00:00:15.740 - 00:00:24.280

Good afternoon, Dr. Byrd. I think I can say afternoon. Yes. Good afternoon. 12:01.

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Some, some days the, the word "zoom" has more meaning than others. We're kind of zooming in this webinar, aren't we? I thought I had plenty of time to log on. I thought I was logging on ten minutes early.

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Well, it's okay because you're here. Our audience is here. It's Friday. It's time for doc talks, and it's, it's a good Friday. It's a good week at Rice.

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An excellent week. Some might, historians might call it a historic week. I would call it that. I definitely would.

00:01:07.230 - 00:01:27.570

Some non-historians have said that as well, and I think that that's accurate. Of course, hopefully our audience has heard the big news yesterday, the announcement of Reginald DesRoches, the eighth president of Rice, starting next summer. So it's very exciting times around, around campus today.

00:01:29.250 - 00:01:52.610

I am, I'm quite excited. It was good to, to see his introduction yesterday. It is something I wanna work hard to sear into my memory. Absolutely. And you and I have already been talking about dusting off our regalia and our

00:01:52.610 - 00:02:08.180

best duds for what hopefully will be a lot of pomp and circumstance next summer to inaugurate this presidency. I'm ready for investiture. I'm gonna, I'm gonna start working out so that I can, I can fit into my robe.

00:02:09.770 - 00:02:25.520

Absolutely. Well, it was, it's been a big week for the task force too. Last Friday, we had our latest webinar with Davarian Baldwin. It was a great lecture on a Friday evening. We're working on getting the video recording of that up so that those who weren't able to

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make it live will be able to to catch up. And the work continues. I hope that our audience isn't too disappointed that last Friday I advertised today as a special doc talk.

00:02:38.930 - 00:03:03.680

We were to be joined by two guests from the Rice faculty to discuss our summer research updates. But life intervened and jury duty came up for one of our guests, and so we've had to postpone that till next Friday. So I promise there was no false advertising to get you here for the two of us.

00:03:03.680 - 00:03:22.370

We will bring you that special conversation next Friday, so keep that, keep that on your calendar. I also just saw right before we went live, Dr. Byrd, that our conversation with Dr. Melanie Price with Houston Public Media's show "I SEE U" has just gone on the web.

00:03:22.370 - 00:03:39.650

I'll see if I can find that. But I was just listening to it this morning, there's a conversation not only with the two of us about the task force, but also with historians at Prairie View A&M University about the work they're doing on the history of the Alta Vista Plantation.

00:03:39.650 - 00:03:58.430

I think I said that right, is it Alta Vista? Which is the plantation on which the campus for Prairie View A&M was later built. And it was a really fascinating conversation. I think it draws out a lot of the same sorts of questions and purposes behind our work,

00:03:58.430 - 00:04:16.640

but with some different sets of sources, some different objectives, some different methods that they're using. So I'd really recommend our audience check out that show as well. I think if you were to go to Houston Public Media and search for the I SEE U show, you

00:04:16.640 - 00:04:28.010

could find that latest episode. But... That was one of, I'm sorry, I thought, I thought you were, we're not professional enough yet, or I'm not.

00:04:28.020 - 00:04:34.680

I took that as a pitch. I'm sorry. Yes, that was a cue. Say something. Say something about the...

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I don't, I don't know if we, I don't, I don't recall us mentioning on air about that that conversation with Dr. Price, but it was, definitely has been one of the highlights of, of my semester, this, this work that, that more and more universities are involved on with the, the

00:04:57.690 - 00:05:21.900

introspective reflection on their, on their past, and the way that their past inform their present for good and for ill. I'm, I'm excited to, to be involved in this work with, with a growing number of scholars at universities in the, in the region.

