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Good afternoon, Dr. Byrd. Hello, Professor McDaniel. Happy Friday. Happy Friday. Happy New Year.

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And happy New Year! Doc talks is back. I've been looking forward to resuming our conversations and I'm glad that, that we're both well enough to be here.

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I know a lot of people are struggling these days with a lot, and I'm just grateful that I see some folks filing in to join us for our doc talk. How is your semester getting started? It's, so, so far, so good.

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You know, these, these are still challenging times for our students and their families and the folks who work here, and so, but all things considered, right, the university, I think, has been moving forward pretty well, and I'm happy to be here to, to figure out this semester with, with everyone else.

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It's becoming, it's sad that it's becoming a little familiar to, to start a semester in these unusual circumstances. Some of our students who are here, and they're, I was thinking about this in our third year, students who are juniors have yet to experience what a lot of us still

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remember as a normal year at Rice. So there is an ongoing challenge, I know, to, to navigate these times online, and, but this is a highlight for me, that we can join on Zoom to talk about task force work and invite people who might not be on campus but are still able to join us from afar

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through the Zoom webinar. So that's a silver lining of sorts. If you are joining us for the first time, my name is Caleb McDaniel, I'm the chair of the history department here, and along with Dr.

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Alex Byrd, the co-chair of the Task Force on Slavery, Segregation, and Racial Injustice. And every Friday, during academic semesters, we meet here at this same Zoom time and same Zoom address for our weekly doc talks. And the purpose of these is to give you a glimpse of the kinds of work that we're doing

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as the co-chairs of the task force and as historians engaged in the work of understanding the history of our institution, and especially with how the history of Rice has been entangled with the history of slavery, segregation, and racial injustice. And so this is very much a work-in-progress webinar.

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We like to show you the kinds of primary sources that we're getting from the archives this week and and giving you some insight into how we think about those documents and fit them into a larger story that can help us move forward as a university and think about how to best address some of the more painful parts of our past.

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So we're delighted that you're willing to join us on that journey. I hope that you'll share this information with colleagues and students and community members who might be interested in this work. We're here every Friday and always glad to have your comments and questions in our Q&A

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box or the chat as they come up during our presentation. Did I hit everything that I should cover on our first doc talk of the semester? You hit everything. The only thing I would add to our faculty colleagues is the power and importance of doc

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talk extra credit for your students. Something that should always be considered. Extra credit is a, can be a powerful instrument, and, but whatever has brought you here, whether it's extra credit or just extra interest in what we're doing, we're

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really glad that you've joined us. Should we just jump right in and do what we do? Let's get going, what, what, what's on your mind this week? And what did, what have you brought to talk about?

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Well, you know, I mentioned that our doc talks typically focus on primary sources, so these are historical documents that we get from the archives or sometimes from publications like the Rice Thresher. But of course, that's only part of the work that historians do.

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We dig in the archives, we find documents, primary sources, but we also try to, to read widely in the secondary literature on the topics that we're interested in, because those can shed light on the primary sources that we're finding and help us understand what's unique about the specific instance we're looking at, what's, what's exceptional

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about Rice, what's similar and familiar from other universities' experiences when we look at Rice, that's the kind of thing that secondary literature can really help with. And over the break, I've had a chance to start looking at some very new books that just came out in the last month or so.

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One of them that I'll show you on my screen here is an edited collection called Invisible No More. The subtitle, The African American Experience at the University of South Carolina, edited by two historians, Robert Greene and Tyler Parry. And this is a book that joins a growing list of volumes by universities that are engaged

00:06:04.520 - 00:06:23.930

in work like the work of the task force. And this is often led, as we heard in one of our webinars last year when we talked with historians from Rutgers University, it often results in publications like this one that can share this historical research with a broader audience.

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And I was really struck in reading the introduction to this book, I recommend that, recommend it highly. It's got a lot of great chapters in it. But one of the things that struck me was a passage from the introduction that I, that I thought felt illuminating and, and provocative for our own context, and I've

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underlined it here. By the way, I got in trouble with my fifth grader who saw me using pencil on my book and underlining and said that I shouldn't be writing in a book. I don't know, do you have a ruling on that, Dr.

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Byrd, or is that...? I have a ruling on that. I feel very strongly that you shouldn't write in books that aren't yours. And I feel equally strongly that you should write all over your own books.

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Okay. Okay. But stop writing in the books that I check out from Fondren, please, everyone. I'm with you on that. I think we're on the same page.

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This is my own copy, so I think I, think I'm okay. And I usually try pencil because you never know, sometimes your reading of books changes over time, but... Don't erase. Don't erase, prof.

