00:00:10.150 - 00:00:22.120

(laughs) Well. I'll tell you what, I'm saving this. (laughs)

00:00:33.810 - 00:00:47.450

I'm excited. I'm excited about today prof. I'm excited about tomorrow 'cause it's a weekend. I am so excited about today's document

00:00:47.450 - 00:00:58.640

that I am as excited about right now as I am about the weekend. Wow. That's some excitement, that's some excitement.

00:00:59.490 - 00:01:08.970

Maybe you should go first since you're so excited about that. I'm willing to. You know what, I really want to.

00:01:08.970 - 00:01:20.500

I think I'm on record. You are on a bound. For our audience, Dr. Byrd extorted a promise from me yesterday.

00:01:20.500 - 00:01:30.010

No, that's not fair. He didn't extort it. I voluntarily offered it that I would go first on the Doc Talk today because he took the lead

00:01:30.010 - 00:01:46.540

in another presentation we had earlier this week, so. But welcome to those of you who are joining us for our weekly Doc Talk, as you hopefully know, by now we're here at this same link every Friday

00:01:46.540 - 00:02:00.600

at Noon Central working our way through some of the documents that the task force on slavery segregation and racial injustice are studying to try to better understand the history of Rice

00:02:00.600 - 00:02:09.370

and the ways that it is implicated and the history of slavery, segregation and racial injustice. So we're so glad

00:02:09.370 - 00:02:24.710

that you are joining us for this conversation. If you haven't been to our website, taskforce.rice.edu, you can also find their links to podcast episodes that feature recordings of past,

00:02:24.710 - 00:02:37.710

live webinars with Kate Coley from the Rice Alumni Association joining us to debrief some of those discussions. And a lot of times on those podcast episodes,

00:02:37.710 - 00:02:48.750

they're recorded several weeks after we've had one of our live webinars. And as we know, in 2020 and 2021 a lot can change in a few weeks.

00:02:48.750 - 00:03:00.230

And so those debriefs give us an opportunity to revisit some of our early interpretations and situate them in recent events. So our most recent episode

00:03:01.130 - 00:03:12.120

I think is a good example of that episode six where we used the debrief to talk a little bit about the events of January 6th and the history of white supremacist violence

00:03:12.120 - 00:03:26.570

in the United States and how the history that we're doing can help inform reactions to where we find ourselves in the present. So please go to the website and check out the podcast

00:03:26.570 - 00:03:37.610

if you haven't and without further ado, today we want to talk about a couple of documents that we're thinking about this week and save some time towards the end

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for any questions that you might have. So I said that I would go first this week. And last week I shared a document that as far as I'm aware, historians have never seen before

00:03:53.890 - 00:04:05.030

that mentions William Marsh Rice as a reference in an advertisement for a slave trader. And we discussed a little bit last week how it's possible that

00:04:05.030 - 00:04:14.620

even after all of the research that's been done on the history of Rice as an institution and William Marsh Rice, how is it possible that we're still able to find documents

00:04:14.620 - 00:04:23.470

that we haven't seen before? And that's partly because databases have been digitized that bring things to the surface

00:04:23.470 - 00:04:37.020

that have been buried in microfilm or in newspapers that are crumbling and the physical versions of them are crumbling and digitization gives them sort of a new life.

00:04:37.020 - 00:04:47.680

And so that brings things to the surface that have been forgotten. The document this week is also a document that had been forgotten by me

00:04:47.680 - 00:04:59.590

but it's not because of a digitization, it's just because I'm getting old Dr. Byrd, and sometimes I've forgotten about things that I had known or been told.

00:04:59.590 - 00:05:15.540

And so I'm grateful that one of our former PhD students here in the history department at Rice now, Dr. John Marks, who's gone on to a wonderful career as in public history

00:05:16.360 - 00:05:28.900

and also has published a book about the free black communities of Charleston, South Carolina, and Bogota, Columbia that sort of comparative of free black communities

00:05:28.900 - 00:05:40.070

in those two port cities. He reached out to me to remind me of an article that he published while he was still a graduate student here in the history department

00:05:40.070 - 00:05:56.130

in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly which investigated the history of black communities in Texas and specifically free black men and women living in Harris County Texas in Houston

00:05:56.130 - 00:06:05.610

in the antebellum period. And as Dr. Marks could tell you the history of free black Southerners is a difficult history sometimes to reconstruct

00:06:05.610 - 00:06:21.170

because the sources that exist to document their lives are very fragmentary. So even if we were to go to the US census in 1850 or 1860 and try to do count up how many

00:06:21.170 - 00:06:33.920

free black men and women lived in Houston, the numbers would be very small. We'd come up with maybe eight or nine names. And yet other documents show that there were more people

00:06:33.920 - 00:06:49.460

than that living in Harris County at that time. And so it's difficult even to sort of figure out the size of a free black communities in the South sometimes although I should say historians know

00:06:49.460 - 00:07:00.640

that they were very small as a percentage of the overall black population in the slave-holding states on the eve of the civil war. And that was true in Texas as well.

00:07:00.640 - 00:07:11.830

We know that there were free black people living in Houston, but we know that their numbers were small relative to the African-American population of the state as a whole,

00:07:11.830 - 00:07:31.040

the vast majority of whom were enslaved. And we also know that they lived lives that were constrained by discriminatory laws that were designed to pressure them to leave the state at risk of enslavement if they stayed.