00:05:24.160 - 00:05:47.380

Absolutely. And one of the things that Professor Robinson from, from Prairie View A&M pointed out on the show is that a lot of that work began with the work of the current president of Prairie View A&M University and Rice University Board of Trustees emerita Ruth Simmons, who started the work on the history of Brown University's entanglement

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with slavery and racial injustice back in 2004, I think is right, and of course, since has become president at Prairie View A&M, is continuing the work there, and I think it's fair to say, has been an inspiration for our work at Rice as well. Some of our regulars may recall her lecture on campus right before the pandemic, it was

00:06:10.600 - 00:06:36.550

our first and last live lecture before everything went remote. But it was, it was also wonderful to hear Provost DesRoches yesterday mention President Simmons's influence on him and his career and on Rice University from afar, even though she wasn't able to to join the, the announcement yesterday.

00:06:38.470 - 00:06:53.980

Alright, so we're getting started. We didn't, I didn't get in early enough for us to decide who was going first. I think if you show up in the nick of time and make your co-host sweat a little bit, then that means that you're volunteering.

00:06:54.010 - 00:07:20.710

Alright, this is good. I'm ready, I'm ready to go, and I spoke a second ago about getting in some workout and some training so that I could fit into my robe come investiture time next year, and continuing, next school year, and continuing along that theme of of working out, I wanna

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focus today on athletics and black life at the university and discourse about blackness at the university. And so I've, my documents today are two newspaper articles, one from the late 1960s and one from the early 1970s, that addressed the career of Stahle

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Vincent. And those of you who have been around for a while, and particularly at the 50th, celebration of 50th anniversary of blacks on campus, but also at the unveiling of To Be Young, Gifted and Black, the film put together by Public Affairs and Multicultural Community Affairs on black life at the university, will be familiar with

00:08:23.260 - 00:08:38.770

Mr. Vincent. And I, and I wanna do two things today, partly inspired by an event that's happening later this week that, Dr. McDaniel, please, if my notes fail me and I forget to mention something that's happening

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this weekend, just give me the heads up. But partly inspired by an event that's happening on the campus this week, I wanna take a document from the start of Mr. Vincent's career at the university, and a document from toward the very end of Mr.

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Vincent's career at the university, and use them to raise questions about what it means to interrogate various kinds of black life at the university. And and, of course, for this particular moment, I want to raise questions for what it means to be a black athlete at Rice, and the place that black athletes play in the, in the

00:09:27.340 - 00:09:59.650

desegregation, the continuing desegregation of the university. So let me get started with my very first article, which comes from the Houston Chronicle from April 7th, 1968. And this is a piece from deep in the newspaper, but not very deep into the sports

00:09:59.650 - 00:10:34.270

section. And we see that getting, not quite pride of place, but unavoidable, it's some prominence on the page, is a photograph of Stahle Vincent in a circle, and there's a quite bold headline, perhaps the boldest headline on the page actually, that says "Rice Owls Get Negro Grid Star." And I may not be zoomed in enough, I feel

00:10:34.270 - 00:11:07.090

like perhaps I'm not, so I want to zoom in just a little bit more for our audience. And what, the process I'm gonna use today is I'm gonna read a little bit from this 1968 article, and then I'm gonna go to a 1972 article, and then I want to use them to, to make inquiries about what it would mean to tell the story of desegregation at, at Rice,

00:11:07.090 - 00:11:27.140

through the career of a black athlete like Mr. Vincent. So here we go. Joe McLaughlin is the sportswriter who breaks this story, and this, this, this story, it looks quite prominent on the page.

00:11:27.140 - 00:11:49.130

I just, I just wanna return to, to that. These are the Southwest Conference days of Rice football, and, and so we may not be used to Rice football getting this type of prominence in the local paper now, but it's somewhat different in the, in the late 1960s.

00:11:51.290 - 00:12:12.260

And I want, I want, as I start to read, I'm gonna ask our audience to be particularly attuned to changes in language from the, descriptive language, from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. And that gets at some of what I mentioned earlier about being attuned to changes in

00:12:12.260 - 00:12:27.290

discourse around desegregation. But then also we wanna tune in on what, what types of questions I think we could raise about Mr. Vincent's experience on campus.

