in 1996. So she, she was born in Montgomery, Alabama, but she grew up in Houston, Texas,

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and, and graduated in 1948. So that's just a little bit about the two students. I think I have a picture of some of her work here, so I'll just throw that up, some of her, her impressive works.

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But let me go back to this, this magazine article and summarize just very briefly some of the positions that Mr. King and Ms. Frank were taking on this question in this, this forum.

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And Mr. King's position is pretty easy to summarize from the very first paragraph. He, because he doesn't mince words. His first sentence is, "I believe in segregation. I believe in equal rights," he says, "for both whites and blacks, but not in

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intermingling their societies. Now, this is an issue I know we've talked about on doc talks before, Dr. Byrd, the specter of, of social equality or social mixing, and, in fact, I don't want to, to really dignify a lot of the arguments that are in this essay because, you know,

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they don't deserve, I think, a lot of attention, because they, they traffic in, in racist ideas about Caucasians and people of, quote unquote, "Negroid descent." And when it comes right down to it, what Mr. King says is that he believes in segregation because of racial ties and heredity.

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And his major argument for opposing the integration of Rice is that it would lead to things like white students and black students together at the same dance. And, of course, we've talked before about the ways that that kind of argument is really basing an argument from segregation on fears about interracial relationships.

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So I don't wanna spend too much time on that, but is there anything you wanna add about Mr. King's argument? The only, the only thing I would add, and I'm glad that we won't get too much into the

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details of his argument, but I'm sure some of our viewers may want to follow up on this, but outside of the details, the kind of scope of the, of the argument in those first two sentences or three sentences, I can, I think can be quite helpful, because it's a kind of approach that still prevails today, that, that, that takes a stance and then

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ostensibly embraces the opposite of that, of that stance. And I think having a view of the ways in which this manner of, the history of this way of arguing can help us to approach related arguments that also embrace these kind of contradictory notions.

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And so that's, that's why I find the start particularly valuable. Yeah, that's a good point, you know, "I'm all for equal rights, don't get me wrong," but then most of the article argues in the opposite direction, or doesn't see a tension there, where the tension seems so obvious to us.

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But I do wanna spend a little time on, on the other side of this question, this article that's written by Fance Frank. And she answers the question, should black students be admitted to race, yes. And she sort of approaches the question a little bit differently.

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It's less direct, the way that, that we saw on the left side of the page, because she's, she's clearly interested in, in persuasion and attempting to sort of bring people along. She says she's heard many references to the, quote unquote, "Negro problem," and heard lots of opinions expressed on the subject, but no facts about the subject.

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And so she says to understand the situation, it's necessary to look at some salient facts, and a lot of this right side of the page, in stark contrast to the left side of the page, you can see just without even reading, do you notice any differences, just looking left to right, between these two columns?

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So, absolutely, I noticed some differences as a history major just scanning it. I'm, my blood pressure goes up just a little, 'cause I see a lot of percentage signs and dollar signs, and it, it makes me think math is involved. Lots of numbers, lots of math.

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She talks about the number of children in Texas attending public schools, and then the percentage of those children who are white, the percentage that are black, how much money is spent on the classrooms in these different schools. But her point is really to try to gather some facts about, about what segregation,

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what "separate but equal," if we could use that that historical phrase, actually looks like on the ground, and the ways that this disadvantages black students in the public schools, that in a way that creates what a lot of defenders of segregation then refer to as the, quote unquote, "Negro problem." So she's got, she's sort of marshaled a lot of

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evidence to, to argue against that position. And one of the questions it raised for me is, is where she got all of that data, because clearly she's, she's done some research, and she's got a lot of information, including, on the last page, she talks about the experience of black soldiers in the war.