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Leave the evidence of former thinking behind. Alright, fair enough, fair enough. Well, this is from page three of Invisible No More. And as the authors point out here, their book is very similar to books like Slavery in

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the University, edited by Leslie Harris, James Campbell, to historians that we've had on the program before to speak to the Rice community, Ebony and Ivy by Craig Steven Wilder. And they point out that many of these volumes are dedicated to the fight for access and equality for African Americans that took place at numerous universities in

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the 20th century; access and equality. And they point out that some of these schools, like the University of South Carolina, are schools based in the former Confederacy, much like Rice. And then this next couple of sentences, I think, a couple of sentences I think are what

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I wanted to zero in on. "The desegregation of these schools in the former Confederacy in the 1960s represented progress, but these works also remind us that such progress did not come without cost for the African American students involved.

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Nor, and this is a critical point for Invisible No More, did the process of desegregation end when those students first registered at their campuses. Instead, the process of desegregation should be thought of as ongoing, which explains the decades of activism at universities across the country for the sake of greater

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acceptance of African American students, minds, and experiences." I thought that that was a really powerful way to frame a moment in the history of the University of South Carolina, but also, I think, a moment in, in the history of many universities, as they, as they hint.

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This 1960s moment of progress, of of integration, of the registration of African American students at these universities, but also on the other side of that progress, they refer to some of the costs for the African American students involved, and some of the activism that continued at these universities for the sake of greater

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acceptance. Does that, how does that strike you, Dr. Byrd? I just wanted to bring that to the table first. There, there is nothing, all of that is correct, right, right. It's not, well, I'm gonna go too far, right, it's not even interpretation.

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That's all facts, and it lines up, I mean, not that people need to line up with our developing approach at Rice, but I think it shows that some of the ideas that we are gravitating toward in our own work about what it means to be a desegregating university, right, which is a term that highlights the process of of desegregation

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over time, sometimes over a long, a quite long period. Absolutely. And, you know, I think it also just raises a question that we can bring to some of our own sources, what were the costs for African American students who were part of this early generation of students who integrated schools in the former Confederacy,

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like the University of South Carolina? And the primary source that I wanted to talk about today, the doc that I brought to this doc talk, I think gets at that set of questions too, and poses some questions for us about what, what those costs might have been, and why this ongoing process might,

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might still have been needed. So, so I'm gonna switch now to my, my archival document, and as you can see here on the screen, I have a typed letter from July 19th, 1973, and it's on the letterhead of the Dean of Undergraduate Affairs at Rice University in 1973.

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And you can see at the bottom that the letter is signed by Katherine Brown, who was the Dean of Undergraduate Affairs at the time, and it's written to President Norman Hackerman, who was at that time the president of Rice. And so, not surprisingly, this letter was found in the Hackerman papers, presidential

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papers, in the Woodson Research Center at Rice University. And, you know, as we've talked about before in our work on the task force, it would be really nice if we could go to the Woodson Research Center and look in the finding aid and request a file folder on the process of desegregation and find everything that we

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might need with, with regard to our work in that one folder. Of course, it doesn't actually work that way. It takes a lot of time to, to turn through the pages of folders like the ones that you find in the Hackerman papers, and sometimes you find things that don't even seem

00:13:04.570 - 00:13:19.330

immediately to be related to our work, and then as you read on, you find a line here or a line there that is related. And that was kind of my experience with this letter, which I'm just gonna begin by reading a little bit of, and then we can talk about what's going on.

00:13:20.410 - 00:13:36.470

So it says, "Dear Dr. Hackerman, with reference to the 'Greek Underground,' I inquired of Dr. Castañeda and Dr. Gruber, who seemed to be the available masters on campus at the moment, what they

00:13:36.470 - 00:13:57.980

knew of any such membership." Okay, let me stop right there. I don't yet know, from this letter, what we're talking about, the "Greek Underground ?" I'm not sure what that is. But I do, as a former magister, understand why only two masters seem to be available on

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campus at the moment. Probably you can, can relate to this as well. It took me, it took me a moment, I had to rush to the dateline. Dateline, July 19th, 1973.

00:14:07.640 - 00:14:28.910

So this is the summer months, and we can imagine that the college masters, after a busy year in the colleges, have, have taken some time in the summer to get away. I know, and my heart is going out to many of the college staff and students who have not had that experience in recent summers.

00:14:28.910 - 00:14:47.020

The work I know has been really year-round because of the ongoing challenges of the pandemic. But in 1973, I think we can intuit that many of, of the college masters were away, and there were two masters around. Though, though gas may have been very high.

00:14:47.020 - 00:15:02.150

It may have been hard to go far. True, true. But let's resume our letter. So Dr. Castañeda, who was at the time the master of Will Rice College, and Dr.