00:12:27.290 - 00:12:45.850

So I'll get down to reading, which is my job today. "Rice Owls Get Negro Grid Star. A speedy Negro quarterback with a great arm." Dr. McDaniel, I just gotta pause for a second.

00:12:45.880 - 00:13:07.600

I just wanna, as a, as a sometimes teacher of the English language, as someone who, who works on writing with students, but even more than that, works on my own writing, it's hard for me to get past this headline and the first sentence without, I know I said we're gonna ask questions later.

00:13:08.410 - 00:13:24.610

You didn't even get through a sentence, Dr. Byrd. But it's hard to get past the first sentence without wanting to make some comments here. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna go ahead and say that, you know, sometimes, sometimes I'm

00:13:24.610 - 00:13:43.390

captured by redundancy. And I wonder what the purpose of redundancy is. And so I just wanna, I just wanna lay that out before I continue. "Rice Owls Get Negro Grid Star, a speedy Negro quarterback with a great arm." So I

00:13:43.390 - 00:14:07.030

feel like one of the things that McLaughlin or his editors want to make clear here, what's particularly important for the readers of the paper, they don't want you to forget, not for one second, that Stahle Vincent is black. And in case you're having any trouble with it, we have a picture of him right here under

00:14:07.030 - 00:14:19.750

the headline. We've got "Negro Grid Star" in the headline, and we have the third word of the first sentence in the article about Mr. Vincent also underlining that fact.

00:14:19.750 - 00:14:39.550

But now that we have that underway, I'll keep reading, won't stop anymore. But that's the kind of attention to language that I want to return to a little later. But, "A speedy Negro quarterback with a great arm, sought by more than 50 major universities throughout the nation, has signed a letter of intent to play football at

00:14:39.550 - 00:14:55.420

Rice University this fall. The athlete is Stahle Vincent of Dudley High School in Greensboro, North Carolina. Vincent is a six-foot-one, 185-pounder who was an All-State performer in North Carolina and voted the state's top gridder.

00:14:55.630 - 00:15:27.300

His coach, Bill Furcron, describes Vincent 'as quick as a hiccup.'" So if you were wondering if Stahle Vincent was fast, the answer to that question is yes. The defensive coach who actually took on the task of recruiting Mr. Vincent because he had some experience in it in a previous job, working the North Carolina

00:15:27.300 - 00:15:52.290

circuit continued to say the following about Stahle Vincent. "We feel Stahle was one of the hardest recruited kids in the country. We visited him three times, but I've been a long-time friend of Coach Furcron and had done extensive recruiting in North Carolina before." As the, as the story moves on, we're

00:15:52.290 - 00:16:15.180

informed toward the end of the first column, importantly, "Vincent is the third Negro football player recruited by Rice this spring, and he is the 39th player signed by the Owls. So importantly, what, what we're seeing here is the desegregation of Rice football, and a

00:16:15.180 - 00:16:44.970

particular way in which it is, it is happening. And then we get some details about Vincent's speed and capabilities as an athlete, but here is, for some of the readers of the Chronicle in 1968, is where McLaughlin tumbles upon what for many of them would probably have been the lead or should have

00:16:44.970 - 00:17:05.670

been the lead. So there would have been readers of the Chronicle who got toward the end of the first column, and this is what would have, this, the following line would have gained their attention. "'He definitely will get a shot at quarterback,' Rice head coach Bo Hagan said.

00:17:05.670 - 00:17:31.050

He was impressed," speaking of Vincent, "he was impressed with the quarterbacks who have played here and gone on to play pro football." And then the story goes on to talk a little bit more about Vincent's athletic abilities. And then it ends, speaking to some of his qualifications and experiences at Dudley High

00:17:31.050 - 00:17:45.200

School before he came to Rice. "Vincent is in the upper 5% of his class, was president of his student council, and president of the National Honor Society. He wants to major in business at Rice.