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Of course, this is in 1947. And she gives some evidence about intelligence tests given by the U.S. Army Expeditionary Force comparing the IQs of white men and black men and arguing that they, that, that they, they don't show, you know, they don't argue in favor of

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segregation. Now, of course, this, this mode of argumentation about IQ tests and intelligence today, if we were, were looking at this, we might say kind of basing the argument on some shaky foundations, or maybe conceding a little too much to the other side. But I think it's interesting that she has these, this kind of data, these numbers,

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and it raises the question, where is she getting, is she getting those kinds of numbers? And in the end, she, she comes to a position that is, that is, we might, we might use the, the word "paternalistic" to describe it, because by the end of the, the column, she sort of says that white people at Rice should not act in word or deed to

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"impede the development of the," quote unquote, "Negro." And this is going to "demand," she says, "constant circumspection and unfailing tact in all relationships across the color line." And she says that there will be some growing pains for this group that has been so disadvantaged in the past, but she says, it's "for us, the older,

00:23:04.920 - 00:23:30.390

better educated, more mature group," the white Americans, "to handle the situation with tact, generosity, and leadership." So it's an argument about, against segregation and in favor of integration that very much bears the marks of its moment in time. It's a post-war effort to kind of chip away at the edifice of, of Jim Crow.

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And one place, she says, that that chipping should begin is at Rice. She concludes by saying, "The logical place to begin correcting the situation is at Rice and other colleges." Quote, "If educated Negroes and white men working together come to a fuller understanding of each other and the problems of American relationship, we

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will make a real achievement." So that's Fance Frank's argument in 1947. So I haven't quite finished the journey, but let me pause there and ask you, Dr. Byrd, if you have any reactions to Ms. Frank's column. Hello?

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Oh, Jan? Are you there, Dr. Byrd? Are you, are you muted? I'm sorry, I was just handling that.

00:24:25.720 - 00:24:32.410

Okay. Okay. We had a, we had a former panelist rejoining us, probably, probably unexpectedly to her. Using an old link.

00:24:33.510 - 00:25:02.990

Yes. But what do you, what do you, do you have any reactions to the...? I do, I have, I have one in particular, and I could get more, but this is the one that I find interesting, is that I'm struck by what may be a similarity between an allusion in some of President Lovett's early speeches about the importance

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of education in the South and some allusions to its importance across the entire South. Now, Frank in her work has taken, isn't alluding, right, it goes beyond an allusion, and spells it out in ways that I haven't seen evidence yet of Lovett spelling it out. But, but one of the things I find interesting about it is that it speaks to, it

00:25:39.520 - 00:26:06.850

speaks to an unfolding of a type of argument about equality, and raises the point that this is a position that has precedent. Right, now, it's very much rooted in, in a place in time, as you say, it is a kind of post-World War II liberal argument.

00:26:06.850 - 00:26:34.390

But, but I can see some of it, some of its predecessors, right, which just raises the question for me that, that this argument also exists before the war, right, I'm not saying that, that Lovett holds it, but, but it's an argument that also exists before the war. The second thing is just a question, and that is I'd be interested if Frank, how

00:26:34.390 - 00:26:58.670

many, if any, college-educated African Americans Frank knew, because I feel like, that that could inform or disinform some of her position. That is a great question. Did she, I think she, she, in fact, mentions that at some point in, in this article.

00:26:59.570 - 00:27:18.470

See if I can find, might not be able to lay my hand on it, but she says something to the effect that most white students--oh, here it is. "Most of us in the South," I'm quoting her here, "have never talked to an educated Negro. Therefore, we don't know what education can do for him." And when I read

00:27:18.470 - 00:27:42.560

that line, the "most of us" did make me kind of wonder, well, you know, does she, has she been in touch, maybe with, with educated black men and women in Houston, where she grew up? And I'm gonna get us there, I think, at the, at the end of this journey, if I can move along a little, a little quickly, 'cause that was a question that, that came up

00:27:42.560 - 00:28:01.750

for me as well. I also had a question about, what was the impact of this, of this magazine article on campus, because we saw that it was gonna be sold in the Sallyport, right, right under the administration offices at the time, and we know from past doc talks how earlier