00:15:02.150 - 00:15:21.500

Gruber, who, who, by the way, I should probably introduce some of these players, shouldn't I? Because I've just been reading some names. But I told you that, that Norman Hackerman was the president of the university at the time. Katherine Brown was the Dean of Undergraduate Affairs, an alum of, of Rice,

00:15:21.740 - 00:15:40.310

the daughter of one of the very first professors at the Rice Institute, who went on to become a professor of art history here at Rice and also the Dean of Undergraduate Affairs. And then, Dr. Castañeda, I wanted to show you a picture of him, he was a professor of Spanish who came

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to Rice in 1961. And, and this is from the 1971 Campanile. You can see some of the members of Will Rice College here engaged in various activities. And also Dr.

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Castañeda here on, on the couch in the Will Rice master's house. And if I scroll down, I can also get us to Hanszen college. Let me see here, scrolling past, Hanszen, where you also can see some, some college, some college students in the college engaged in various shenanigans in photos in the

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Campanile. But also, you can see here, a picture of Dr. Ira Gruber, who, as, as you and I know, is a colleague of ours, a professor emeritus of history who came to Rice in 1966 and is pictured here with his family as master of Hanszen college. Now, I said that this was from the 1971 Campanile, the letter we're

00:16:46.820 - 00:17:07.820

looking at is from 1973, a couple of years after that, and in fact, I'm a little impressed that Dr. Gruber was around and still available, because his term as as master of Hanszen College was ending, I assume as of July 1, 1973, and he was being succeeded in the

00:17:07.820 - 00:17:28.040

following academic year by Stephen Baker as master of Hanszen College. But that's all, that's all background to the letter we have here. Remember that Katherine Brown is writing to President Norman Hackerman about something called the "Greek Underground," and she's reached out to the two masters available in

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the summer to ask about this issue. Let's read on. "Jim was not aware that any member of Will Rice was involved but plans to check with his college secretary. Ira said that he knew of only one instance among the members of Hanszen, a black student

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who had joined a fraternity at Texas Southern quite openly in 1972 because he had very limited opportunities for social life at Rice. I also spoke to Mike McEnany," this is another former administrator of student life at Rice, "who recalled having heard that two or three Rice students were members of

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fraternities at the University of Houston. He said you had discussed this with him." So as we read on the letter, we find out a little bit more about what, what was going on here about the Greek Underground. Apparently, President Hackerman was concerned, had already talked to some people

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about rumors that there were Rice students who were joining fraternities, and that presumably is the Greek Underground in the first line there. But, but Dean Brown goes on to reassure President Hackerman that her conversations lead her to believe that this is not widespread.

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"All three men," she says, "felt that the number of students involved must be very small, and that the attitude of the majority of Rice students would be anti-fraternity or disinterest in belonging to one. If you wish, I can mention the matter at the next meeting of the Committee of Masters in

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August, together with university policy with reference to it." And then we can see over here on the right, President Hackerman, by the way, anyone who's spent time in the Woodson Research Center knows that President Hackerman, for all of his talents, handwriting, clear handwriting, was not among them, and you can see his

00:19:28.910 - 00:19:46.970

characteristic writing here on the side, but I can make out this word: "No." So clearly, President Hackerman didn't think this was worth bringing up at the next meeting of the Committee of Masters. And also, it looks like, called Dean Brown the day after this letter was written,

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perhaps to talk about it a little bit further. So that's the document I wanted to share, and I know I did tease this one a little bit to you, Dr. Byrd, and showed you a clip from it, and you said that you loved this document on multiple levels.

00:20:02.480 - 00:20:23.130

So what kinds of things struck you about this when you, when you read it? So, a couple of things. I think one of the things that strikes me, or one of the questions or themes worth exploring, exploring further, is the relationship between Rice and Houston, right,

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and what it means to be a black student on campus and what is the nature and scope of available community. And so I think this, this reference to a fraternity, fraternity at Texas Southern University speaks to that.

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And I also, you know what, I'm misremembering part of this letter. I thought I saw Dr. Gruber's letter too, but I must have just done that myself. Did I, did I make that up?

00:21:00.060 - 00:21:10.080

I think, I think you made that up. Okay. No, that happens. Don't trust me. A report of what, well, maybe I'll have to go back.

00:21:10.350 - 00:21:18.540

Maybe there was a follow up letter, but I don't, I don't think so. I think this was just Dean Brown talking with Dr. Gruber. About Dr. Gruber's letter.

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And I, and I would raise one additional point to get us started, and that is whether we should, how we should interpret not only these two things that look the same, right, so, black students joining a fraternity at TSU, and I'm guessing white students joining fraternities, though that is just a guess, at the, at the University of Houston.

00:21:50.490 - 00:22:16.020

Whether, what are, are there ways in which we should distinguish questions that arise from those two ostensibly similar acts, and how both should apply to the ways that we interpret the nature of social and cultural life on campus for both sets of students?

