00:00:19.100 - 00:00:34.880

Dr. Byrd. Professor McDaniel, welcome back! I imagine our audience is just surprised, but also pleased. Well, long time no see, but it's good to be back.

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And although I have to say, you know, your guests the last couple of weeks made a pretty strong case to just leave me out of it and keep going. Those were some great conversations that I was able to see afterward. I'm gonna accept the part of that that indicates the excellence of our guests, and

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I'm going to reject the part of it that suggests that you shouldn't be here from here on out. Well, you know, that's, that's, that's, that's kind of you to say, but, but it was nice to, to listen to, to what our guests had to share, and I appreciate you keeping an

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eye on things, keeping the ship afloat over the last couple of weeks, so. And welcome to all of our audience who's here. We're so delighted to see you, of course, usually both of us, but sometimes this semester, one of us with a guest, has been convening our doc talks on Fridays at noon to

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talk about some of the research that we're doing on the Task Force for Slavery, Segregation, and Racial Injustice. And as always, we're glad that you're here and along for the ride as you get, sometimes a little bit too honest of a glimpse into the process that historians have to go

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through as, as we do research in the archives. So, definitely gonna be some of that today, and maybe we should just jump right in. Dr. Byrd has gotten used to, you shared with me, you've gotten used to going first in my absence, so I'm all for it.

00:02:08.780 - 00:02:25.280

You just keep, keep rolling. Well, here, here I go, hopefully this is my last time going first for a while. I will say that I was not nearly as good at going first as you were. That, that I realized two Fridays in a row.

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But, but I got better, and that's, that's what we wanna do. Third time's a charm. Third time's a charm. Here you go. Yeah. So we'll, we'll see, we'll see what happens here today.

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I'm gonna start with a bit of an announcement, right, because I want folks to know that we have an important webinar coming up next Friday, "A Great Migration: Black Society and the Shaping of Houston in the Twentieth Century," where Dr. Bernadette Pruitt from Sam Houston State University and Dr.

00:03:06.920 - 00:03:29.990

Portia D. Hopkins, who is presently at Rice University, will be helping us with a really important piece of context. Context in one sense, but, but also just some really important details about Houston, about our city on its own.

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And so I hope that our audience will be with us on March 11th, which is next Friday at, at 6:30, where we're gonna talk about transformations in Houston and in black Houston in the early 20th century, and really contextualize or also provide folks who come to the doc talks who are interested in the history of Rice

00:04:01.460 - 00:04:20.090

with a really important piece of context about that history. We're always talking about Rice, and it's founded in the early 20th century, of course, but that founding of the university coincides with a tremendous moment in African American history, and that's the urbanization of the black population of the

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United States. And so we'll treat that on next Friday. And while I'm rolling in this direction, I just wanna bring up another, our doc talk after this, which will be held on April 14th at 6:30, which is a Thursday. You said, you said doc talk, you mean...

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Oh, I'm sorry, I meant webinar. Webinar. This is why I can't drive this ship alone, man. Our, the webinar following this will take place on April 14th at 6:30 PM, and it's gonna be a conversation with Catherine Clack.

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And there is no one, no one person more important in the modern history of black life at this university and the institutional response to black life at this university than, than Catherine Clack. And she's celebrating 40 years at Rice.

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And so I'm looking forward to that conversation, I'm excited about it. And it leads into the document that I want to discuss today. And I said, "document," Dr. McDaniel, I just want you to know that Dr.

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Jones last week, really, I felt like he was training me, man. I felt like he had, he had said, enough of this twelve document stuff, Dr. Byrd, after I ran through all my documents. So today I'm just going to talk about one document, and I'm gonna try and emulate some

00:06:03.260 - 00:06:27.350

of the best of what I saw of Dr. Jones last week. So the document that I have today is a report, and it's dated May 30th, 1989. It's on some, a yellowish letterhead, "Rice University" across the top, and in the upper

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left-hand corner, still in the letterhead, it says "Office of Minority Affairs." Those of, those of you who have frequented the doc talks know that the Office of Minority Affairs opens in the mid '80s after some debate, and we've treated some of that debate, and it opens under the auspices of, George Rupp is president at the time, and

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Catherine Clack moves over from the Office of Admissions to be the first director of the Office of Minority Affairs. Now, the Office of Minority Affairs, I don't think we've mentioned this, is that its first three years are actually funded externally, and so, and it's funded in response to

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a proposal that is submitted to the Arco Foundation, which is the philanthropic arm of the Atlantic Richfield Corporation, which was an oil corporation that was active in the Houston area, and elsewhere of course, it was a national corporation, doesn't exist anymore.

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It has, it is now part of BP. But at this time, the Arco Foundation in the mid '80s was entertaining proposals from universities in support of the type of work that was going on in the Office of Minority Affairs. And in May, the end of May of 1989, Catherine Clack is providing an

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initial update to the work that the Arco Foundation had funded. And so this initial report is about two, three pages long. And what I wanna do is I want to go through some highlights of it. Sorry to make you dizzy there, Dr.

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McDaniel. I wanna go through a few highlights and then do what we do in doc talks, indicate what I find striking about it, but then also raise some questions and hear your questions about it as well, Dr. McDaniel.

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Alright, so here we go. So Catherine Clack is reporting on the work of her office as funded by the Arco Foundation, and she indicates in this letter that she's going to speak to the work that the office has done in the order of the original proposal.