00:28:01.750 - 00:28:27.610

discussions of the question of integration on Rice were, at Rice, were greeted on campus, like in the 1928 pre-law banquet, where there was a vote taken on this question. So it made me wonder what the reaction was, and I did find a review of this issue of the magazine in the December 4th, 1947 issue of the Rice Thresher, and it's

00:28:27.610 - 00:28:48.990

written by Brady Tyson. And Brady Tyson, writing for the Thresher, reads through the, the article, and says, on the whole, it was a pretty good, it was a pretty good issue despite the troubles. He was concerned that there were only 250 copies, so they sold out really quickly and

00:28:48.990 - 00:29:11.190

only some people were able to, to read the the issue. So he hoped that in future issues there would be more. He does comment on the question of the pro and con article here on page six. He says, quote, "The pro and con article, 'Should Negroes Be Admitted to Rice,' was

00:29:11.190 - 00:29:26.090

poorly correlated. Oftentimes it seems as if the two debaters agreed, and often it seemed as if they were debating different questions. Incidentally, very little was said by either side as the relative merits or demerits of

00:29:26.090 - 00:29:48.980

letting Negroes in Rice, but most other articles you see of this type suffer from the same thing, and practice will surely improve in the case of RI." Now, I found that review interesting, because Brady Tyson, unlike Fance Frank and Bob King, was a name I definitely did recognize from the history that we're, that we're examining, because

00:29:48.980 - 00:30:16.310

this issue is from 1947, December 1947, but about a year later, while Brady Tyson was serving as editor of the Rice Thresher, he launched a major controversy and discussion on campus that was, that was begun by an interview we've talked about before that he conducted with Heman Sweatt from the University of, of Texas.

00:30:16.330 - 00:30:29.220

I probably said "sweat." Is that right? "Sweet." Hey, we, I go back and forth, and I think that's why there are two of us here. Okay. Probably, probably our audience members could correct us on this question.

00:30:29.220 - 00:30:52.820

But you might recall that this, this article sparked a lot of debate in the pages of the Rice Thresher, with editors, letters to the editor, flowing in to Tyson, and Tyson took a pretty progressive for that time position on the question of integration that ultimately prompted the president of Rice, William V.

00:30:52.820 - 00:31:13.140

Houston, to send a letter to the Thresher, reminding Tyson that the charter "forbade integration," according to President Houston, and therefore, it was just an academic question. There was nothing that could be done on this. So we, I knew that that came up about a year later, and, and what's interesting here is

00:31:13.140 - 00:31:34.090

that one of those letters to the editor that was sent in in January 1949 was from none other than Bob King. Okay. Bob King was the one writing the, in favor of segregation in the Rice Institute magazine, and was a classmate of Brady Tyson's.

00:31:34.630 - 00:31:52.360

They were both juniors at the time of the magazine article and seniors at the time of this letter to the editor. And if you've read that Rice Institute magazine article, it won't surprise you how Mr. King feels about Tyson's latest arguments in the Thresher.

00:31:52.360 - 00:32:16.940

He reprises a lot of the same talking points from the magazine about how he strongly desires equal rights, but he's "appalled and saddened that one would wish to violate the sacredness of both races, which seems," quote, "very disrespectful to our maker." And in particular, here he's talking about a question that's been posed to Mr.

00:32:16.940 - 00:32:39.560

Tyson of whether he would be opposed to, quote, "a Negro student of Rice dating his best girlfriend's sister or other coeds." This question of social mixing. So that's not very surprising that he's making those arguments, but I was struck by a report that he gives in this letter of an interaction between the three students that

00:32:39.560 - 00:33:02.580

we've been talking about; Fance Frank, Bob King, and Brady Tyson; in January 1948. So this is only a couple months after this pro con article has been published. And he says, "Some time in January 1948," this is King writing, "at Mr. Tyson's request, Ms.

00:33:02.580 - 00:33:19.620

Fance Frank; a former student at Rice, and strongly in favor of anti-segregation of whites and Negroes; Mr. Tyson, and myself, journeyed downtown to see the president of the Watchtower Life Insurance Company.