00:22:16.680 - 00:22:33.680

Absolutely. I mean, it's clear that, that President Hackerman, and to some extent Dean Brown, were, were addressing this, this Greek Underground issue as a matter of university policy. And the question is about, could students join fraternities?

00:22:33.690 - 00:22:56.970

There's a long history and tradition at Rice of, of not having fraternities, not having Greek life, and so they're approaching it from that perspective, and yet there's this little line again that's not, not flagged for us task force researchers as relevant, and yet it does give us this window into a particular black student who joined a

00:22:56.970 - 00:23:22.260

fraternity for a very specific reason: "limited opportunities for social life at Rice," according to Professor Gruber. So I agree, it kind of, it kind of tells us something about Rice at the time. This is a few years after that moment of integration, the first black undergraduates

00:23:22.260 - 00:23:46.070

arriving at Rice in 1965. So we're now eight years on in that process of desegregation, and yet we're getting a glimpse of what the authors of Invisible No More referred to as the costs for some of these early African American students at Rice, which was "limited opportunities,"

00:23:46.080 - 00:24:06.200

according to Dean Brown's letter "for social life at Rice." Now, that was beginning to change around this time, to some extent. The Black Student Union had just been formed the year before, I believe, in 1972. There were some, there were some stirrings of beginnings in 1971.

00:24:06.200 - 00:24:21.660

But am I right about those dates? You're looking at me like I may be making that up. No, whenever I hear dates, I quiz myself, and so that look is me quizzing myself. Right. So there, so there were the beginnings of the organization of black students on

00:24:21.660 - 00:24:45.120

campus, and one of the things you see in the Black Student Union records is a concern with the lack of social activities for black students within the colleges. You know, I think when we, when we kind of scrolled through our our yearbook here, we were getting a little bit of a taste of the kinds of activities that were going on in the

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colleges, and one thing this letter is hinting at is that these colleges were not necessarily doing activities that black students who were enrolling felt either welcome at or a part of or familiar with. And, and the fact that the BSU was, was organizing around that, it's also striking to

00:25:12.360 - 00:25:27.540

me that, that, that Dr. Gruber remembered this student who we don't know who it was, not, not, not named, but remembers a student joining this fraternity at Texas Southern "quite openly." I mean, that was a phrase that that leaped out to me.

00:25:27.930 - 00:25:48.030

Is there an element of, of protest or dissent here, that, that this student was joining openly to call attention to what, what black students like himself were going through within the colleges? And then, of course, as you've already hinted, it raises all kinds of questions

00:25:48.030 - 00:26:12.270

about the relationship between Texas Southern and, and Rice students at the time. And it's clear here that, that Texas Southern was providing a resource to a Rice student that apparently Rice at this moment was not providing for the student or could not provide.

00:26:12.450 - 00:26:36.660

And I like to think that maybe there's there's another layer here where Dr. Gruber is, is subtly raising this to the attention of Dean Brown and President Hackerman. You know, they wanted to talk about the policy around the Greek underground, but this instance, in a roundabout way, brings another issue to the

00:26:36.660 - 00:27:07.620

fore, which is the experience of black students within the colleges and at Rice in these early years and what some of the costs and struggles for acceptance might have been for, for students like this unnamed fraternity member. Fantastic letter, and raises a number of really important questions.

00:27:07.620 - 00:27:29.520

And I really like, I like a lot of things about it, I like the ending in terms of Professor Gruber perhaps steering the conversation in an additional direction. "Underground? Underground?" This is, this isn't underground .

00:27:30.210 - 00:27:48.360

"Quite openly." That's... Yeah, this is, this was quite open in response to, in response to a situation that should be clear and obvious to, to many of us, at least the impetus behind it should be clear and obvious.

00:27:48.360 - 00:28:09.090

I think it's, I think it's another, another element of this is the effort to keep these issues visible. And I think that's what the, the authors of Invisible No More were getting at, they're, the 1960s, it's clear that the 1960s are important, because that's the moment when

00:28:09.750 - 00:28:29.640

legal barriers to, to admission at universities like Rice are falling, first black students are arriving, we spend a lot of time talking about that moment, and yet trailing that moment into the '70s are issues that are not resolved by that earlier moment, and have to keep being brought up.

00:28:29.640 - 00:29:00.300

You know, I'm struck, I'll say just one last thing that I think about when I read this, and this might be be stretching a little bit, but had this letter appeared in 1966 or 1967, I wonder if the president's reaction to learning about a Rice, a black student at Rice, being involved in a fraternity at Texas Southern, might have read

00:29:00.300 - 00:29:23.280

differently or might have raised different questions, because we know in the 1960s, when there's a lot of activism on, on campuses, if you're going through President Pitzer's papers, or you're going through President Hackerman's papers, there's a lot of, of tumult on college campuses in the '60s, and a lot of concern among administrators about

00:29:23.280 - 00:29:46.170

student activism. And Texas Southern sometimes appears in those papers as a little bit of a worrisome source of political activism, worrisome to, to administrators, who are concerned about, about campus unrest over the Vietnam War or over black power or civil rights protests.