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More on the original proposal in a moment. So I just wanna run through some of the most important work as indicated by Catherine Clack's report. So we see highlighted in this report at first is the, the funding, or at least the

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establishment of a student group known as the Ambassador Group. And you see, I stumbled a bit over my words there, I started with "the funding of," but then moved to "the support for the establishment of a student group." And the student group is called the Ambassadors, and it's about thirty students who have

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volunteered for the work of recruiting students, recruiting minority students to the university, encouraging students in the larger Houston community to be interested in places like Rice. We see in this report that part of the ambassador group performs a play called A

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Trio of Cools in Houston area schools. But probably even more importantly for the way university life has long been organized, especially undergraduate life at the university, we see the ambassador group is also making some inroads into the orientation of students on campus.

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And so what I've highlighted here is that "Ambassador group members have been paired with incoming minority freshmen." As a former college magister, Dr. McDaniel, you will be familiar with some of the work that these ambassador students do. "Each member will write a letter of welcome this summer to the person he or she is paired

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with." And also the group is in the process of putting together a newsletter of welcome that will be sent to the freshmen, "which includes a listing of the many services and activities conducted by the Office of Minority Affairs." And there's also going to be a reception held during orientation week for minority students who attend, who have

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been admitted and accept their admission to the university. And so for the Rice students, right, for the Rice alumni on on the call, you will almost immediately recognize some of this student-to-student work that's going on with the ambassador group as, in, in some really fundamental ways, replicating

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orientation, right. So there is a letter writing, there is almost the equivalent of an O-Week book that's, that's being sent out. And, so, I'll stop, I won't try to explain, I'll just describe.

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We'll go to analysis later. The middle part of the report speaks to professional development on, that, that Ms. Clack is able to do with some of the money. It outlines the trips that she makes, and also outlines some important leadership

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positions that she takes up at the same time that she begins directing the Office of Minority Affairs. And then we get to some support of minority student organizations, and in this part of the report, we end up coming back to some, to some themes that we've seen before.

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One of the primary benefits of the Office of Minority Affairs is with the support of minority student organizations, particularly around advertising and communication. So in the late 1980s, having access to a copy machine is, I guess, the equivalent of the 16th century of having access to a printing press, I guess.

00:14:12.590 - 00:14:40.830

I don't....I'm not sure. But then there's also some receptions that are funded, cohosted by the Black Student Union and HACER, the Hispanic Association for Cultural Education at Rice. Actually, I thought HACER meant "enrichment," but okay.

00:14:41.110 - 00:14:47.880

Gotta consult the sources. Gotta consult the sources. I know, I have to get back to the source. So, I thought that acronym meant something else.

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And then finally, or penultimately, in wrapping up the report, Ms. Clack speaks to an honor society that the Office of Minority Affairs is establishing called Positive Concepts Honor Society. And this is a research-based honor society that comes out of the work of Dr.

00:15:13.530 - 00:15:40.930

Philip Treisman at the University of California at Berkeley, that, that, that work has spoken to some of the study habits that Dr. Treisman saw as emerging from black students at highly selective and competitive universities. And I'll just quote from the report at this point.

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Dr. Treisman found that black students in his calculus class, he, and, when he, when he thought about black students in his calculus class and the habits of Asian American students in, in his calculus classes, he found that many of the Asian American students tended to work in groups and helped each other with their, with their studies,

00:16:06.060 - 00:16:27.450

whereas many black students, on the other hand, tended to take a kind of John Henry approach to, to some of their work, and working alone, and feeling that if they didn't do the work by themselves, they would, they would be considered a failure. And so the intervention that Dr.

00:16:27.450 - 00:16:59.640

Treisman makes is that he sets up study groups that encourages all the students in his classes to study together, and he sees significant increases in the performance of his students in calculus, which, which then leads over into better performance in other STEM courses, but also helps foster a sense of community among minority students.

00:17:00.140 - 00:17:21.930

Now, I got to rush out, Dr. McDaniel, so we can get to some questions. The last piece of work out of the Office of Minority Affairs that Ms. Clack speaks to is a program that's called the Neighborhood Institute Program that was

00:17:21.930 - 00:17:39.360

in the original proposal. Dr. McDaniel, how, how is your Latin? Ooh, rusty. Well, I like rusty, 'cause rusty suggests that you've had some in the past, and so this

00:17:39.360 - 00:17:59.670

is good. I know what "magister" means, for sure. Yes. This is, this is, right, so, this, this, this would be right up that alley. Well, this is a Latin term that did not quite enter into the Rice lexicon in the

00:17:59.670 - 00:18:15.840

way--now I can never say "magister" again. Now that, now that you, you've said it a different way. But what, what happened is this proposal that was the Neighborhood Institute Program ends up being renamed and changed in this report.