00:33:20.160 - 00:33:36.180

The purpose of the trip was to influence me." And he said, "The gentleman is a very fine man," this president of the Watchtower Life Insurance Company. "I was influenced that much," he said. "One of the first statements the president made was that he is," I don't even know how

00:33:36.180 - 00:33:53.380

to how to read this, 1/32? He has a fraction here, that he is 130 seconds, quote "Negro. And he showed me pictures of relatives" that were very dark complected, and made arguments against segregation, I'm paraphrasing now what King says.

00:33:53.380 - 00:34:09.580

But in his closing statement, the president said something that really lost him whatever credibility he had gained with Mr. King in this exchange, because he said he saw no reason why there should not be dating across the color line, and that was a bridge too far for Mr.

00:34:09.580 - 00:34:23.050

King. And he says, Mr. Tyson, he remembers Mr. Tyson agreeing verbally with that position in this meeting. So this, this, this, this was amazing to me in a way, Dr.

00:34:23.050 - 00:34:40.900

Byrd, because often you see a publication like the magazine and maybe you get the review like we saw, but we're, we're, we're able to piece together now that this conversation that was in the pages of the magazine didn't end in the pages of the magazine, because it's clear that, that Ms.

00:34:40.900 - 00:34:58.870

Fance Frank and Mr. Tyson thought that they might still be able to persuade Mr. King to, to the rightness of their position, and even went so far as to invite him to go downtown with them to talk to the president of the Watchtower Life Insurance Company and

00:34:58.870 - 00:35:10.860

see if they could influence him. What do you make of that? Oh, you're, you're muted. I made two things of it when, when you, when you pointed it out.

00:35:10.860 - 00:35:39.690

I think the one thing is the, the beauty of the university, right. It's a, it's an illustration of some of the things that the university does best, and particularly outside of the classroom, right, informed by things that happen inside the classroom. I think the second thing is it's an allusion, I think, to access to a

00:35:39.690 - 00:36:00.600

part of the black community that opens up. I have a feeling we'll be traveling to Fourth Ward in a second, but opens up a entrée into another section of Houston. And the third thing, when you saw me look away just now, when you, when you called my

00:36:00.600 - 00:36:28.710

attention back, I was trying to remember whether this musical is called Riverboat or Steamboat. I was trying. But is that, is that this, this trope, that this is a common post-war anti-segregationist trope, the, the idea of using passing or the ability to pass as a kind of argument in

00:36:28.830 - 00:36:42.660

against segregation. And it finds itself expressed in Hollywood and on Broadway again and again during this period, and right here it's being acted out in real life. Yeah. Yeah.

00:36:42.900 - 00:37:01.380

Well, you're, you're right that we're gonna travel a little bit more, but not to Fourth Ward, to Third Ward. But you, but you knew, you knew more than me, because I didn't immediately recognize anything in this reference to the Watchtower Life Insurance Company that would, that would

00:37:01.380 - 00:37:25.950

maybe clue someone more familiar with the Third Ward in. But what's really interesting is that we don't know from Mr. King's letter who this president was that they went to meet together as students. But I, I did learn a little bit about the, the, the Houston Watchtower Life Insurance

00:37:25.950 - 00:37:50.280

Company, and it was founded by Mr. Thornton McNair Fairchild, who was born in Houston in 1875; attended Prairie View College, now Prairie View A&M; served for a time as principal of black high schools in Houston and other places; and then he founded the Watchtower Life Insurance

00:37:50.280 - 00:38:10.300

Company, which became one of the leading black insurance companies in Texas, and served as its president and major stockholder until his death in 1941. And so, by the time that our students that we've been talking about traveled to talk with the executive of the Houston Watchtower Life Insurance Company, it wouldn't have been

00:38:10.300 - 00:38:32.290

with Mr. Fairchild, but around that time when Texas Southern University was getting its start, you might remember that it was in 1947, around this time, that Texas passed a law chartering what became Texas Southern University. The oldest building on campus was actually named after Mr.