00:29:46.170 - 00:30:07.320

And in fact, in the '60s, if you go to the Rice Thresher, you can find white students writing articles that are saying explicitly, making the claim that Rice is a racist institution, and, and more needs to be done. And yet here we are in 1973, a few years later, in 1973, it doesn't seem to be raising

00:30:07.320 - 00:30:28.800

those same kinds of flags for, for President Hackerman. He doesn't even want this to be brought up at the next committee of the masters. And I think you do see as you go through these, these letters, a kind of, I won't say dying down, but a kind of, to use the term of the booklet we were talking about, these

00:30:28.800 - 00:30:48.570

issues are becoming less visible to administrators and other white students who, in a, in a more, perhaps conservative atmosphere, Nixon as president, are, are starting to turn to other issues of college life. You know, Baker 13 would be run for the first time the year after this.

00:30:49.020 - 00:31:12.570

The same kinds of concerns about student activism are not quite as present. And in the meantime, what's getting lost is a concern for black students who are coming to Rice, enrolling, looking for community, and not, not finding it at Rice. So there could be something about the shift from the '60s to the '70s in between the

00:31:12.570 - 00:31:32.640

lines of this letter as well. Yeah. Yeah, I think the expectations, right, we're, we're almost ten years out, right, these, these students coming are pioneers in some aspects of the, of, of the word, but the initial trail has been blazed.

00:31:32.640 - 00:31:59.160

They are no longer, they're "firsts," but they're not the first, right. And this is, this is the environment in which, in which, in which we, we find ourselves. Now, none of that first generation, I imagine, arrived at Rice expecting much in the way of social life.

00:32:01.780 - 00:32:21.970

Maybe, although, you know, the Black Student Union was calling attention to this that same same year. Well, I'm saying '64, right, '64-'65, '65-'66, you're not, those, those first few years, you're not thinking you're going to land here, well, you know, you have a firmer

00:32:21.970 - 00:32:39.040

idea of what to expect, and have been prepared in a, in a certain way, I would imagine. Right. Now you're seeing the kind of ongoing process of desegregation, ten years on, to, to address all of the implications of that earlier moment.

00:32:40.940 - 00:33:07.010

Well, fantastic, thanks for that. I'm going to, I'm gonna head, I'm gonna head in a, in some ways in a similar direction, though in the early '80s, to examine this continuing process, and also paying attention to some costs.

00:33:07.010 - 00:33:37.280

Over, over the last couple of days, I've been working around trying to learn more and more about celebrations, of celebrations and commemorations of Martin Luther King Jr. on campus. And so I should, I should rush to, to, to add that this semester's commemoration

00:33:37.280 - 00:34:07.080

happens January 16th, that at 6:00 PM, and you can find the details about how to attend this year's vigil on the page of university public, the Office of University Public Affairs. And so I encourage you, if you are not busy on Sunday at 6, to go ahead and register and

00:34:07.100 - 00:34:29.600

see what our students have put together for us. I guess I wasn't clear that one of the reasons I'm looking at Martin Luther King Jr. commemorations at the university is because I'm going to speak on, on Sunday. But in the, in the process of doing that work, of trying to get under or trying to get

00:34:30.140 - 00:34:55.700

a fuller grasp of the ways black students on campus organized around the memories of Martin Luther King Jr. and also organized for an official commemoration of his life and work at the university, but, but also in, in the larger society, I was taken at least in some

00:34:55.700 - 00:35:25.010

of my work in the Thresher on this. I was, I was taken by things that I kind of kept seeing in the margins of the paper, and sometimes central to, central to the paper, in the early 1980s, focused on crime reporting and the ways in which blackness is, was

00:35:25.010 - 00:35:46.970

featured in, in some of this reporting. And I wanna start just by surveying a few of these briefs, that's all, just reading and summarizing them. And what I would ask the, the audience to do is just keep in mind, or inquire of these

00:35:46.970 - 00:36:07.250

pieces, what are their practical purposes? What are, what are the aims of, of these documents? And I'll raise some specific questions around that theme that the work raises for me. And so let me get going.

00:36:07.250 - 00:36:20.240

So how's my, how's my screen working there, prof? Okay. It is completely covering my notes, which is good. So let me make some adjustments on my desktop.