00:18:16.770 - 00:18:41.780

And so Ms. Clack is reporting on the Neighborhood Universitas. You got some English in there and some Latin, right, right up next to each other. And in the proposal, in the original proposal that went to Arco, this was a, a

00:18:41.780 - 00:19:07.190

program in which the Office of Minority Affairs was going to work with the Houston Independent School District in order to provide enrichment opportunities for junior high and high school students in HISD at Rice. But what has happened over the years is that this project has changed and the Office of

00:19:07.190 - 00:19:31.850

Minority Affairs is focusing on it, is doing the work solely themselves, and have recruited thirty minority students from Cullen and Ryan Middle Schools to attend Rice's summer school for high school and junior high school students, which is something that doesn't exist anymore on campus, but we can talk a little bit more

00:19:32.570 - 00:19:59.990

about it later. Ms. Clack closes out by saying that the money is almost gone, and they would, she and the university, would appreciate a renewal if Arco is considering renewals. And then in closing, she indicates the kind of twinned focuses of the first couple or so

00:20:00.020 - 00:20:31.510

years of the office's work, and that is making the university a kinder and more welcoming place for minority students, but also introducing what was then the majority culture, majority students at the university, to a kind of, the, the opportunities waiting for them with greater multicultural interaction.

00:20:31.520 - 00:20:52.610

So that's the, that's the first report of the Office of Multicultural Affairs, and I'm just gonna end with a few questions that I'll throw out that it raises for me, that it raises for me as I prepare for this conversation with Ms. Clack in a, in a month or so.

00:20:53.480 - 00:21:12.530

One, I'm interested, why is Arco in this business, right? It sounds as if Arco is in the business--there's a, there's a page that I that I didn't show. It's the cover letter from President Rupp, where he indicates that Arco looks to be in

00:21:12.530 - 00:21:43.940

the business of supporting minority affairs offices at other universities. So I'm interested in why, why is an oil company in this business in the, in the first place? I also wonder what a critical look at this philanthropy might yield. Does, does the fact that the office is originally supported by Arco affect the

00:21:43.940 - 00:22:07.430

work of the office in any way? I wonder if Catherine Clack felt that. And I also wonder what the external funding says about the importance of the office. In an earlier doc talk, when we were discussing The State of Black Rice, one of

00:22:07.430 - 00:22:34.490

the criticisms that, that, that came to the fore in those discussions was, was the university really bought in to supporting this work? And I think that's a, that's a question worth asking at this, at this point. I've got, I've got fake questions about the Neighborhood Universitas, Dr.

00:22:34.490 - 00:22:53.030

McDaniel. They're fake questions because I kind of know the answers to them. You, I feel like there may be more you're not telling us about the identities of some of these student ambassadors and school program representatives. There may be some things that I have left out.

00:22:53.270 - 00:23:05.450

I will say that I was not, I definitely, I have no memory of being an ambassador. Okay. I will, I will say that. I have zero--that does not mean that we may not find something that indicates that, that

00:23:05.450 - 00:23:27.080

I was, but I have zero memory of it. I do have a lot of memories about Neighborhood Universitas. But I, so these are some fake questions, right. I think we see that we have ended up still with the focus, for those of us in the, in

00:23:27.080 - 00:23:45.760

the audience who know where Ryan Middle School is and where Cullen Middle School is, will, will know that we're back to these connections with the Third Ward and the greater Third Ward, right, that this is, this is work that is, is happening in this part of the, of the neighborhood.

00:23:46.690 - 00:24:12.910

And then I'll end just by saying that thematically, right, when you and I and those on the, on the, on this, on the doc talk, especially those who are, who are working at the university, and we think about the larger themes that are evident in this 1989 report, they are the themes that are evident in 2022, right.

00:24:12.910 - 00:24:36.530

Those are the, these are the...so I'm gonna overstate just a little. These are the exact same questions and problems that we are yet grappling with. So on the one hand, right, I think that, that's worth noting. But, but then as a historian, as I just kind of overstated it just a bit, right, and I

00:24:36.530 - 00:25:03.590

also wanna be a responsible historian and say at the very same time that these themes are the same--belonging, retention, right--the transformations in the university from 1989 to 2022 are vast and dramatic. And so one of the questions that I would have is, what are the differences within those

00:25:03.590 - 00:25:21.950

similarities that, that join the time? Another way of asking that is, does "retention" mean the same thing in 1989 that it means in 2022? Does "belonging" mean the exact same thing, and how have those concepts changed?

00:25:21.950 - 00:25:41.570

Because certainly they would have to have also changed. And so I think those are those are some final questions that are worth pursuing. What, what, what questions or comments come to you, Dr. McDaniel, from this, this initial report about the Office of Minority Affairs?

00:25:41.570 - 00:26:02.000

Well, I, some of my thoughts were traveling along the same track of the change in continuity over time. You know, as I was hearing about the research that was being presented on, basically on study habits and group study, I was thinking about, maybe six or seven years

00:26:02.000 - 00:26:28.190

ago, one of the common readings that, that the university did was Claude Steele's Whistling Vivaldi, which is a social psychologist's scholarship on just this question, about stereotype threat and, and the ways of ensuring that students, when they arrive on campus, reach out and study in groups and, and how, how they approach that.

00:26:28.190 - 00:26:49.490

So there's a continuity, you know, over time. But I was also thinking back to, in the '60s, I know there was a lot of interest among students in tutoring programs in the city going to HISD schools. So another question this raises for me is a kind of a, a longer history of Rice's

00:26:49.490 - 00:27:13.010

involvement in programs like the Universitas program, and what are the, what are the milestones there, and maybe, that's maybe something, maybe you can push back on on me, because I know we just had yesterday, we had a bunch of students from San Antonio who were here on campus visiting Rice, but when I think about kind of where the, I guess the,

00:27:13.010 - 00:27:33.800

the momentum or the energies around, around student work on some of these issues are today, it's not as much on those school partnerships as perhaps it was in 1989 and the '60s. And that's just an initial impression. It just raises the question for me of that change over time, and the change about the

00:27:33.800 - 00:27:55.460

ambassadors. As you pointed out, a lot of that work is the kind of work that now O-Week group leaders and O-Week coordinators and Orientation Week is supposed to provide, or is there a connection between the ambassadors and the diversity facilitators? Are some of the work that's being done there being more incorporated into the colleges?