00:07:31.560 - 00:07:41.090

One of the earliest laws that was passed and I promised I'm gonna get to the document in a minute, but this is important context. Even in the history of the Republic of Texas

00:07:41.090 - 00:07:54.690

before Texas became a state, some of the first laws that the Republic's Congress passed were to outlaw essentially the presence of free black people in the Republic of Texas.

00:07:55.550 - 00:08:09.520

And basically said that any free black person who entered the Republic was given a short period if time to leave or else they could be sold into slavery

00:08:09.520 - 00:08:22.680

according to the law. And so that remained the legal situation faced by many free black Texans, even after Texas became a state,

00:08:22.680 - 00:08:35.320

was annex to the United States. And this is important because it doesn't necessarily mean as some historians have shown that the laws were always enforced,

00:08:36.530 - 00:08:47.550

and the fact that we have in the US census examples of even if it's only eight or nine names of people who were living in Houston as free people of color,

00:08:47.550 - 00:08:58.850

even though the law supposedly said that was impossible, what that tells us is that sometimes there's a gap between what the law says and what the reality is on the ground,

00:08:58.850 - 00:09:14.120

and it tells us that laws are unevenly enforced and laws that might be true at the state level maybe are viewed differently at the local level, and I think we can understand

00:09:14.120 - 00:09:28.210

that even even today as we think about mask orders for example, in our own state, maybe there's some kind of directive coming from the state but that doesn't mean that all local officials

00:09:28.210 - 00:09:39.490

or all local organizations necessarily are going to do exactly what the state directive is, but even though. I think it were kind of law.

00:09:39.490 - 00:09:57.880

So Dr. McDaniel speaks to the creation of a certain kind of precarity on the ground, right? To have a law whose consequence is so significant and to have it not enforced in a moment,

00:09:59.120 - 00:10:10.070

there's a lot of meaning surrounding that. It doesn't necessarily, it creates some, it can create some real problems, right? Absolutely, and it means

00:10:10.070 - 00:10:20.980

that even when the law wasn't enforced, the fact that that sword was sort of dangling above the heads of free black Texans in this period

00:10:20.980 - 00:10:35.520

and could be enforced at any time meant that there was a kind of tenuousness to the freedom that people of color in very small numbers might have somehow managed to win.

00:10:36.700 - 00:10:48.500

And this is complicated too, by the fact that in addition to passing these laws, prohibiting the immigration of free black people into Texas particularly after the beginning of the civil war,

00:10:48.500 - 00:11:02.470

the Confederate constitution and the Confederate state legislature prohibited slaveholders from emancipating people that they enslaved.

00:11:02.470 - 00:11:16.530

And so, in addition to trying to keep free people from coming into the state, there were laws on the books attempting to forbidden individual slaveholders from making the decision to manumit

00:11:17.900 - 00:11:31.020

or free people whom they claimed as property. So I wanted to give you a sense of the overall legal context in order to make sense of the document that Dr. Marks reached out to me and reminded me of

00:11:31.020 - 00:11:42.200

because as I said, he published an article in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly about the free black community in Harris County. And in the course of his research for that article,

00:11:42.200 - 00:11:56.940

he came across the document that I wanted to share with you today. So let me pull up my screen. And hopefully what you is yet another handwritten document

00:11:56.940 - 00:12:08.080

as we've looked at these from time to time on the Doc Talks. And so I'm gonna do my best to transcribe this 19th century handwriting for us so we can see what we're looking at.

00:12:09.030 - 00:12:20.980

What this is, is a petition. It's a petition that's being sent, as it says at the top to the honorable, the legislature of the State of Texas. And immediately under that,

00:12:20.980 - 00:12:36.210

it tells us who the petitions from. The petition of Peter Allen, a free man of color, aged about 49 years and by profession a barber respectfully represents.

00:12:37.970 - 00:12:51.050

So let me just pause right there before we even go on. What we're looking at here is a petition being written by this 49 year old man, Peter Allen who is described in the petition as a free man of color.

00:12:52.290 - 00:13:06.120

But we don't find a record of Peter Allen in the census of 1860 or 1850. So that goes back to what I was saying earlier about the kind of incompleteness of the census record.

00:13:06.120 - 00:13:19.610

And I've already told you that according to the laws of the State of Texas, there's not supposed to be a free man of color much less one who can petition the state legislature.

00:13:19.610 - 00:13:38.320

And yet this is one of several kinds of petition like this that have turned up in the archives, excuse me, where people of African descent were writing to the legislature and, excuse me,

00:13:40.610 - 00:13:55.990

and making claims on the legislature and making an appeal in essence to have an exception made in their case to the laws governing slavery

00:13:55.990 - 00:14:06.410

and freedom in the state of the time. And that's, as we read on in this petition what Peter Allen has done here. And so let me read briefly what Peter Allen says

00:14:06.410 - 00:14:17.760

in this petition. He represents that he has been a resident of the City of Houston in the County of Harris in State of Texas for the past 17 years.

00:14:19.550 - 00:14:36.360

And I should have said there some other metadata with this document that tells us the petitions from 1863. So that means he's been a resident of Houston since 1846. During all of which time he has endeavored

00:14:36.360 - 00:14:49.920

to conduct himself honestly, soberly and industriously. And by his correct and upright department he believes he has one for himself the good opinion of all who know him.

00:14:51.740 - 00:15:06.080

He goes on to say that he was born and raised in the South, and that all his interest sympathies and feelings are in the land of his nativity. And that for more than eight months of the past year,

00:15:06.080 - 00:15:22.040

he was attached to Terry's regiment in the service of an officer of that regiment and your petitioner has been repeatedly complimented for the good and deficient service rendered his country

00:15:23.110 - 00:15:38.060

upon the battlefields of Watsonville and Shiloh of which his modesty forbids him speak. In consideration of all of which your petitioner would deem it a peculiar hardship

00:15:38.060 - 00:15:53.420

should he be required to leave this state at this time, wherefore, he humbly prays that a special act of the legislature be passed for his relief allowing him to remain in the state.