00:36:21.530 - 00:36:53.420

Alright, so I wanna start here with the Thresher from January 21st, 1983. And you can see in around the third column, at least I hope you can, in the third column, an article called, "Sherrill not at all sorry to see Aggie pizza thugs leave team ." And Jackie Sherrill, for those of you who have followed Texas football, isn't at Rice,

00:36:53.420 - 00:37:24.860

he was the head coach of the Texas A&M football team. And what this story does, it just recounts two football players for Texas A&M who called for a pizza delivery to a broom closet on campus. They basically made a telephone call, asked for a pizza to be delivered at the broom

00:37:24.860 - 00:37:53.050

closet, and then when the, when the pizza was delivered, the players would, one player would come out of the broom closet masked and, and rob, rob the, the pizza person in the athletic dormitory at Texas A&M called, called Cain Hall. The description of what took place there reads as follows.

00:37:53.200 - 00:38:14.710

I'll just bring your attention to what I found is a kind of telling line. "When the, when the, when the delivery person approached the broom closet, a large black male with a cloth bag over his head then grabbed the delivery man from behind. Another black male took the pizza and fled.

00:38:14.740 - 00:38:38.390

The delivery man said he was then pushed down the second-floor stairs." So I'm not gonna spend too much time on that, but again, just wanna raise the question, what is, what are the practical purposes of the reporting, but, but also, the descriptions in the brief?

00:38:38.390 - 00:39:15.670

And I'll go next, in 1981, from early in the fall semester, to a crime brief that is headlined, "Transvestite burglar reported." And the, the, the crime that is featured in, in that brief isn't reported until well below. It has to do with the robbery of a dress from, from one of the college

00:39:15.670 - 00:39:41.800

laundry rooms. But early on in the brief, Chief Mary Vosswinkel reports on a bicycle theft that happened "In the mid-afternoon on August 21st," when "an unidentified black male stole a bicycle at knifepoint from two neighborhood children

00:39:41.800 - 00:40:09.310

near entrance seven. [...] He claimed that he needed to go to work ." And Vosswinkel thinks apparently that's, took him at his word, and so RUPD searched nearby fast food places looking for the suspect, and also sent details to the Houston police, HPD, and also to the

00:40:09.310 - 00:40:28.180

Texas Medical Center Police. Again, think about, what are the practical purposes, especially the description. What, what good is the description? What is, what are the aims and the consequence of, of the description?

00:40:28.540 - 00:40:56.770

And then here from October of 1981, we have another crime brief that doesn't, doesn't allude to any violence. I would say that the earlier, now I've, I've headed into the realm of interpretation, but in the earlier briefs, there, there is some sense of violence at the, at the, at the very

00:40:56.770 - 00:41:21.880

least. In this report from Matt, Matt Leslie, it has to do with a con called the "pigeon dupe" that was apparently making the rounds in Houston at the time, where someone would approach a person in a drugstore or at a bank and tell them, I can double, I can

00:41:21.880 - 00:41:38.350

double your money for you, however much money you have, I can, I can double it, double it for you. And I would think that that dupe wouldn't have a lot of takers, Dr. McDaniel, but apparently it did.

00:41:38.920 - 00:42:04.540

All it took was someone to say, "How much money do you have, I can double it for you," and some folks were willing to say, let's do it. And in this case, a Rice student and a friend were duped in this way. And the description of, of what went down goes as follows in this issue of the

00:42:04.540 - 00:42:27.400

Thresher. "The, the students were approached in the Houston First American Savings in the Village. A 20-to-25-year-old black male approached them and offered to double the sum of money. Any sum agreeable to the student. He had a partner with them who was 30, a 30-to-35-year-old black male of slighter

00:42:27.400 - 00:42:51.760

build, who then joined them. They all arranged to meet the men in front of Cohen House at a later time. Needless to say, neither of the, the two men who claimed to be able to do this magic with money showed, showed up.

00:42:51.760 - 00:43:22.670

Around the same time, still in the same era of the early '80s, from the spring of 1982, we have the following brief, and in the bottom left hand is a very short brief. It's on the bottom left-hand side of the Rice Thresher, marked off by a thin box.

00:43:23.000 - 00:43:44.660

Within that box reads the headline, "Rice woman raped." And then there are two paragraphs below that headline. And to the left of those two paragraphs is a composite photo that was compiled by the Rice campus police.

00:43:45.710 - 00:44:23.660

It is a, not very detailed, because it is a composite, of a dark-complected man with a rather grim face and wideset nose and small scrunched eyes and severe eyebrows with a afro that as placed on the composite is, looks like some attention has been paid to

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it, but it is also a bit off-kilter. The description in the, in the crime brief, reads, "A five-foot-eight to five-foot-ten black male in his early twenties with a slim to medium build is suspected in the rape of a Rice girl at 6:40 P.M.