00:38:32.290 - 00:38:50.110

Fairchild, the Fairchild Building, the founder of this insurance company, which apparently for many years had its offices on Dowling Street, now Emancipation Avenue, in the Third Ward. And I have not been able to figure out exactly who might have been that president

00:38:50.110 - 00:39:14.500

that the students met with to try to persuade Bob King, but we do know a little bit about the vice president from a few years later, Charles Shaw, who in 1949 appeared here in an article in the Houston Post at a conference from, that was being hosted by leading members of the black community in Houston, and C.A.

00:39:14.500 - 00:39:33.070

Shaw, an executive of the Watchtower Life Insurance Company, was appearing on a panel together with Heman Sweatt, which I'm glad to see one of our audience members has chimed in in the chat and vindicated my pronunciation, Dr. Byrd, so. But here you have a panel where, where Mr., Mr.

00:39:33.070 - 00:39:50.290

Sweatt and, and Mr. Shaw were presenting about civil rights issues in Houston. A few years later, Shaw has become the president of the Watchtower Life Insurance Company, and addresses seniors at Yates High School for their commencement.

00:39:51.310 - 00:40:16.780

He's named a few years later as the the head of the Metropolitan Division of the United Fund in Houston, which was the division that solicited contributions two the United Fund philanthropic community chest in Houston from Houston's black citizens and business leaders. So clearly there's a long history of the Watchtower Life Insurance Company

00:40:16.810 - 00:40:38.410

being a major institution in the Houston business community and being, its executives from its founder on, being leaders in the NAACP, the early NAACP in Houston, and civil rights activism, and maybe, here's just a speculation, there's some answers there to the question of where did Ms.

00:40:38.430 - 00:41:02.980

Frank get some of these arguments and some of this data and some of this information that we saw in the magazine article? It may well not have been totally separate from the interactions that she and Mr. Tyson evidently had with members of the black community in Houston, who they knew

00:41:03.010 - 00:41:21.820

would, would be available to talk with their, their fellow student, this rabidly segregationist student that they wanted to bring to talk to, to this unnamed executive. So that's, that's where I am on the journey right now, but I'm, I'm interested to see if we can go farther along those lines.

00:41:25.120 - 00:41:46.030

Well, that's fantastic. I, you know, I have a feeling that my IO benefits journey will not be as compelling and interesting and bump-free as, as that journey was, but... It might, well, no comment, but it might take, it might go over time, and might go

00:41:46.030 - 00:42:01.900

longer than, than, as I did. I apologize for... I know how to talk fast, and the audience knows how to listen fast, so here we, here we go. Thanks for that, and there is a segue, right, with, to, to my document, because, in

00:42:01.900 - 00:42:35.320

1996, the very year that Frank was receiving the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Association of Rice Alumni, the document that I'm going to focus on today was being written by Cathy Clack to Dennis Huston, who at the time was the chair of the athletics committee. And so I'm gonna jump right in, and I'm gonna do one doc, I'm gonna, I'm

00:42:35.320 - 00:42:51.040

gonna do one doc and, and see, see what happens. And so my doc... Wait a second, wait a second, wait a second. This is cheating a little bit, a document with, with two other documents affixed to it.

00:42:51.990 - 00:43:09.280

And I am gonna return to those, like it's a layered doc, right. It's, it's a document that has, I'll describe it in a moment, but it's a document that has other documents attached to it. And I'm gonna call it a single doc, somewhat bending the rules, but the other docs are

00:43:09.280 - 00:43:25.070

small docs. And so, I mean, what, what can I do if the doc comes to me attached with other docs? So the, the letter that we have here is of a kind that we are familiar, it's on Rice letterhead.

00:43:25.070 - 00:43:49.170

The version that we're looking at right now is obscured, though it appears to come from the Office of Multicultural Affairs. It has been received in the Office of the President of Rice University on March 26th, 1996. There are two Post-it notes attached to it, one dated March

00:43:49.170 - 00:44:08.740

27th and addressed to Dr. Gillis, who at this time is Malcolm Gillis, who's the president of the university, and there's a couple of lines of introduction attached to it, and it is signed by Jermaine Gibbs, and I'll return to that note, or that Post-it shortly.