00:15:54.590 - 00:16:11.250

And then as you can see here, it has Peter Allen's name but not his own signature autograph because there's also an X here that's labeled his mark. And that was common in legislative petitions like this

00:16:11.250 - 00:16:26.300

if the petitioner could not write their own name then they would sign an x to signify their legal mark. So there's a lot that's going on in this document, a whole lot that's going on.

00:16:26.300 - 00:16:39.610

And you may be wondering why I'm talking about it for a Doc Talk about the task force on slavery segregation and racial injustice. And I wanna tell you that in just a moment

00:16:39.610 - 00:16:54.090

but first I wanna talk a little bit about some of what Allen was claiming here, because there's potential for some misinterpretation or misunderstanding of what's being said here,

00:16:54.090 - 00:17:07.410

particularly about what it sounds like Peter Allen is saying about his connection to a regiment of Confederate soldiers from Texas who had fought at the battlefield of Woodinville

00:17:07.410 - 00:17:18.420

and the battle of Shiloh in April of 1862, which would have been some months before he is writing this petition in 1863 to the state legislature.

00:17:19.770 - 00:17:34.550

And some people today I think sees on documents like this to claim that there were quote unquote black Confederates or people in the South black southerners

00:17:34.550 - 00:17:48.170

who supported the Confederate cause and were in fact enlisted in the Confederate army and in an age of fake news and the internet, you can find websites

00:17:48.170 - 00:18:06.460

that will point to a seeming evidence of that. And I just wanna say that I'd like to recommend a couple of books that I think put those myths in contexts and show why they are so misleading.

00:18:06.460 - 00:18:17.830

One is this book Kevin Levin, "Searching for Black Confederates: "The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth." And another book that I could recommend is

00:18:17.830 - 00:18:27.430

by Bruce Levine called "Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free "and Arm Slaves During the Civil War." And what both of those books by excellent historians show is

00:18:27.430 - 00:18:44.710

that the Confederacy was opposed throughout its life to the army of enslaved people. And there were on occasion proposals made from within the Confederacy to do that.

00:18:44.710 - 00:18:52.810

And they were also, they were always viewed as iconoclastic and voted down and said, absolutely not. We cannot arm enslave people.

00:18:52.810 - 00:19:09.070

We can't extend offers of freedom to people who would take up arms. And so there was no enlistment and on the scale that some of these websites claim of African-Americans,

00:19:09.070 - 00:19:26.040

there just were not black Confederate soldiers, but there were, as Levin talks about in his book sometimes enslaved people who as enslaved people were forced to perform military labor, build fortifications,

00:19:26.040 - 00:19:41.080

or to serve as cooks in support of a Confederate encampment. And sometimes these enslaved people were brought by their legal owners to the battlefield officers who would bring these enslaved people

00:19:41.080 - 00:19:56.230

as so-called camp servants, who would assist in washing their clothes and cooking their meals and doing the kinds of forced labor that they would have been doing

00:19:56.230 - 00:20:07.130

on the plantation of their own or back home. And so this is kind of an interesting case because Peter Allen is saying I'm petitioning as a free man of color

00:20:07.130 - 00:20:19.350

but then he's also seems to be describing himself as having performed a role like that where he was attached to Terry's regiment. And he had rendered good and efficient service

00:20:20.690 - 00:20:28.940

at these battles in Watsonville and Shiloh. So I just wanted to note that there's kind of a an ambiguity here around what Allen was doing

00:20:28.940 - 00:20:40.240

but clearly in this petition, he's saying that his sympathies are with the South and he's pointing to that. His modesty doesn't allow him to go on

00:20:40.240 - 00:20:50.400

but he's pointing to that. Why would he do that by the way, Dr. Byrd, do you think there's any reason why he would emphasize that in 1863 in a petition like this?

00:20:50.400 - 00:21:00.200

Yeah, I think there are some reasons, you probably want more than just my agreement though. (laughs) (indistinct) the significant.

00:21:00.200 - 00:21:14.670

What are some of those reasons that. So around 1863 is the year if I'm not mistaken of the emancipation proclamation, am I wrong? No, you're not.

00:21:14.670 - 00:21:19.730

Yes, I am wrong. You are not wrong, you are not wrong. I'm not wrong. So that's one reason.

00:21:19.730 - 00:21:33.170

And I think a broader reason even if there wasn't an emancipation proclamation, there would be reasons to use this language. This language is required

00:21:34.070 - 00:21:51.530

in a petition to the Texas legislature. Yeah, if you're petitioning the legislature of a state that forbids owners from emancipating enslaved people that has laws on the books that says

00:21:51.530 - 00:22:04.700

free people of color have to leave the state or else they will be enslaved, you probably are gonna go out of your way and your petition to express your support for the state

00:22:04.700 - 00:22:17.260

and sort of flatter them with these kinds of expressions of sympathy. So and obviously I don't wanna rule out the possibility that that Peter Allen

00:22:18.380 - 00:22:32.870

was a unique person who could have views of his own, he was an individual, but we don't really have a diary here from him or a letter. What we have is a very particular kind of document

00:22:32.870 - 00:22:44.420

that's being framed as a petition to the legislature. So it's not quite the same as if we could sit Peter Allen down and ask him, what he understood himself to be doing

00:22:44.420 - 00:22:53.300

on these battlefields at Shiloh and Watsonville because all we can know of that is filtered through this petition language. That has a specific goal.