00:27:55.460 - 00:28:08.750

Is that a change that we see over time? So those are some of the thoughts I had just as you were presenting. It's a great document. I think when we, when we talk with Catherine next month, right, we'll see that evolution,

00:28:08.750 - 00:28:28.130

right, that I, I would not be surprised if there is a direct connection, right, between the ambassadors and the diversity facilitators. And the difference, right, is the ambassadors are very much, or one of the differences, the ambassadors are, are external to the work of orientation, then an

00:28:28.130 - 00:28:58.470

innovation of the diversity facilitators is attaching that work to Orientation Week itself, and to O-Week groups itself, and then, and, and so on and so on, right, but...the report ends, and then I'll pass it on to you, right, with a, with an editorial from the Thresher, from the Thresher editor Greg Kahn, that attempts to put a bow on the,

00:28:58.500 - 00:29:19.680

on the debates of the mid '80s about, that really spoke to what kinds of, what would be the worst-case scenarios of opening an Office of Minority Affairs. And so Ms. Clack ends this report with, with Greg Kahn's editorial from 1989 that pretty much

00:29:19.680 - 00:29:40.970

puts to bed all of those fears and those worst-case, and those worst-case scenarios, indicating that, from the perspective of many on campus in late, in the late 1980s, it was an excellent start of the work. Well, that's fascinating.

00:29:40.970 - 00:30:01.790

And I also have questions now about copy machines and the history of copy machines on campus, 'cause I seem to recall, since you mentioning those debates, in the early days of the Black Student Union, there were also efforts to fund minority student organizations through the SA, and one of the proposals made was that, that those

00:30:01.790 - 00:30:17.600

organizations could get funding if they would work for the library in maintaining the copy machines that were in the library, and so maybe the shift from that to getting a copy machine in the Office of Minority Affairs is a more significant change than it might appear at first glance.

00:30:17.600 - 00:30:35.270

So thank you for that document, I agree it's great fodder for the conversation coming up on April 14th, and I hope everybody has already put that in their calendar at 6:30 PM to hear from Catherine Clack in conversation with Dr. Byrd and some other special guests to to explore this history with, with some people

00:30:35.270 - 00:30:55.100

who were there and, and can, can give us more insight on it. You know, your document connects to that webinar on April 14th. My document, what I wanted to talk about, connects more, I think, with the webinar that's coming up next Friday, Professor Pruitt's presentation on African American

00:30:55.100 - 00:31:15.260

migration to the city of Houston in the early 20th century. So I'm gonna take us back to before the opening of the Rice Institute in 1912 to some of the early days of our task force's research. And I said earlier that on the doc talk, sometimes our audience gets a glimpse into

00:31:15.260 - 00:31:30.230

the work that we do. It's not always clean, sometimes it's messy. I know that we we present ourselves to you, our audience, as very accomplished historians who always know what we're doing, and I'm gonna be a little vulnerable today and share

00:31:30.260 - 00:31:50.210

a mistake that I made as a historian. And, and I've even used this story as a warning to some of my graduate students to do as I say and not as I did in this particular case. But I don't know about you, but when I'm opening up like that and revealing something

00:31:50.390 - 00:32:01.490

that I, that I did that I probably shouldn't have done, I like to ease into that. I don't wanna just start right there. So I'm gonna try to cushion the blow a little bit first, is that okay? I think that's okay.

00:32:01.490 - 00:32:19.280

I think it would also help if you would just put your Pulitzer in the frame. No, no, no. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna cushion the fall a little bit. And what I wanna do is start with a map of the city of Houston from 1890.

00:32:19.280 - 00:32:35.660

I was looking closely at the flyer you shared for Professor Pruitt's upcoming lecture, and it had an early map of Houston on it, but I don't think it was this one. I think this one is even earlier, from 1890. And I found this, by the way, on the Library of Congress's website, which has a lot of

00:32:35.660 - 00:32:55.100

great maps if you're interested in looking at the evolution of Houston over time. And obviously the map that you will find of Houston here is very different from the Houston we know today, much smaller, much less developed. But there are still, some of the downtown grid is still there, the bayous are there,

00:32:55.100 - 00:33:13.730

and you can sort of orient yourself at looking at some of these old maps. For example, if I zoom in here, here's the courthouse right on, on Congress, and not far from, from the bayou there. And here is Market Hall, Market, Market Square there.

00:33:13.940 - 00:33:33.500

But I wanna come down Louisiana Street to a tract that's labeled here as W.W. Swain. W.W. Swain. Now, remember, this map was in 1890, and this is a quick pop quiz for our

00:33:33.500 - 00:33:54.520

audience, but does anybody remember the, when the charter that William Marsh Rice signed to create the William Marsh Rice Institute, when, when did that charter date from? You can drop it in the chat or the Q&A if you remember. See if we're getting any takers.

00:33:55.030 - 00:34:07.740

Give it, give it a wild guess. Put it in the chat. Nobody wants to even try. See, I said I was gonna be vulnerable and I was gonna show a mistake I made, but no one wants to get it wrong.