00:17:45.210 - 00:18:07.830

Vincent accounted for more than 2700 yards total offense last year as he quarterbacked his team to the state finals. Rice's first Negro signee was Mike Taylor, a halfback from Waco High School, and the second one was Rodrigo Barnes of La Vega Carver, offensive or defensive tackle." And I

00:18:07.830 - 00:18:30.750

wanna add, I wanna close by mentioning something about Rodrigo Barnes later. So, so here we have the setup for Stahle Vincent's arrival at, at the university. And I wanna pause for just a second, Dr. McDaniel, in case there's anything you want to tee up or anything that has come to mind

00:18:30.750 - 00:18:52.320

for you as I've gotten started. Well, one of the things that comes to mind in this article is something that's missing in the report, which is Vincent himself. He's not interviewed along with all of these coaches, although it does say, McLaughlin

00:18:52.320 - 00:19:08.930

says some things about what he wants to major in, And the coach says he was impressed by previous quarterbacks. But it's kind of conspicuous to me that Vincent himself is not interviewed. Yeah, no evidence of it.

00:19:08.940 - 00:19:31.830

No evidence of it at all here. Not sure how people did signing letters in the late 1960s. You do them now, it's easy to have access to everyone, even if they're on different, located in different sections of the, of the country.

00:19:33.270 - 00:19:53.290

But what's not clear, your question, what your question raises for me, an unclarity on my part, I don't, I don't know where any of these people are when this reporting is done. But certainly telephones exist in the late 1960s. I, I don't recall that, but I've been told.

00:19:53.290 - 00:20:12.840

I've been told that. Alright, so fast forward four years to the last game of Stahle Vincent's career, and I want to then move on to that. I wanna drop in some few athletic facts along the way.

00:20:16.120 - 00:20:44.590

In the late 1960s, if you were recruited to play football at Rice, you didn't play your freshman year. Just, I just thought I'd drop that in. You, you practiced, and you, and you got acclimated in other ways to the university. So I wanna move on to November 28th, 1971, when

00:20:45.340 - 00:21:07.540

happily, "Records Fall as Rice Blanks Baylor, 23 to 0." That's what, that's what I'm, that's what I'm talking about. I'm still trying to, I'm so glad to read this, because in my mind, I have a football memory that I'm still trying to scrub from my mind, and that is, and it's against, it's

00:21:07.540 - 00:21:35.170

a Rice game against Baylor when Baylor was quarterbacked by Robert Griffin III. I'm sorry to be, have been triggered here, but it was, has always been hard for me to appreciate Robert Griffin III because of that game, but I'm so excited, I'm now gonna replace that game in my mind with this 23 to nothing whippin' that the Rice Owls put upon

00:21:35.170 - 00:21:57.190

the Baylor Bears. And also one in which several records fell. And Vincent is one doing a good deal of the record breaking. So I wanna run to the second column of the, of the article.

00:21:57.190 - 00:22:25.630

And remember, we're looking for questions that arise out of the use of language, but also trying to get at some of Vincent's experience as a black student at the university. "Vincent," story is also by Joe McLaughlin, "Vincent, the swift, will-of-the-wisp halfback, struggled all day, and finally, on his 39th carry of the

00:22:25.630 - 00:22:48.730

game," that's gonna mean something for those of you who watch football. "On his 39th carry of the game, made a four-yard run to the Baylor ten with only seconds remaining. It gave him 123 yards for the day, the number he needed to break Kosse Johnson's 18

00:22:48.730 - 00:23:14.170

year old rushing mark of 944 yards by exactly one yard. To add to his brilliant day and put the finishing touches to a superb career, the six-foot-two 195-pound senior from Greensboro, North Carolina, on the next play tossed a ten yard touchdown pass to Bubba Berg with 20 seconds left.