00:22:53.300 - 00:23:02.980

A specific goal is don't make me move, right? I wanna remain in Houston. As he says, it would be a peculiar hardship if he should be required to leave the state,

00:23:02.980 - 00:23:12.040

which is what according to the law he would have to do. So he's seeking some security in the context of that precarity that you were mentioning earlier

00:23:12.040 - 00:23:25.270

Dr. Byrd, he wants something. He wants a law, a special law passed by the state just about his case that would say he can remain. And so he says, I've lived in Houston, I've been honest,

00:23:25.270 - 00:23:35.990

I've been industrious, I've been here for 17 years, I'm well known in the community and therefore allow me to stay. Now, the reason why Dr. Marks

00:23:35.990 - 00:23:48.630

pointed this petition out to me, I haven't shown you yet, but as we scroll down, it's important to note that attached this petition from Peter Allen at the legislature,

00:23:48.630 - 00:24:03.000

there is a second paragraph that says, we the undersigned citizens of Harris County have known Peter Allen for many years past and take pleasure in certifying to his correct deportment.

00:24:04.240 - 00:24:17.840

We believe him to be honest, sober, and industrious and recommend his petition to the favorable consideration of the legislature. So these are citizens who are supporting Allen's appeal

00:24:17.840 - 00:24:28.920

to the state legislature. And as you look at these names you see some very significant names like WR. Baker who was a mayor of Houston,

00:24:28.920 - 00:24:43.650

you see A Groesbeck who was a one-time partner of William Marsh Rice. And what I want to emphasize here on the right side is that you can see the autograph about four names down

00:24:43.650 - 00:25:05.330

of William Marsh Rice himself. So William Marsh Rice was one along with others, Paul Bremond, DW house of these prominent Houstonians who were supporting Peter Allen's petition

00:25:05.330 - 00:25:21.570

to the legislature. So I don't know about you, Dr. Byrd that it leaves me with some questions that I think are worth thinking about.

00:25:22.660 - 00:25:36.140

And one is what does it mean that William Marsh, first of all why would William Marsh Rice sign this petition? Why would he support Peter Allen's petition?

00:25:36.140 - 00:25:47.770

Remember, this is an 1863, which is the same year. Thinking back to our earlier Doc Talks that we saw a fugitive slave named captain who had been captured

00:25:47.770 - 00:25:59.150

and claimed that he was owned by William Marsh Rice and Frederick A. Rice. We know that a few years before as we saw last week, William Marsh Rice was lending his name

00:25:59.150 - 00:26:11.470

as a reference in a very different enterprise for Thomas Gresham, who was offering enslaved people for sale. So why would William Marshall Rice

00:26:11.470 - 00:26:21.230

has his name be listed here? So those are I think important questions to ask of this document. And I think the other question it raises is

00:26:21.230 - 00:26:36.070

what happened to this petition because it was sent to the state legislature. We have it because state legislatures keep pretty good records and if they receive a petition,

00:26:36.070 - 00:26:45.960

they hold onto it. And so it's there in the state archives in Austin that this petition is there, but how was it received? What would you guess, Dr. Byrd,

00:26:45.960 - 00:26:58.850

would you think that this petition from Peter Allen after he's gone through the trouble of professing his sympathy for the South and after he's gotten these pretty impressive

00:26:58.850 - 00:27:15.840

list of of white citizens in Harris County to sign on, do you think he succeeded in his petition? Oh boy, thanks for that question. I'm sorry that I couldn't have given it to you instead.

00:27:15.840 - 00:27:25.860

So and I'm gonna answer it without an answer, right? It's just gonna be a hypothesis. I'm gonna tell you if you're right or wrong. So this is (indistinct)

00:27:25.860 - 00:27:37.670

Okay, good, this is good. I want it to be this way. So I don't know enough about free blacks in Texas or petitions in Texas to have an educated Texas guests.

00:27:38.360 - 00:27:52.540

I'm drawing on what I know about free blacks and the petition process in Jamaica. And so I'm gonna lean, what's throwing me off is 1863, right?

00:27:52.540 - 00:28:08.140

So that I'm having, if this had happened 10 years before, I feel more confident in the yes that I'm going to make, but the 1863 is throwing me off.

00:28:09.010 - 00:28:18.640

But without that, I would say, given that list of names, there would be good reason to grant this petition. I love that's such a historian answer.

00:28:18.640 - 00:28:28.060

I love it that you went straight to the date, right? Because it matters when the document happened. You're absolutely right. And what was the context of the time?

00:28:29.330 - 00:28:36.820

And you were kind of wondering too, what were the precedents in Texas, were there any petitions like this that had succeeded in the past?

00:28:37.760 - 00:28:48.430

And I'll just give a plug to Dr. Marks as well in his article, one of the things he talks about is some of the scholarship on free black communities in Virginia,

00:28:48.430 - 00:29:01.390

a very different state, but some of the scholarship on those communities has shown that despite these harassing laws passed by the state that locally many free black southerners

00:29:01.390 - 00:29:18.050

were able to carve out lives for themselves and some security for themselves and property for themselves by building local reputations for honesty and sobriety. And you can hear some of that in the petition, right

00:29:18.050 - 00:29:34.850

that Allen is saying and the signatories are saying, he has a correct deportment, he's in other words not the kind of free black man who's going to agitate or undermine slavery.