00:44:08.740 - 00:44:31.540

And there's a second Post-it that is very hard to make head or tails of, but it has the date April 14th, it has an F with a circle around it, and it has the letters "BSA" attached to it. But if we continue through the document, we see, we have a shot where the Post-it has

00:44:31.540 - 00:44:53.650

been rolled up, and we see that this initial letter was written March 15th, 1996, even though the president gets it on March 26th. It's to Dennis Huston, chair of the Committee of Athletics, and it's written, looks to be written by Catherine Clack, though there are, and other advisers to the

00:44:53.650 - 00:45:21.160

BSA. And quickly, the letter raises, really is attached to one concern, and that is, sometime in the spring semester, the Black Student Association had requested from the athletics committee at Rice the use of Autry Court, the old Autry Court, which is, was in the gym and where Rice basketball plays.

00:45:21.370 - 00:45:43.540

They wanted to hold a party in Autry Court on March 23rd. And they send this letter, they make this request to the athletics committee. The athletics committee considers, to make a long and convoluted story short, the athletics committee has a somewhat drawn out process of considering the question,

00:45:43.540 - 00:46:09.130

ultimately rejects the matter, tells the BSA they cannot hold the party, and this letter from Catherine Clack to Professor Huston; I think, I'm pretty sure that's Professor Huston; to Professor Huston, is to raise some concerns about this answer. The first paragraph is a, is a, is a complaint, or not a complaint, it's an

00:46:09.130 - 00:46:26.820

explanation of process. It seems to be responding to a point of contention that is not clearly articulated within the letter itself. It's Catherine explaining why this letter is coming to Professor Huston at this particular

00:46:26.820 - 00:46:48.270

time. And basically what you can tell from this first paragraph is that Catherine has been in communication with other people who aren't Dennis Huston, and perhaps this has raised some hackles on the part of Professor Huston, and she is explaining why, by the time she writes this letter, she has also already spoken to the vice president for

00:46:48.270 - 00:47:07.110

student affairs, which is pretty much as high as you can go on, on student matters, and must have been a cause of concern. But the heart of the matter is the nature of the decision that the athletics committee, here represented by Dr.

00:47:07.110 - 00:47:23.010

Huston, has made. And she's, she's outlining what she sees as troubles to the process. So the BSA makes this request. It's her understanding that the athletics committee then has questions about it.

00:47:23.010 - 00:47:48.360

They respond negatively to it, and it begins this long conversation that, as Ms. Clack points out, involves the vice president for student affairs, it involves the president's office, it involves what we would now know as the University Council, and her understanding is that there's some back and forth between all of these offices for a

00:47:48.360 - 00:48:14.220

request to use Autry Hall, which is typically made by the athletics committee. And so she's concerned that it took all this to make this decision, and she's also concerned that it doesn't seem to her that the athletics committee, who had enough questions in mind to, to touch all these bases, did not return to the BSA to actually

00:48:14.220 - 00:48:44.130

touch bases with them before making a negative decision. She also raises what she sees as a source of some of this negativity, and that is that the BSA is being held responsible for a party of two years ago that apparently didn't turn out too well, which she, that was hosted by a Greek letter

00:48:44.130 - 00:49:08.940

organization at Texas Southern University that was given access to the Grand Hall that, according to the athletics committee, some type of problem was raised through it. And so Catherine Clack is is quite disappointed in this. She uses, I mean, if you worked at a university, you'd know that there's some

00:49:08.940 - 00:49:16.880

really strong language in here, even though it may not at first glance look like strong language. And I do work at a university. And I do work at a university, so.