00:34:07.760 - 00:34:18.490

Any guesses? What about you, Dr. Byrd? When was the charter, roughly? I'm guessing 18...88. Oh, we have a guess!

00:34:18.490 - 00:34:31.520

You've been saved, you've been saved! You've been saved. We have an answer in the, in the chat to us for 1890, which is closer than you were, Dr. Byrd. 1891.

00:34:32.320 - 00:34:52.370

1891 was the original charter. That's the charter that later the institute went to court to, to change in the 1960s. So that's 1891, this map was in 1890, so this is a year before that. And so it predates the Rice Institute.

00:34:53.570 - 00:35:16.150

And so you're not gonna find on this map the Rice Institute or anything having to do with the Rice Institute. But we know from, from later sources that this triangle right here that's labeled W.W. Swain would be given to the Rice Institute in 1892 by William Marsh Rice.

00:35:16.160 - 00:35:37.430

It was one of the original gifts of real estate to create the endowment of the, the William Marsh Rice Institute. But that's 1892, so two years after this map, and it's clear from, from the early records of the Rice Institute that, that William Marsh Rice, who was still living at

00:35:37.430 - 00:35:59.150

that time, was on the Board of Trustees, had the idea that this tract, this lot, on Louisiana Street and Bell, or Leland, sometimes it would say, was intended to be the original grounds for the campus of the William Marsh Rice Institute. This was where it was going to be located.

00:35:59.150 - 00:36:19.840

Again, long before it opened its doors in 1912, before the Institute even had hired a president, Edgar Odell Lovett isn't even in the picture, it's just Captain James Baker, William Marsh Rice, Frederick Rice, a few others were on the board, and they were imagining this as the original campus.

00:36:19.840 - 00:36:40.830

And let me just say, does this tract, the shape of this tract, look familiar to you in any way? This is kind of a weird contingency of history to me, but does this remind you of anything? It is the shape, though I do not know if it is around 300 acres or so, it is the shape of

00:36:40.830 - 00:36:57.360

our current university. Look at that, the tract, there's the tract and here's our actual campus. I mean, these guys must have, must have liked these, these triangular tracts, I don't know. But you're absolutely right, this tract was much smaller than our campus.

00:36:57.360 - 00:37:14.480

So our campus is over 300 acres, this little tract was only about six and a half acres. So it's much, much smaller. And it kind of does give you a sense of, of the scale on which the original trustees were thinking about the Rice Institute.

00:37:15.140 - 00:37:37.910

Again, this is before Rice had died, before Edgar Odell Lovett came on, on the scene. And after Rice died and the institute realized what, what he had left, they realized they had resources that were much greater than they thought to build an institute, an institute that was much more ambitious than they had originally

00:37:37.910 - 00:37:57.330

envisioned. And of course, Edgar Odell Lovett, as the first president of the institute, really accelerated that transformation of the institute into a university. But nonetheless, even as late as 1907, the, the plan was still to site the campus here.

00:37:57.330 - 00:38:15.660

In fact, I looked at another map on the Library of Congress webpage, and this is what's known as a Sanborn fire insurance map. The Sanborn fire insurance maps are invaluable resources for historians, because they go back into the late 19th century, and these were maps that were generated to help

00:38:15.660 - 00:38:36.240

insurance companies assess the risk of fire to a particular property, which is really important for issuing policies and rates for policies. And so they would make these very detailed maps, even down to, in the keys of the maps they would say, what direction were the prevailing winds in this particular city to

00:38:36.240 - 00:38:48.270

know where fire might spread, what were, what were the materials that the buildings were constructed out of, were they brick, were they, were they wooden? And because they were interested in those questions, they made maps that were much more detailed than this one.

00:38:48.270 - 00:39:04.290

This one, you can see the tracts, but you can't really tell what the buildings are on that. But this map was one of a series of maps in Houston. It dates from 1907. Okay, so 1907, and you can see this tract.

00:39:04.320 - 00:39:21.850

It's oriented a little bit differently, but here we are, Louisiana Street is over here on the right, and Bell Avenue's right here at the top. So North is kind of pointing this way, so it's turned a little bit, we don't get that same nice triangle view that we have here, but you can see it.

00:39:21.850 - 00:39:42.980

And the tract is labeled here in 1907, "to be Rice Institute." Okay, so that's, that's the property. Now, there's not much, based on what I just told you, on the property, we can tell from this map because each of these little yellow squares indicates a wooden building, a wooden structure.

00:39:42.980 - 00:39:56.720

If it was red, it would tell us that it was a brick structure. But all of these yellow structures tell us that there's a wooden building there. And if it has a, a D on it, then it means it's a dwelling. Okay, you can see the D for dwelling.

00:39:57.560 - 00:40:10.970

And one thing you immediately notice is that on the Rice Institute property, there aren't many buildings. The six and a half acre is mostly vacant. It's, it's pretty much a vacant lot except for this one building right here.