00:29:34.850 - 00:29:48.230

He's got the right reputation. And in these other states, I think your guess is right because sometimes those appeals to reputation worked. We have evidence of that working in other cases.

00:29:48.230 - 00:30:02.210

So the question though is in 1863 in Texas while the nation is at war with itself and the Confederate Congress has passed laws, prohibiting emancipation of any kind,

00:30:02.210 - 00:30:15.250

what would happen in this case? And here to go back to my earlier comments, digitization does come to the rescue because Dr. Marks in his article wasn't sure what the outcome

00:30:15.250 - 00:30:23.360

of the petition was. And Andrew Forest Muir, our friend, Andrew Forest Muir here at Rice, the historian who's done so much research

00:30:23.360 - 00:30:33.060

on William Marsh Rice also published an article in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly back in the 1940s about the free black community in Harris County. He mentioned this position as well

00:30:35.040 - 00:30:45.720

but he claimed with no footnote that the legislature rejected it, rejected the petition. And so that got me curious and without going on too much, I mean.

00:30:45.720 - 00:31:00.060

Did you say claimed with no footnote, doctor wait, wait, let me hit my, I thought I misheard that. It didn't, there was no footnote, but thankfully digitization came through

00:31:00.060 - 00:31:11.490

because as I was looking into this, I got on the portal to Texas history and found and searched for Peter Allen and let me show you what I found.

00:31:12.910 - 00:31:36.810

I found this newspaper article, the Houston Telegraph, the weekly Telegraph published February 25th, 1863, okay? And before I show you, Allen pops up, by the way since you brought up 1863,

00:31:36.810 - 00:31:50.780

I have to show you this little article right here on the same page, where it says, it reports on some prices that were recently paid to purchase enslaved people in Wharton County.

00:31:50.780 - 00:32:03.510

And the newspaper sites these very high prices as evidence of the confidence of the people in the stability of property. And so this is evidence among lots of other evidence

00:32:03.510 - 00:32:16.340

that shows enslaved people were still being bought and sold in Texas after the emancipation proclamation. And that Confederates were actually pointing to those sales

00:32:16.340 - 00:32:25.500

as evidence they were confident slavery would survive the war. And when we come over here to see about Peter Allen's petition,

00:32:25.500 - 00:32:39.930

I think you can see some of that same confidence because here we see a report on recent actions taken in the house of representatives in Austin. And it says on the fourth column here,

00:32:40.890 - 00:33:00.190

the report of the committee on slaves and slavery adverse to allowing Peter Allen a slave his freedom for good behavior at Shiloh was adopted 48 to 24. Are you confused yet?

00:33:06.250 - 00:33:13.430

That confused me at first because. I was confused for a minute, but then I think I got it or for a second, but then I got it.

00:33:14.730 - 00:33:22.600

Well, it might seem confusing 'cause we've just been talking about this petition of Peter Allen as a free man of color, that's what he says in the petition

00:33:22.600 - 00:33:37.250

but here it describes him as a slave and it describes his petition as requesting freedom for good behavior at Shiloh. And then kind of reading between the lines here,

00:33:37.250 - 00:33:48.800

it's clear that a committee had drawn up a report adverse to that, in other words, opposing his freedom. And that that was adopted 48 to 24.

00:33:48.800 - 00:33:58.940

In other words, the state, the house of representatives denied his petition. But what's interesting is the petition is being described here slightly differently

00:33:58.940 - 00:34:13.280

from what we saw in the original document. Here it makes it sound like Allen had not been a free man of color prior to this petition, at least in the eyes of the law, but was attempting

00:34:13.280 - 00:34:25.870

to gain freedom for what it calls here quote, good behavior at Shiloh. And that even then the state legislature said no. So I did a little more digging

00:34:25.870 - 00:34:39.890

and thanks again, here to digitization. We can go to the actual journal kept by the house of representatives in 1863. And the journal of the house of representatives

00:34:39.890 - 00:34:56.100

for that day, February 14th gives us a little bit more detail about this petition. It says that if I can scroll down here, where is it? Pretty sure it was here, there it is, whoop.

00:34:59.690 - 00:35:09.790

So here it says, a petition of a portion of the citizens of Harris County in relation to Peter Allen and the report of the committee on slaves and slavery there on was taken up.

00:35:10.750 - 00:35:18.910

And then there's some sort of parliamentary maneuvering where some of the representatives say, let's not talk about this, let's put it on the table, but that fails.

00:35:18.910 - 00:35:31.040

And so then the report comes up for a vote. You gotta vote, do you support it or not? And then it lists here all of the votes that supported it 48 years.

00:35:31.940 - 00:35:44.460

And then what's interesting is the nays are also listed but the nays, several of the nays try to give their explanation for why they're voting no,

00:35:44.460 - 00:35:54.810

because clearly they're in the minority and they're having to, they're taking an unpopular stand here by supporting Allen's petition.

00:35:54.810 - 00:36:06.640

So they try to sort of explain themselves. And what's interesting is several of these representatives, well, I'll read one. This is from representative Cone

00:36:06.640 - 00:36:14.860

who is actually from Harris County and he gave this explanation. While endorsing the principles embraced in the report of the committee

00:36:14.860 - 00:36:23.840

as those which should constitute a general law and believing them to be correct and founded on a wise policy, I shall nevertheless vote against the reception

00:36:23.840 - 00:36:34.680

of the report as it does not recognize that under any circumstances, whatever there should be an exception to the rule laid down for as in this instance, cases may arise

00:36:34.680 - 00:36:47.660

wherefore meritorious conduct in this dreadful struggle, free men of color should be permitted to remain amongst us without going into slavery. So what's Cone saying there, he's basically saying,

00:36:47.660 - 00:37:01.530

"I agree in general "with the laws that prescribe the rights of free black men, "I agree in general "with the law say enslaved people should not be freed

00:37:01.530 - 00:37:14.840

"but I support this exception." And again and again, the nays kind of put it in that light. Here's another example of Buckholts, representative Buckholts said,

00:37:14.840 - 00:37:24.460

"I believe in the general principles "annunciated in the report "but believe that the prayer of the petition "should be granted in consideration" of what he called.