00:49:16.890 - 00:49:31.590

.. Okay, so you have spotted, you have spotted some of it, but this is almost, I don't know that there's any stronger language to use at a university than this. "We are particularly troubled to discover that the issue was discussed with a number of

00:49:31.590 - 00:50:00.960

different individuals and groups," and here comes strong university language, "without the slightest effort being made to acquire additional information from the individual who made the request." That is coming guns blazing, I believe, at the, at the, at the university. So the, the protest is made by a letter, the end paragraph raises the

00:50:00.960 - 00:50:19.590

prospect of revisiting this issue and resolving it, because the potential consequences of it might be great. And so Catherine Clack ends the letter by saying that the black community at Rice is demoralized by this decision, they are demoralized how they have been treated, and

00:50:19.590 - 00:50:39.690

they are demoralized about it in the midst of admissions season, in the midst of the season in which we are now, and Catherine lays out that this needs to be attended to quickly, because it could have consequences for our yield, yield by the, yield of students, yield of black students.

00:50:39.690 - 00:51:01.620

And she's particularly concerned about it because we are at a point in time where the university had just admitted one of its largest black classes ever. And so that's the, that's the letter in a nutshell, though I feel like I took more than a nutshell, so I'm just gonna rush through some of the questions that this raises for

00:51:01.620 - 00:51:19.830

me, and then I'll pitch it to you, Dr. McDaniel, to, to get some of your feedback. So the first one that's interesting is that we're talking about the BSA and not the BSU. That's the first one, and that, that, so sometimes in, in the mid '90s, the name

00:51:19.830 - 00:51:44.940

changes. It raises a question of, of how and, and why. The second thing that comes to mind to me is there's a great deal of continuity in the black experience on campus that is, that is expressed here. And that continuity is the importance of other institutions in the local Houston area

00:51:44.940 - 00:52:12.450

to, to black life, and particularly black social life on campus, though there might be a different valence that, that I think is addressed here. This is happening in the context in which the BSA has posted some successful collaborative parties with organizations on black campuses in Houston, and it's also a

00:52:12.450 - 00:52:37.230

moment where the black community on campus has had some success reproducing aspects of black college life, historical aspects of black college life on, on the Rice campus, with step shows and the like, for example. And I'm just gonna put in the chat here, and I'm gonna encourage our audience just to, you

00:52:37.230 - 00:53:02.400

know, YouTube, if you don't stop it, it'll just start playing related videos, and so I wanna encourage our audience to get a sense of what the mid '90s might, might be like. I've put a link in the chat to Spike Lee's School Daze, and this is a post School Daze moment which gives a sense of the, of the types or ideas about black, black,

00:53:02.400 - 00:53:23.520

historically black college culture that may predominate in the minds of people who don't necessarily have connections to historically black collegiate culture, but are nevertheless working to reproduce aspects of that culture on a predominantly white campus. So, so, so one of my questions--you see how fast I'm talking?

00:53:23.520 - 00:53:31.020

Am I talking fast enough? Okay. All my fault, all my fault too, but... No, no, I like talking fast, it makes me feel like I'm in the classroom.

00:53:32.070 - 00:53:54.930

This is why it's hard to learn in my class. Okay, so one of the questions that I have here has to do with that change in valence, that potential change in valence, and that is, do these successful co-coordinated social events with black Greek letter organizations and the like in Houston, does this represent

00:53:54.930 - 00:54:17.910

a new kind of connection between black students at Rice and black students at historically black colleges and universities? Or is it an intensification and a relocation of these former connections? And by that I mean, are we seeing types of black intercollegiate cooperation that in the

00:54:17.910 - 00:54:36.320

past happened off of Rice campus, now in the mid '90s, being held on Rice's campus? So that's, that's one question for me. The second question is how to explore potential issues of bias. So one of the questions that's raised here is Catherine Clack is raising the questions

00:54:36.330 - 00:55:03.030

of, did, did the athletics committee, in denying this request, make the decision based on prejudice and bias that had nothing to do with the students who are asking, but had something to do with other black students not even associated with, with the, the university? The question of repercussions, I think, is, is worth exploring.