00:44:45.260 - 00:45:13.730

Tuesday in the wooded area between Main Street and Lot P. According to the campus police, the rape is the worst crime committed on the Rice campus in the last seven years." So I'm gonna go back to, to sharing that in a, in a bit, but the question I wanna put to our, to our audience, and I would

00:45:13.730 - 00:45:29.720

appreciate any answers in the, in the chat, is what, what, or in the Q&A, what is the purpose of this report? Right, this is a question that's, that's, that's raised for me. What's the purpose of it?

00:45:30.080 - 00:45:53.630

I've asked people, and I myself have paid particular attention to the descriptions that are put forth and the, and the composite, composite photo in the picture in the, in the last article. And so another question that arises for me in this reporting is, what are the strengths,

00:45:53.630 - 00:46:20.060

not just what is the purpose of the reporting, what are the strengths of the descriptions that are offered? What work is the word "black" doing in these, in these briefs? What work is the term "black male" doing in these briefs?

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And the last one, I would add, which is a twinned question to the one I started with, "what's the purpose of this reporting," is the second question that I'm really interested in is, what are the consequences? What are the consequences on campus?

00:46:40.240 - 00:47:05.890

Intended, right, but also unintended. And again, I welcome our audience to, to respond as they see fit in the Q&A, and I would welcome any responses you have, prof, as well. Well, the last point about unintended consequences, it makes me think, think with

00:47:05.890 - 00:47:28.240

our first document where we were calling attention to the experience of a black student on campus seeking community outside of campus at TSU. Of course, this is now ten years later, if I was hearing the dates right, from that document, but it raises the question for me of what the experience would have been for a

00:47:28.240 - 00:48:00.640

black student reading that reporting, as opposed to a white student reading that reporting. And I think in every one of the cases that you mentioned, I was also struck by the, the, the disparity in the descriptions of, of victims and suspects, that the suspects were, were described with racial terms alone, whereas

00:48:00.640 - 00:48:37.100

other individuals in the story were, were not defined or described in that way. Yeah. Right. What, what, one of the, especially given some of the spareness of the, of the description of, of suspect, you would typically get three things, right. You'd get a height, if possible, a build, and a race, a race, right.

00:48:37.110 - 00:48:57.900

Very, very little else, and sometimes you don't, you don't get all those, you don't, you don't even get all those, all those three. Very little in the way of detail after that. If you wanted to find me today, right, I would imagine, and I won't spend much time on

00:48:57.900 - 00:49:24.430

this, but if, you could go with, you, if you're looking at me on the screen, I would imagine that a couple of the most important details would be purple-checked shirt, right, that's a, that's a kind of detail that probably gets you pretty far. A clothing, a clothing detail, in addition to racial characteristics, I guess, wearing,

00:49:24.450 - 00:49:42.420

wearing glasses, etc. But there's not, not much detail in these after height, build, and, and race. And I don't have, I don't know what to do with the build descriptions, right. "Medium build." Not quite sure what to do with those.

00:49:43.770 - 00:50:14.610

Let me rush on. So it turns out that the period of the early '80s looks to be a time in the history of the university, in the history of Houston, and in terms of the focus of, of some of the work of the college magisters at the time, that petty crime

00:50:14.610 - 00:50:49.500

and violent crime begins to come to the forefront as something to which faculty and staff and students at the university begin to, and are, and are in some instances, forced to, pay greater attention to. And so what I, having surveyed those, those brief reports, I wanna spend just a little

00:50:49.500 - 00:51:21.780

time on focusing on some of the larger pieces that arise, particularly in, in the spring of 1982 and in 1983, around what folks began to see as a, as a, as a plague of crime on campus. And if we look at this front-page story in the March 26, 1982 edition of the Thresher,

00:51:22.590 - 00:51:58.860

the lead story reads, "Crime surge plagues campus, administrators seek solutions." And beside that headline is a campus police car parked, halfway blocking a street, and also up on one of the grassy medians at, at the university. And the story itself goes on to describe recent crime, incidences of, of crime

00:51:59.190 - 00:52:27.870

at the university. The first incident recapitulated in, in the story is the, is the rape mentioned just previous to this in our discussion, the March 16th sexual assault. Also mentioned is a March 18th, what looks to be a March 18th potential assault in Sewall

00:52:27.870 - 00:52:58.560

Hall, where, according to the police report, a female Rice student was assaulted by a black male, 28-year-old black male, name, well, whose name is given in, in the report. And in the story, the, the apparent assault was

00:53:01.440 - 00:53:34.140

thwarted by a Rice architecture professor and a Rice political science professor and 24 students from the political science professor's class, who hear a scream and head toward it and chase a black man out of Sewall out of Sewall Hall, and into the campus proper, and hold him using chairs until, until the police come.