00:37:24.460 - 00:37:34.120

Here he said, quote, "The boy, Peter "having served the Southern Confederacy "at the battle of Shiloh. So there's still some kind of ambiguity even here

00:37:34.120 - 00:37:46.900

in whether the representatives can agree on was Allen enslaved? Was he a free man of color? What should his rights be?

00:37:46.900 - 00:37:56.560

I think what's clear is the majority ruled against him, and that tells us a couple of things about William Marsh Rice that in signing that petition,

00:37:56.560 - 00:38:12.210

he was in the minority of opinion on this question but I also don't know how much we can conclude about his personal feelings from that signature because we see that people who opposed the report

00:38:13.370 - 00:38:26.340

had a variety of reasons for doing so. Some said it was because he was a free man of color and should be allowed to remain. Others described him as an enslaved man

00:38:26.340 - 00:38:38.600

who was petitioning to receive his freedom. So it's a little unclear just from joining the nays as it were, what William Marshall Rice thought but it is a pretty revealing, I think

00:38:38.600 - 00:38:52.470

piece of evidence that tells us something, I'm not 100% sure what yet about how William Marsh Rice thought about these laws that talked about slavery

00:38:52.470 - 00:39:00.000

and free people of color in Harris County. I've gone way past my time, but I'll stop there (indistinct) Don't worry, I'll speed up. And I'm gonna keep you on it

00:39:00.000 - 00:39:17.030

for just one more minute to just add that. I think one of the, I think we can be fairly certain or not certain enough, right? Lean toward the direction that if you sign this petition,

00:39:17.910 - 00:39:32.400

that in general, you weren't against allowing a black person to stay in the state and be free, right? I imagine there are some places where that might not be true

00:39:33.270 - 00:39:45.130

but I've just liked to raise the problem, the additional problem of trying to figure out what any individual person who signed this petition thought. Because the other thing that I guess,

00:39:45.130 - 00:40:01.780

I think we would need to do is to investigate the networks by which this petition ends up in the hands of individual residents of Harris County and whether they are signing

00:40:01.780 - 00:40:14.150

because of their, why they're signing, right? Because of they actually, the stuff that signed the petition is actually true in their own minds or it's true in the minds

00:40:14.150 - 00:40:29.270

of people in whose circle they operate and to whom they want to be accommodating. The question of why people sign will also be important Does it take a patron in order to begin

00:40:29.270 - 00:40:40.490

this type of petition process is really the question that begins some of my thinking about that. I think that's a great question.

00:40:40.490 - 00:40:53.710

And the Allens were a very prominent family, a white family in Houston among the founders of the city. And so it does kind of raises the question in my mind of whether there was any connection between Peter Allen

00:40:53.710 - 00:41:05.140

and that family that might have given him some additional connection to these business leaders in the city. I think it also needs to be said,

00:41:05.140 - 00:41:19.230

when we look at the petition critically whether you were supporting the petition or not in Peter Allen's case, the petition itself is still indicative

00:41:19.230 - 00:41:31.250

of the principles of white supremacy that we're structuring this society because think about what Allen was having to do

00:41:31.250 - 00:41:45.100

to be made an exception, he was having to represent himself as not like all those other people of color. I'm honest, I'm sober, I'm industrious.

00:41:45.100 - 00:41:54.830

I deport myself correctly. I support the South. And so, and that's what the signatories also say in the certification.

00:41:54.830 - 00:42:04.210

They find his reputation and they find his behavior to be the right behavior. And in a way, it kind of recalls some of our earlier conversations last semester about

00:42:04.210 - 00:42:20.100

the language around qualified students or the kinds of students that Rice would be admitting once it ended it's exclusionary charter. I think what this petition connecting

00:42:20.100 - 00:42:33.310

to that discussion does is makes us attentive to that kind of language about department and behavior. So I'll stop because I'm eager to hear about your document but this one seemed important to discuss.

00:42:33.310 - 00:42:52.890

All right, well, let me get going. I'm going to head to a blueprint that I hope I'm not going to mess up trying to show it, but here we go I think.

00:42:52.890 - 00:43:02.830

And just when I did this, I lost something. So let's see, I lost my ability, there it is. I lost for a minute my ability to move around but now I find it.

00:43:03.840 - 00:43:21.610

So what we have here is a blueprint of the basement of the Rice Memorial Center that I've been thinking about all week, actually, Dr. Will Jones our researcher

00:43:24.180 - 00:43:38.990

attached to the Woodson Research Center and also to the task force sent this to us last semester in response to a query about segregated spaces on campus. And it was, I found it really thought provoking then

00:43:38.990 - 00:43:52.740

but this past week I returned to it and think it's worth some consideration here during the Doc Talks. And so this is the plan

00:43:53.640 - 00:44:07.340

of the 1957 Rice Memorial Center, the heart of the center that we still have, right? It's the center lies between the chapel and the Lay Students Center,

00:44:07.340 - 00:44:22.860

though I don't think anyone caused the Lay Students Center the Lay Students Center anymore, but that's what it is. And this is down in the basement. And so we have a blue document with white lines

00:44:23.460 - 00:44:46.390

that kind of mark out spaces within the basement of the RMC. Those of you who are Rice people can probably very quickly call to mind some of these spaces. I think I see the pub, Dr. McDaniel.