00:23:14.200 - 00:23:39.580

Passing-wise, Vincent has hit four of four this year for two touchdowns. Vincent's 39 carries snapped Butch Robinson's record of 38 totes against Baylor in 1960, sorry, 1968. His 243 carries," that's his, Vincent's carries for the year, "is a conference

00:23:39.790 - 00:24:07.180

record, bettering the old mark of 232 set by Arkansas's Bobby Burnett in 1965." I won't read what comes, the story continues, which just speaks to some of the drama of the story, that Vincent basically breaks the record within the last two minutes of the game.

00:24:07.840 - 00:24:29.500

And if we were, if we were, if we had a little more room to run narratively, we would, we would tend to that. But here we get a second story by McLaughlin that focuses mainly on Vincent and captures, Dr. McDaniel, his voice.

00:24:29.770 - 00:24:57.310

It's Dad's Day at the football game, and so the players who can have invited their fathers to the game, and among the Dad's Day crowd for Rice was Vincent's father, his mother, a brother, his sister-in-law, an aunt and uncle, and his girlfriend, and all of them had come down from Greensboro to watch Stahle Vincent's last game where they

00:24:57.310 - 00:25:14.140

saw him break, break the record. "Vincent, after 39 tries, says, 'I wasn't tired,' Vincent said. 'I couldn't believe I had carried that much. I sprained my toe in the second quarter and it bothered me in the second half.

00:25:14.170 - 00:25:31.990

They told me I only needed so many yards for the record, and I was thinking about it and it was so close.'" And then he goes into some of the drama of the game where Rice actually looks to have scored a touchdown, and Vincent is pretty certain that therefore he won't be put back in the game.

00:25:32.170 - 00:25:57.220

But then thankfully the touchdown is called back because of a penalty, and Vincent gets to run, and then he thanks all of the folks who blocked in front of him and the coaches who put him in this position, and it's just everything that someone who's just broke a rushing record is supposed to say about the folks who make it possible.

00:25:57.520 - 00:26:20.410

So that's the, that's the start of what I'm, what I'm working with right now, Dr. McDaniel, and so, I wanna say some, I'll go one question that it raises for me, or maybe I'll go two, or maybe three. The first one is tongue-in-cheek.

00:26:21.760 - 00:26:38.830

I think it's pretty cool that Stahle Vincent kept growing, right. So he's, he's 6'1", 185 when he's recruited, and by the time he breaks the rushing record, he's got an inch and ten more pounds. So that's what I'm talking about.

00:26:38.830 - 00:26:55.210

That's, that is some good recruiting, you wanna recruit people... You know, I'm glad you noticed that, because I was, you know, we must be historians, we must be close readers, 'cause I was gonna say the same thing. No, this was, this was one of the things that was really, that's a lot of totes for

00:26:55.210 - 00:27:09.940

185-year-old, 185-pound guy. It's a lot of totes for 195-pound guy. I would, I would, I would think, that's a lot of work. It tells you a lot about what he was as a, as an athlete.

00:27:11.020 - 00:27:43.450

Two more things that come to mind is the, the, the prominence of attending to Vincent's blackness in 1968 and almost the utter lack of it in, in, in 19, in 1972. Another big question for me is the move, the, the move, the apparent

00:27:43.450 - 00:28:10.030

move from quarterback to halfback, particularly given the prominence given to the quarterback position in his, in the first article. And if you followed some of Stahle Vincent's life and his recruitment to the university, you know that one of the reasons he chose Rice is because the coach told him, right,

00:28:10.030 - 00:28:37.690

that he would have the ability to win the job, and it would be his if he, if he wanted. But you can also see in McLaughlin's treatment in 1968 around Vincent's ability as an athlete, some of the tension that would have arose, right, He's a speedy Negro quarterback, his arm is good, but, but more attention in that article is given to his

00:28:37.690 - 00:28:59.840

speed and his, and his quickness, which for someone like Vincent and other black athletes who wanted to play the quarterback position, would have, you know, it was the kind of struggle that they, that they, that they had to keep in mind, if they were committed to quarterback. So I have some questions in my mind about what that meant.