00:53:34.380 - 00:54:04.050

There's also a March 19th attempted robbery that is, that is related in the story, where a woman who is crossing the street from the Tide Hotel, which is now where the BRC is, and is headed on campus for Parent's Day, who is accosted, according to the story, by a black man who who puts his finger in her chest or points his finger to his chest,

00:54:04.170 - 00:54:32.320

her chest, and says, "I have a gun," and demands, demands her money. She refuses and he runs away. Most tellingly for me in, in this story, is where the reporter relates that the campus police feels that they have apprehended a possible suspect in the March

00:54:32.320 - 00:54:48.660

16th sexual assault. "Campus police apprehended, and then a name is given, "a 28-year-old black male possibly fitting the description of the rapist on the, on the east athletic field near the gym Friday afternoon.

00:54:50.250 - 00:55:28.280

The man was later cleared of suspicion and was subsequently released with a criminal trespass warning." So, a couple of questions that I'm grappling with from these stories is, is this, is this apparent crime wave in the area, right, and on campus,

00:55:29.840 - 00:55:53.810

how important is it as an underlying context of what I'm going to call for the, for the '80s, don't hold me to the terminology too, too much to the third and fourth generation of black life on, on campus? What role does this play in the nature and quality of black student life on campus?

00:55:54.500 - 00:56:21.740

I'm also interested in some of the complexities and subtleties that emerge from some of these stories, though I didn't pull them out with great specificity. In these stories, Mary Vosswinkel emerges, and Sergeant Willie Anderson emerges. Sergeant Anderson is one of the early black police officers on campus.

00:56:21.740 - 00:56:50.660

Chief Mary Vosswinkel is credited with the, the professionalization of the Rice University Police Department, but also bringing the theory of community policing to campus. It's an idea that has fallen on fairly hard times recently, but in the late '70s and early '80s was, was understood as quite, quite progressive.

00:56:53.500 - 00:57:21.130

How does, dealing with crime and violence is commonly understood, But what happens to those common understandings when race is interjected into the subject? And I'm especially taken by the, the caption under the photo from the March 1982 edition of the, of the Thresher that, that relates the crime surge, where it says

00:57:21.130 - 00:57:44.830

"campus police arrested a rape suspect near the gym last week." Right, now there's some discrepancy between that caption, right, there's some significant discrepancy between that caption and the, and the actual reporting. What they did was chase someone down, right, and let, and let, and let him go.

00:57:44.830 - 00:58:16.630

What does it mean to become, how does one become a black suspect on campus in the early '80s? And the last thing that I think really call, raises important questions for me is, what qualifies as crime in the early 1980s? The reporters and the, and the chief of police who write a memo concerning the sexual

00:58:16.630 - 00:58:50.260

assaults on campus, describe these assaults as the, as the worst crimes on campus in years, one, but also one of a few sexual assaults on campus too. Which raises for me the questions of what qualifies as sexual assault on campus in the 1980s. What, what is, what is contained in those characterizations, but also what's

00:58:50.260 - 00:59:23.200

missing when sexual assault is only characterized as, as, as put here? I'll stop there, prof, but I began, right, interested in King, but I've ended up wanting to pay a little more attention to what might be a really important context for black life on campus in the 1980s.

00:59:24.460 - 00:59:40.600

Well, thank you for sharing that difficult material with us. There's a lot to think about, and I think it's directly relevant to the work we're doing. I think, to bring us back to the beginning of our conversation, too, it really speaks to the need to put primary sources like the ones you've found within the context

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of secondary literature and other primary sources. One of our audience members shared a comment in the chat about how the language in these articles perpetuates racial distrust and criminal stereotypes, while not adding value to the report being consumed by members of the Rice community.

00:59:59.080 - 01:00:29.590

And I think the word "stereotype" in that, in that comment also points us to these historical stereotypes associated with race in, in the U.S., in Texas, in Houston, that provide a context for these particular instances that I think we need to attune to as well. And it's only if we look at that larger context too that we can think about

01:00:29.590 - 01:00:48.370

what's missing, as you pointed out, what's, what's not being counted as a crime or considered as a sexual assault. That too is something that requires us to balance the documents from the archives with secondary literature and a broader base of sources too.

01:00:48.370 - 01:01:09.970

So I think it brings us back to where we started, the need in our work to, to read widely and, and to patiently go through the archives, sometimes finding things that we weren't looking for. I think both of us experienced that with our documents today. So, hope if you in the audience are interested in what you heard, you'll be back

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with us next Friday, and even before then, that you'll join the vigil on Sunday to hear Dr. Byrd speak. I believe that there will be some more history included there, and I hope that you'll, you'll be able to join us for that event as well.

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Dr. Byrd, have a great weekend. You too, prof. See you later.