00:44:46.390 - 00:44:57.700

I think I see the pub. I think I see the former book room. That can help us since I was constantly having to turn off my camera

00:44:57.700 - 00:45:14.400

in order to see what was going on and to help Dr. McDaniel by moving in some here by zooming, by zooming in some, if I can remember how to do it, okay? Is this it?

00:45:14.400 - 00:45:25.300

Oh, no, that doesn't, that's not it. Here we go. So I'm thinking this area here looks off of like the pub to me, right?

00:45:25.300 - 00:45:45.590

It's this area unfinished, except for concrete floor in the 1957 plan. Over here on this part of the, across from the pub is what used to be the basement

00:45:45.590 - 00:46:02.350

of the bookstore, right, but which is now, or for a time was the multicultural center, right? The first iteration of the multicultural center. On the right part of the document

00:46:02.350 - 00:46:19.020

we have who the architect was, Harvin C. Moore, AIA architect 2006 West Alabama Street, Houston, Texas. And then we have parts of the RMC

00:46:19.020 - 00:46:32.990

toward the top of the print that I'm less familiar with. I didn't spend enough time in the bottom of the RMC as a student, Dr. McDaniel. I know that surprises you.

00:46:32.990 - 00:46:45.370

Not even much time in pub. And so, and I think if I did spend much more time in pub I would have gathered a kind of mental sense of better mental sense

00:46:45.370 - 00:46:59.200

of what I'm trying to relay to folks now. But I have a couple of questions already about this document. One is Harvin C. Moore.

00:46:59.200 - 00:47:12.390

I'm excited about who are the people who are drafting the plans for buildings on Rice's campus, right? That's a question that we're interested in

00:47:12.390 - 00:47:24.490

on the task force, right? Who are the people who design our buildings, who are the people who built our buildings, et cetera. So that's one question.

00:47:25.630 - 00:47:38.790

And those of you who have been in Houston for some time and you make a habit of reading the architects on Houston buildings on the plaques as you walk through them, Harvin C. Moore

00:47:38.790 - 00:47:52.640

will be a name that you, I wouldn't be surprised if you had seen it, you had seen it before. It's this area of the basement of the RMC

00:47:52.950 - 00:48:07.830

that I'm particularly interested in on the top left-hand corner. We get to what looks like a kind of amaze of buildings of rooms that come together,

00:48:07.870 - 00:48:25.800

whether a set of stairs but also a corridor from the pub that leads into this area. And there are four finished rooms in particular, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21 that interests me.

00:48:29.520 - 00:48:39.290

This is a space that's doing a lot of work, right? I'm not an architect, I wished I was, I wish I was an architect. It looks like a wonderful job

00:48:40.290 - 00:48:50.890

but this is a space that someone has put a tremendous work, right? They've carved out a bunch of things going on here. You can tell there's a decent amount of plumbing

00:48:50.890 - 00:48:57.730

or I guess I can tell, I don't know if we're in here deep enough but there's a decent amount of plumbing. If you look in here

00:48:57.730 - 00:49:14.480

you can see what looked to be some fixtures, some sinks or whatnot up against the walls. These are looked to be toilets I think if not, obviously, probably toilets,

00:49:15.680 - 00:49:26.000

and we've got a lot of them, right? So even though this is a busy space, right? It's a particularly busy space. There also seemed to be some incredible

00:49:26.000 - 00:49:37.000

inefficiencies here, right? This is right. So at first glance going, wow this architect is really putting this space to work, right?

00:49:37.000 - 00:49:44.990

He's carved out. I mean, there's all kinds of action but then when you get in close and you start looking at what looks to be plumbing,

00:49:44.990 - 00:49:58.640

then I'm going, oh my God, this, I guess there are ways to be more inefficient with plumbing but this looks particularly inefficient. So we've got a toilet over here and then right behind it,

00:49:58.640 - 00:50:10.370

we've got one toilet here, but different rooms, I guess that could make sense. But then, but right here, you also had two toilets already right next to each other.

00:50:10.370 - 00:50:27.010

And then another toilet over here and to get answers to some of those questions, we can head over to the room schedule, right which tells us what Harvin C. Moore

00:50:27.010 - 00:50:42.460

and tins all of these buildings, what all of these rooms to do. And when we get to the section of the blueprint that we just spent a little time at, we see the key here.

00:50:42.460 - 00:51:04.410

So 16 is the white ladies locker room, 17 is the colored ladies locker room. So if we go back over, 16 is the white ladies locker room, 17 is the colored ladies locker room

00:51:04.410 - 00:51:15.630

and then we head back over to the key and we'll see, there's a kitchen storage, a mechanical equipment room but then 20 is the colored men's locker room

00:51:15.630 - 00:51:37.120

and 21 is the white men's locker room, right? So dog gone is I forget that soon. Yeah, 20 is colored, 20 is colored, and 21 is white. So we see here at a time when Rice is building

00:51:37.810 - 00:51:57.450

its first student center, one of the questions that has to be raised, right, what are the facilities going to look like in 1957? And so we get an answer here, but as a historian, right?

00:51:57.830 - 00:52:16.230

And as someone working on the task force, I also have a range of other questions that emerge that this layout, right begs questions about the nature and quality of segregated space on campus.