00:40:10.970 - 00:40:32.330

There is one dwelling building and one office space that has been constructed on, on the institute grounds. Okay. So I wanted to start with these maps, again, to lead into the mistake I made, which was that at the very beginning of our research for this task force, and I was

00:40:32.330 - 00:41:00.980

trying to remember when, it may have even predated when we were really starting our research, I remembered running across a document about this property on Louisiana Street, and in my mind it had something to do with neighbors in this area, and specifically black neighbors of the property, petitioning the institute or

00:41:00.980 - 00:41:23.880

protesting to the institute that they wanted a street nearby the institute to be opened so that they could have more access to this particular street. And I remembered in my memory that the institute was not keen to do that. There was some kind of conflict between the neighborhood and the Board of Trustees about

00:41:23.880 - 00:41:41.070

this property. Here's the mistake I made as a historian: I didn't write it down in a place where I knew I would find it later. I mean, this is, this is like, historian 101. This was, this was so dumb that I didn't make note of this.

00:41:41.100 - 00:41:55.890

Has this ever happened to you, Dr. Byrd? Please help me. I am just as embarrassed to say that the number of times that I don't write something down because I, I convinced myself again and again that this is so important, I will never

00:41:55.890 - 00:42:08.910

forget it. I'll find it again, I'll know, I will know where it is. Or sometimes it happens, you're in the archive, you're looking for one thing and you're working really hard, going through a lot of material, and you see something that's

00:42:08.910 - 00:42:25.380

kind of interesting, but you don't really know yet where to place it, you don't know whether it's gonna be important, and I don't know how else to explain it. Sheer laziness. You just, you just don't write it down, you set it aside. And I was convinced that that's what had happened in this case, that I had seen this

00:42:25.380 - 00:42:44.340

somewhere, and so if you were to talk with the staff in the Woodson Research Center, they know that I've been in there for weeks trying to go back over my tracks, going through the early Rice Institute records, looking everywhere I could think, coming up empty, until finally last Friday, while I was at a conference with some graduate

00:42:44.340 - 00:43:10.020

students here in our program, I was lamenting this, this mistake that I had made to them and telling them a little bit about my search when one of our star PhD students, who took one of the classes for the task force that I taught last academic year, it rang a bell, and it turns out that she had shared with me this document I was thinking

00:43:10.020 - 00:43:35.660

about during that course, but had shared it in Google Drivel now we're 2022 historian problems; in Google Drive instead of in Box, where I was keeping a lot of my notes, and so I had been searching in the wrong place for it, hadn't found it. But thankfully, that conversation turned up the source of this memory I had,

00:43:36.080 - 00:43:58.820

and the document that I was trying to remember was in the Rice Institute Business Manager Papers, not in the early Rice Institute records, which is the collection that I was combing through, trying to find this. And box, you can see here, box number 19 of this collection has to do with property in

00:43:58.820 - 00:44:12.080

Harris County, property belonging to the Rice Institute in Harris County, like these original Louisiana street grounds. Okay. And I'm gonna speed ahead here to, if I can, oh, it's not really letting me advance.

00:44:12.840 - 00:44:31.080

Let's see. Okay, let me try this. Okay, here we go. I bookmarked it so that I wouldn't forget it again. And let me assure you that I did write it down this time so that we'd be able to locate it later. But you can see here a letter that's typed out on letterhead that has the

00:44:31.080 - 00:44:51.130

"William M. Rice Institute for the Advancement of Literature, Science and Art" in blue ink in the upper left hand corner. The general offices are at a different PO box than they are now, PO Box 118. But you can see the Board of Trustees listed in the letterhead: James A.

00:44:51.130 - 00:45:05.730

Baker, the chairman; J. McAshan, the Vice Chairman; E. Raphael, who's the secretary; Benjamin Botts Rice; William Marsh Rice Jr; Cesar Lombardi; and Edgar Odell Lovett.

00:45:06.090 - 00:45:27.480

Okay, so that tells us that we are after Lovett's hiring, and actually we're after the opening of the institute. This letter is dated March 10th, 1993, and it's a letter addressed by the business manager of the institute at that time, who is named A.B. Cohn. His initials here are abbreviated "A.B.C." at the end.

00:45:27.630 - 00:45:51.940

A.B. Cohn is writing as the general agent of the William Marsh Rice Institute to a law firm; Baker, Botts, Parker, and Garwood; and Captain James A. Baker, of course, was the founding partner, or not the founding partner, but one of the partners in this law firm, Baker Botts, which was the institute's law firm in 1913.

00:45:52.390 - 00:46:11.770

And I'm gonna read just a little bit about what Cohn says in this letter, and then we can talk about how it kind of fit with my memory, but didn't totally fit with my memory of what I thought I'd, what I thought I'd seen. So it says, "Dear Sir, pursuant to action of the Board of Trustees and granting to the

00:46:11.770 - 00:46:31.120

City of Houston through the Chamber of Commerce, the use of the institute property located on Louisiana Street and Leland Avenue, Houston, as tenant at will, to be used as a playground for children. We enclose here with our file of correspondence in connection with this matter

00:46:31.120 - 00:46:51.460

and would ask you to prepare a lease or acknowledgment of tenancy as requested by Mr. Adolph Bolt, Secretary, Chamber of Commerce, dated February 19th, 1913. Okay. Remember when we're talking about, 1913, the Institute's already opened its doors, and the campus did not open on the Louisiana Street property.