00:28:59.880 - 00:29:20.980

He obviously develops as a hybrid player at the university. He connects on four passes his, his final year. But there's also, there's also some important transition there. Something that changed by the time you get to your traumatic RG3 game, about what black

00:29:20.980 - 00:29:36.040

quarterbacks could do and how they could be incorporated into these traditional game plans. Absolutely. Absolutely. And what counted as, as, as quarterback, as quarterback skills.

00:29:37.300 - 00:29:58.870

Well, I'm struck too, I mean, you're right that in the second article, we hear from Vincent, but now there's a new absence that I'm kind of curious about, which is his family. I was thinking back to our very first doc talk, where we looked at some of the coverage of Jacqueline McCauley's arrival at the university, and it included

00:29:58.870 - 00:30:17.650

photographs of her family at home, and they were named, if I'm remembering correctly, and so that's, that's a set of questions that I, that I have, based on the document you just read about the cheering section that was there for Vincent and what the day meant for them.

00:30:18.130 - 00:30:38.960

Yeah. And we, we have just enough detail, right, to, to be even more, even more curious that his girlfriend is there, from North Carolina, right, which is an important and interesting detail. I'm gonna throw it to you in exactly 45 seconds, prof.

00:30:38.980 - 00:30:56.650

I want to end by just raising a couple of other questions, right. And telling us about an event this week. Yes, and telling you about an event this week. So importantly, Stahle Vincent comes to the university in a, in a cohort, right, in a, in

00:30:56.680 - 00:31:29.670

a, in a cohort of of black football players. And I think it's interesting, right, there's an intersection in the history of Rice University and the history of Rice athletics that I've spoken with today. That long-time trustee, the last of our lifetime trustees at the university, JD Bucky

00:31:29.680 - 00:32:04.810

Allshouse, is the, is the student recruiter for Mike Tyler, Rodrigo Barnes, and Stahle Vincent. When they, when they come to visit the university, they, they room with Bucky Allshouse, which opens up even greater terrain for, for inquiry. What, what, what did it mean, and how were black athletes recruited, not, not simply by

00:32:04.810 - 00:32:34.300

coaches, but by their teammates on the field? And it's also a question that we may get an opportunity to tend to, because Rodrigo Barnes, one of those recruits from 1968, on this Saturday, November 13th, at 1 PM, out by the stadium, will be signing copies of his new book, The Bouncing Football: Life

00:32:34.300 - 00:32:59.020

Lessons on the Gridiron, which will be available for purchase at the game. The week before Stahle Vincent breaks all of the records that he breaks, Rodrigo Barnes has a, a standout game against Texas Tech. If I'm remembering right, I think that game ends in a tie, but Rodrigo Barnes, who by

00:32:59.020 - 00:33:17.350

that time is playing linebacker, is intercepting everything that, that is thrown his, his direction. So I encourage all of you to go to the game this Saturday and pick up copies of Mr. Barnes's book.

00:33:17.800 - 00:33:38.700

And so what, what, what have you brought for us today, prof? Well, that's great, I mean, I'm really looking forward to reading that book. My documents today, and I'm gonna use two as well, since you set the precedent, takes us back in time to the days when Rice University was the Rice Institute.

00:33:39.120 - 00:34:02.070

And in fact, that name is one of the things that I wanna focus on today. You know, Rice University has only existed since 1960, at least in name, when the title of the institution was legally changed, but we can still see, all around campus, reminders of the years when it was the Rice Institute.