00:52:18.220 - 00:52:31.810

So Rice, we like to think of Rice as rich, don't we Dr. McDaniel? Part of the reason we like to think of it as rich is because it is a highly resourced institution.

00:52:31.810 - 00:52:47.470

So there's no question about that but the resources at Rice aren't unlimited, right? They are unlimited and they wouldn't have been unlimited in 1957 in any regard,

00:52:48.590 - 00:52:58.220

indeed in 1957 probably would have been considerable pressures on some of the resources. So questions about costs would have come into account

00:52:58.220 - 00:53:11.620

when they were building this building. And so to get back to the question of the nature and quality of segregation, one of the questions that are on campus at Rice, right?

00:53:11.620 - 00:53:25.200

One of the questions that I have is who's using these locker rooms, right? So we have here, there aren't black students on campus in 1957, right?

00:53:26.380 - 00:53:37.760

And so, but what we do have here is evidence of black staff, right? Or evidence of black presence most likely black staff on campus.

00:53:37.760 - 00:53:55.430

So one of the questions that this document raises for me is who are the people, right who are using these facilities but also because this is a new plan, right? So it's one thing to be building or planning

00:53:55.430 - 00:54:09.650

for segregated facilities in the 1920s or in the 1930s. It's another question to be doing it in the late 1950s, right? In the aftermath of a World War

00:54:09.650 - 00:54:25.480

that has put considerable pressure on segregation, the concept of segregation in the aftermath of Supreme Court rulings, which point toward the possibilities of a desegregated,

00:54:28.530 - 00:54:44.470

point toward the possibilities of desegregation. It reminds me a little of the article we saw in 1863 in the Telegraph citing slave prices in 1863 as a sign of the confidence of a white Houstonians

00:54:44.470 - 00:54:57.920

that slavery was gonna live on. And so to build a space like this, or plan a space like this in 1957 is also a way of communicating some projection of the future.

00:54:57.920 - 00:55:08.950

Some confidence that segregation is gonna (indistinct) Well, I was gonna, I didn't say, well, fast enough, I was gonna stop you on, it's a projection toward the future.

00:55:08.950 - 00:55:21.650

And to have us contemplate precisely what is it projecting, right? As historians or, and I'm singularly unqualified to begin the work I'm about to begin, right,

00:55:21.650 - 00:55:35.170

is that as historians, what does this space tell us about the confidence or lack thereof about segregation, right? It absolutely says that we can't build this building

00:55:35.170 - 00:55:45.840

without some segregated spaces, right? But what does the space, does the space project confidence in segregation or does it not, right?

00:55:45.840 - 00:55:58.720

Is the open question and I would need to call our colleague, professor Lopez Duran on and get her to talk with us.

00:55:58.720 - 00:56:13.420

And if my zoom fingers were fast enough I swear I would get her on, or I figure out. But, so and here's one way to approach it, right? So any person or almost any person familiar

00:56:13.420 - 00:56:25.710

who's watched a documentary on segregation knows that one of the things that segregated spaces are supposed to do right then thank you so much for your zoom fingers.

00:56:25.710 - 00:56:40.360

One of the things that segregated spaces are supposed to do are reinforced and reinforced and inscribing reinscribe any quality, right? So I would want the women's,

00:56:40.360 - 00:56:51.460

I would want the colored ladies locker room for one thing, right? Colored ladies and white ladies, right? There all kinds of levels of things we'd need to interpret.

00:56:51.460 - 00:57:03.610

What is Peter Allen called in the Houston Telegraph? What is the 49 year old Peter Allen called in the Houston Telegraph in 1863. He's not called a young man, right?

00:57:03.610 - 00:57:17.060

So one question is how to interpret the language of ladyhood and manhood on the key but also how to interpret the space, how to interpret the square footage

00:57:17.060 - 00:57:29.610

of these different spaces, or questions that come. So is this a reinforcement of segregation or is it, might it also be a looking toward a vague, how do we use this space

00:57:29.610 - 00:57:46.450

if we're not gonna be segregated for long? These are just, I don't have the answers but now professor Lopez Duran, please help us. Oh, she may not be really here.

00:57:46.450 - 00:57:56.440

It may just be your avatar. Okay, let me see. Well, while she's coming on I think I hadn't thought about it in that respect.

00:57:56.440 - 00:58:06.340

I mean, I was thinking about how, on the one hand there's all of these walls and doors attempting to keep these spaces segregated and yet to get into these rooms

00:58:06.340 - 00:58:20.870

it looks like the corridor is pretty narrow. You're gonna be bumping shoulders and in that corridor is not segregated. So there's gonna be plenty of proximity and interaction,

00:58:22.630 - 00:58:39.150

which in some ways just underscores the irrationality of the whole system of segregated space. But it also, now that I'm looking at it with the cast you've given it,

00:58:39.150 - 00:58:50.600

one can imagine some of those walls being taken down to make a bigger men's locker room or women's locker room when the time comes. So that does raise the question

00:58:50.600 - 00:59:07.470

of what was intended by this particular layout. Fascinating, fascinating, well, doctor, it's telling that Dr. Lopez Duran has to go get a COVID test.

00:59:07.470 - 00:59:18.130

We are in 2021. And so she wasn't able to join us at the moment but we will certainly follow up with her about this and get some expertise

00:59:18.130 - 00:59:32.960

that architectural historians could share but is one o'clock and we want to thank all of our attendees for joining us today for this latest Doc Talk. Please email us if you have questions or thoughts,

00:59:32.960 - 00:59:39.960

we'd love to see you next week when we come together again for the next Doc Talk. Have a great weekend.