00:46:51.460 - 00:47:10.120

It opened at its current location on Main Street and this much larger tract. And so what can we glean from this opening paragraph? Well, we can find out, in between the lines here, but also, if we look at some other documents in this folder, that the city had approached the institute and said, hey, that

00:47:10.120 - 00:47:31.680

big tract of land that's just sitting there near downtown and not being used for anything, could we use it and make it a park? Could we turn it into a park and even build perhaps a playground for the neighborhood's children? And so Cohn took this request from the Chamber of Commerce to the institute

00:47:31.680 - 00:47:46.650

board, they considered it, they said, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. But now the board needs to write the law firm and ask them to draw up some paperwork, draw up a lease, or draw up some acknowledgment that the city is gonna be using this property.

00:47:47.280 - 00:48:04.490

And here are the things that the board has apparently instructed Cohn to tell the law firm. Here's what we want you to make sure gets into this lease. I'm gonna read on here, the letter. "We would suggest that as part of the improvements which they propose to put on

00:48:04.490 - 00:48:26.540

said property, the institute should by all means require them," the city, "to build substantial fences, especially around the west, south and north boundary lines of said tract, and also to build a first-class cement sidewalk along the entire Louisiana Street front to be not less than five feet in width.

00:48:27.050 - 00:48:38.720

Okay, so let's, let's go back to our map over here. Sorry, I've got too many moving pieces. Oh, you're, you're, you're muted. You just turned it off when I was, when I had, when I had focused on that next

00:48:38.720 - 00:48:56.560

paragraph. But maybe you'll go back. We're gonna get--but I just wanna come back to the map here, because remember, they were saying, we want fences to be put up, substantial fences, on the north, south, and west parts of the tract.

00:48:56.590 - 00:49:11.440

Can you see my, my cursor? Okay. And then they want a sidewalk here on Louisiana Street, because this was, this is in 1907, it was just gravel, okay. But I just want you to notice where they want the fences, right, they want some

00:49:11.440 - 00:49:33.460

substantial fences here on these three sides of the property. Okay. Now let's go back over there to the letter, because you're right, I also lasered in on the next paragraph. "We call your attention to a suit now pending by which," I'm reading here directly

00:49:33.460 - 00:49:56.550

from the letter, "We call your attention to a suit now pending by which the colored inhabitants on lots adjoining those near Jefferson Avenue purchased through H.M. Curtain and adjoining the above mentioned Louisiana street tract, by which said Negroes are trying to force the institute to keep open a street known as Smith Alley, which if

00:49:56.550 - 00:50:19.810

required to be open to the public would run directly into the original Louisiana Street tract." Okay, so let's go back to our map here, see if we can find a little bit more information about this street. And sure enough, if we look down here below the tract, we see a little road called Smith

00:50:19.810 - 00:50:37.500

Alley, Which is kind of a continuation of Smith Street that comes down this direction. But Smith Alley was a smaller road. It's not opened to, to Jefferson Avenue, because there's a dwelling right here. You can't really get to it.

00:50:38.670 - 00:51:01.350

But it does run right into the Rice Institute here, and you can see how, if you wanted to get from, from this neighborhood over to this neighborhood, an easy path would be to go straight across this property and be able to go over to the other side. So clearly, the neighbors were wanting this little street to remain open, and in fact,

00:51:01.350 - 00:51:32.770

had gone to court, according to this letter, to force the institute to keep it open. And now the institute is telling the city, quote, "For this reason, we suggest that the south boundary fence especially be made a solid picket fence in order to maintain a dead end to said Smith Street in the event the institute should lose in its suit." and

00:51:32.770 - 00:51:48.490

then they go on to kind of detail some other things that they would request of the city. Who's gonna pay the taxes on the property while it's being used as a park, and who's gonna make sure the trees that had already been planted on the property are cared for? So there are some other details here.

00:51:48.490 - 00:52:13.310

But like you, I was particularly interested in this paragraph, and I'm curious, Dr. Byrd, what questions does does that raise for you? So I'm gonna, I'm gonna give two and try and be brief. I'm gonna start with the darker interpretation, or the darker analysis, is,

00:52:13.310 - 00:52:43.280

one of the things that I find especially troubling, right, is we have, we have, where you and I are located now, right, we have the establishment of an aspiring first-class university open only to whites, particularly whites of small means from the state of Texas.

00:52:43.960 - 00:53:05.420

But, but that opening also has a kind of cover, if you, if you want to use it, to say that this cover speaks to a kind of, or follows a kind of tradition of limiting resources in this way. You make an argument that very, you can make an argument; I'm not buying this argument;

00:53:05.420 - 00:53:22.670

you can make an argument that very little positive action is necessary for, for that. You can make an argument that it's, it's not a direct action against black folks in the city of Houston. You can make that argument. I don't buy it. You could make it.

00:53:23.480 - 00:53:53.420

But, but then we have here a slightly, right, a somewhat different approach, right, that's saying, elsewhere in the city, the trustees of the university may be working positively, right, against the interest of black people in the city of Houston, and throwing the resources of the university and encouraging others to put their resources, use their

00:53:53.420 - 00:54:07.010

resources in such a way that, that contains and reduces the enjoyment of, of, of the city that black citizens can have. Sorry, I meant to be shorter with that. And then...

00:54:07.550 - 00:54:26.890

Yeah, go ahead please. And then just the second thing, which I wish I would have led with, as a historian of Afro America, is that this really sheds light on the nature of black life in the Jim Crow South. It is the flip side of the coin of the oppression of Jim Crow.