00:34:02.520 - 00:34:20.790

In fact, one of our undergraduate student workers here in the history department was cleaning out an office for us last summer and brought by and slid under my door some letterhead that he had found in the history department offices that still had the Rice Institute up at the top of the letterhead.

00:34:20.790 - 00:34:43.590

So it's not, not so distant, and of course, if we were to go to the Woodson Research Center, we'd still find all kinds of documents that refer to the first name of the Rice Institute, the charter that created our university in 1891, specifically called, For the Founding of the William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Literature,

00:34:43.590 - 00:35:07.720

Science, and Art. And of course, it was more familiarly known as the Rice Institute for the first half of its history or so in the 20th century, and I wanna show you first a yearbook from 1923, where you can see on the frontispiece of the, the yearbook, the Campanile, the "RI"

00:35:07.720 - 00:35:35.570

For the Rice Institute there, where the yearbook in 1923 actually asked a question about why the Rice Institute was called an institute. And this was, I think, a fitting year for the Campanile to ask that question, because if, as we know, Rice opened its doors in 1912 and had its first full year, 1912 to

00:35:35.570 - 00:36:00.590

1913, then that would make the 1923 Campanile a special edition of the yearbook. It was the ten-year anniversary of the institute and of, not of the Campanile, which was actually even younger than that, but the ten-year anniversary of the institute. And so at the beginning of the yearbook, you would find all of the usual kind of pictures

00:36:00.590 - 00:36:29.930

of campus, you got the Sallyport, we have some profiles of the administration of the Rice Institute, we've got the traditional address by the first president, Edgar Odell Lovett, to the graduating class, and then of course, as we scroll on down, we get the students' pictures and biographies listed still by class, not by college.

00:36:29.930 - 00:36:55.510

So we've got the senior class pictures here, and following the senior class and some pages about the organization, organizations on campus, the student organizations on campus, there's a unique section of the Campanile that I think, again, befits the ten-year anniversary. There's a historical section of the Campanile where the students ask the

00:36:55.510 - 00:37:12.170

readers to, as the headline says here, "Remember." Remember the early days of the Rice Institute. And so there's a picture of the founder, William Marsh Rice. There's a brief potted biography of William Marsh Rice, which I'm not gonna linger on,

00:37:12.170 - 00:37:35.510

although I could, because it says some, some interesting things about, about him. There's a page about the Rice Institute coat of arms, and then some brief profiles of the founders of the institute, the builders in the first ten years at Rice. There's also a section on athletics, of course, a history of athletics, where you'll

00:37:35.510 - 00:37:55.580

see, here, you'll be glad to see this, Dr. Byrd, Rice beat Baylor in the first game they played. And we also have, after this section on athletics, an interesting story about the origins of Sammy the Owl, and an interesting article about the campus experience during

00:37:55.580 - 00:38:17.120

World War I, "Rice at War." But all of that is just prologue to the page that I mentioned earlier that I wanted to focus on today, which is headlined at the top, "Why Institute?" "Why Institute." So in this section on the history, the student editors raise that question, why is it called an institute?

00:38:18.850 - 00:38:34.460

And I'm gonna read, following your, your lead, Dr. Byrd, a little bit of this article, and then we can talk about the discourse or analyze a little bit more what's being said or not said here about the name. So, "Why Institute?

00:38:34.470 - 00:38:58.500

This is a question that has been asked any number of times, and when the dean and the president were interviewed on the matter, gave the interviewer a rather fishy eye, as persons are wont to do with the constant repetition of any one question." Now already, I wanna stop, you didn't get farther than a sentence, but I'm, I'm a little curious

00:38:58.680 - 00:39:14.380

whether this is just a hook that the writer is using to draw us into this conversation, or did the president or the dean actually seem annoyed by this question? Have they heard the question many times before? We don't really know.