00:55:03.060 - 00:55:26.620

Do these things actually matter in the recruitment and admission of, of black students? And the two last things that are, that are things that I think I'm most excited about exploring, is this, this signature line at the end. So Catherine Clack is there as director, but then also there are Ed Cox and Chandler

00:55:26.620 - 00:55:47.200

Davidson. And I'm interested in this interplay between vital black staff at the university and vital faculty, but also at this time vital black faculty that is coming into fuller development. And then, the last potential very interesting thing that's coming here that may

00:55:47.200 - 00:56:07.120

actually be transformative is this Post-it at the top, which is signed by Jermaine Gibbs and addressed to Dr. Gillis, that says, "Dear Dr. Gillis, here is the letter sent by Cathy," the diminutive, right, I guess, "to Dennis

00:56:07.120 - 00:56:30.370

Huston." There's a whole first name thing happening here. "Dear Dr. Gillis, here's the letter sent by Cathy to Dennis Huston?" I'm sorry. Instead of making my point, I'm screaming, which is a bad...so Dr. Huston is not given, right, "Dr." or "prof," Gillis is not necessarily president, but he's

00:56:30.370 - 00:56:49.540

given "Dr." This looks to be written in the president of the BSA's hand. And then if you have any questions, give me a call. Ring me up. So, so I'm waiting for the doc talk that has a file in President Hackerman's

00:56:50.680 - 00:57:10.700

papers in which there's this type of communication happening between the President of the BSA and the president of the university. I can think of something, I can think of something in the Hackerman papers, but it was not jotted out on a Post-it note with this kind of informality, that's for sure.

00:57:10.720 - 00:57:22.540

It had letterhead, you know, it had, looked more like the document underneath the Post-it note. Yeah. Yeah, I think I know what you're, what you're, what you're talking about. And I don't remember that one saying ring me up.

00:57:22.900 - 00:57:39.340

No, no. This is a lot of things going on here, and I'll pause. A lot of things going on, yeah, no, and your point about bias and prejudice makes me think of that earlier exchange we looked at between then-president of the BSU, Curtis

00:57:39.340 - 00:57:57.250

Davis, and then dean of students F.A. Wierum, if you remember, that they met together for an hour and a half to discuss some issues that the BSU wanted to raise about creating a Black Student Union center on campus.

00:57:57.250 - 00:58:20.980

And then afterwards, we, we looked at Wierum's handwritten note to, to the president, that talked about, "here's what, here's what Mr. Davis said that they want, but I think what they really want," and then, and then, and then Mr. Wierum sort of gave his own concerns about what the BSU was, was angling

00:58:20.980 - 00:58:44.440

for. And that makes me wonder if there was something similar going on in this case, where it sounds like what Cathy Clack is, is saying is that she suspects the committees making this decision were making the decision based not on the, the actual request and the specifics, but on all of this other kind of extraneous stuff that came from kind

00:58:44.440 - 00:59:05.680

of the, the, the imaginaries surrounding the step shows or, or this event that happened the year before. So there's a continuity there, it seems like, how do these, how do these ideas and images that are informed by, by forces and cultural histories, far beyond the university get in

00:59:05.680 - 00:59:22.570

the way of the university actually supporting the, the students that, that they've admitted and empowered in these leadership positions? That's, that's a question for me. Well, we did, this, I don't know if it's a record for the number of docs we fit in

00:59:22.600 - 00:59:32.320

today, but it's gotta be close. But it's always a pleasure to meet with you, Dr. Byrd, and thank you to our audience for being here. We hope you'll be back with us next Friday.

00:59:32.590 - 00:59:51.790

And remember, please, to come to the event that hopefully we can put in the chat again in case you weren't here at the beginning, but if you wanna hear more from the author of that powerful letter that Dr. Byrd just shared with us, make plans to attend our conversation with Catherine Clack

00:59:51.790 - 01:00:03.850

after her 40 years at Rice coming up on April 14th. So that's a week from yesterday. Get it on your calendar, you don't wanna miss that. Everyone have a great weekend.

01:00:04.300 - 01:00:05.020

Take care.