00:54:26.900 - 00:54:49.580

It's showing black Houstonians using the legal system and the resources that they have at hand to, to make their claims on the space of the city. Yeah. They're, they're in court against this powerful organization, the institute, and I mean, one of the big questions, maybe this is the simplest one I have, is, what happened

00:54:49.580 - 00:55:05.480

in this suit? We don't know yet, and I haven't yet been able to locate the details about the suit. But it's interesting that the board is already thinking, if we lose the suit, are there things that we can do even if we lost the suit, even if the court said we have to

00:55:05.480 - 00:55:21.530

keep the Smith Alley open? Well, if there's a really substantial fence that's been built there, that throws up a difficulty to, to keeping that alley open. And so this idea of putting boundary fences around the tract I think is interesting.

00:55:21.530 - 00:55:46.670

And, and you're right, the fact that the neighborhood is, is organizing to advance its own interests and try to gain some access to this property. So it seems that this is a good way for us to think about on the task force, a more expansive history of segregation in Houston.

00:55:46.670 - 00:56:08.840

And it really shows, as you were kind of alluding to, that if we think about that history narrowly, just as a question of who is admitted into the institute, then we're actually not taking the full measure of segregation as, as a system in the city, 'cause, as you point out, the institute, especially at this stage in 1913, was more

00:56:08.840 - 00:56:25.730

than just a university. It was also a real estate holder, a broker within the city of Houston, it was the kind of organization that the Chamber of Commerce had in its Rolodex, as we can see, and was coming to the institute asking for civic improvements.

00:56:26.810 - 00:56:45.350

But also what kinds of civic improvements? I mean, you are alluding to this, but it does raise the question of, which children were going to be able to use this playground that was going to be opened on this property? Would it have been truly available to the whole neighborhood?

00:56:45.740 - 00:57:10.580

And that's especially important given where this property was. And I saw there was a question or comment in the chat to us that I think was really astute in, in going back to the first map that I showed you. One of our audience members noted that, just down Smith Alley, just down the road from

00:57:10.580 - 00:57:33.270

this W.W. Swain property, was the Gregory Institute. And the Gregory Institute was actually the forerunner of what is today the Gregory School. It later moved from this location to the west, to its current location, near Project Row Homes and deeper into the Fourth Ward.

00:57:33.900 - 00:57:53.030

But of course, it's an institution that's closely connected with the history of the Fourth Ward, and Freedman's Town in particular, as a part of the city where many African Americans in the late 19th century from the countryside, the very people that Professor Pruitt is going to be talking about, I would assume, next Friday.

00:57:53.030 - 00:58:15.660

When they move to the city, not only settled in large numbers in the Fourth Ward, but also establish some really important community institutions in this neighborhood. In fact, just beyond the, the property that we've been talking about, if we were to go just a little bit north here, I think we would find Robin Street.

00:58:16.490 - 00:58:37.070

Robin Street right here. So here's the, the, the tract, and here's Robin Street. Well, that's the location of the Antioch Missionary Baptist Church, which I hope rings a bell for some of our audience as, as a critically important African American church

00:58:37.070 - 00:58:47.840

in the Fourth Ward. It's actually on the Sanborn maps as a brick building. You can see it right here. The Antioch Baptist Church is here.

00:58:48.860 - 00:59:10.860

And there's also some other community organizations like the United Brothership Friendship Hall, which was a black community center in the Fourth Ward. And what that tells us is that this neighborhood that we're talking about, the very neighborhood where the Rice Institute was originally planned to be, it was not yet

00:59:10.860 - 00:59:31.710

a fully segregated community. There were white property owners in this vicinity living alongside African American property owners. But one thing we get a glimpse of in this letter is a shift that's taking place in

00:59:31.710 - 00:59:53.940

1913, and a set of conflicts around who gets access to what property. It's kind of the story of how the city becomes segregated in the 20th century, and there's the Rice Institute at this early moment of it. So that's one reason why I kept, I was nagged about this source.

00:59:53.940 - 01:00:12.630

I'm really glad that we located it, but it's really raised more questions for me about, who are the people who were filing that suit, what were, why was the Rice Institute so invested in fencing this property and controlling access to it? Was there a park that was, was built on the property?

01:00:13.800 - 01:00:31.310

So I've got, I've got more questions now that I've found the source, but at least it's not the question of, where was that, where was that letter that...? That's the least interesting historical question that that we could ask. I, that was fantastic.

01:00:31.310 - 01:00:57.220

And I love that that map really helps all of us get a sense of changes in the urban landscape. And if people head down in that direction now, they'll feel very much in downtown, right, they'll be surrounded by a number of important skyscrapers and former businesses.

01:00:57.350 - 01:01:15.680

Chevron and Enron. Yes, right. But, but they'll understand or begin to see these connections, right, that what, what, what people our age typically think of as the Black Fourth Ward is what's left of the Fourth Ward, right.

01:01:15.680 - 01:01:40.400

And then we're also able to, to make these connections between the continuing changes in that neighborhood and what happens when the Gulf Freeway comes in. What happens now in terms of transformations in the building of townhomes and what, in that rump of Fourth Ward that folks my age think of as the Black Fourth Ward?

01:01:40.790 - 01:01:57.200

Mhm. Mhm. Well, it's good to be back, and I'm looking forward to our next doc talk next Friday. It'll be the same day as Professor Pruitt's lecture, so it's gonna be full of great information for our audience. Hope that you'll be here again next Friday at noon.

01:01:57.500 - 01:01:59.060

Dr. Byrd, have a great weekend.