00:39:14.560 - 00:39:32.250

Perhaps it's the kind of question that students liked to ask, and I think we'll get a little bit more in this article about the, the tone in which they might have asked the question. But let me read on for now. The Campanile continues, "It has always been the aim of our learned pile to maintain a

00:39:32.250 - 00:39:47.870

standing not excelled by any other university in the United States, and to rival those of Europe. There are institutes in America and in foreign lands that we can all call to mind that are respected because of their learning.

00:39:49.590 - 00:40:17.730

And on the other hand, every little two-by-four school founded for educational purposes takes it upon itself to assume the title of "university," whether its curriculum or faculty rates good prep-school standing or not." Let me just stop there for a minute, because the editor seems to think that we can all call to mind some institutes in

00:40:17.730 - 00:40:39.700

America and in foreign lands in 1923. So I'm gonna ask the audience to see if they can call to mind, as I continue, in 1923, other institutes in America or Europe that might have existed at that time, that the writer might, might have in mind, or might not have in mind, they're not named.

00:40:39.700 - 00:40:57.300

But I'm gonna pose that as a question to the audience to think about, can you think of any other institutes in America at that time? And I also have to laugh a little bit, because this week there's been, at least in my corner of social media, which is dominated by academics who follow this kind

00:40:57.300 - 00:41:22.140

of news, there's been some headlines about the founding of a new "university," quote unquote, in Austin, the University of Austin, which is a nonprofit organization that's been put together by a group of people worried about whether there's sufficient diversity of viewpoints in institutions of higher education, and so

00:41:22.140 - 00:41:42.660

they've taken it upon themselves to create a new university, the University of Austin, that they say will be fearlessly dedicated to the pursuit of truth regardless of political ideology or alignment. And they've taken some, some heat from, from people who have covered this and within

00:41:42.660 - 00:42:01.470

higher education for using the word "university." It's not an accredited university, but by using the name university, I think even today, as the Campanile suggests, it lends it a kind of legitimacy. And so that's what the writer is, is saying here, that anybody can found an educational

00:42:01.470 - 00:42:13.740

institution and call it a university. But that's just background. Now, the writer continues here, he's, now he's gonna answer the question, "Why Institute?" Why, why did the Rice Institute choose that word?

00:42:14.730 - 00:42:42.370

Well, "since 'institute,'" he says, "was somewhat out of the ordinary and rather more dignified. And since "university" is being more or less vulgarized, it was decided to call it "institute" as more in keeping with future greatness." Little counterintuitive there, the idea that "institute" would have been more dignified than "university." But he

00:42:42.370 - 00:42:59.880

continues, "This was all very well, and works out admirably. But there is another phase to be considered. While there are some educational foundations graced by the name of 'institute'"...did our audience think of any, by the way?

00:43:01.290 - 00:43:21.490

You've got some, Dr. Byrd, okay, hold on to it for a minute. "There are also other organizations, but for different purposes, so graced, such as the Institute for the Blind, or the Insane, or any other of the number of state

00:43:21.490 - 00:43:44.940

institutions. And also, the title 'institute' has been used to designate the summer normal courses that young high school teachers attend and at times in connection with instruction of an agricultural sort. And these do not lend academic dignity to the term." Okay, so if you're following what the

00:43:44.940 - 00:44:02.880

writer is saying here, first, he says, well, the founders of the Rice Institute had ambitions of future greatness, and they wanted to pick something unusual or unique, so they picked institute. But now he's turning to the fact that there are some other foundations or organizations

00:44:02.880 - 00:44:23.520

with that name that seem to stand in tension with that. They don't have the the academic dignity of "university." And at the end of this article, I don't have time to read the whole thing, although there's more we can linger on here, there's apparently a joke that's told by students, "that on one occasion, a lady on a

00:44:23.520 - 00:44:39.770

streetcar passing the institute turned to Dr. Evans and said, 'Do you know how many inmates there are in the Rice Institute?'" This idea that it was an institution for the "insane," quote unquote, or a state institution of some kind.

00:44:40.610 - 00:44:58.910

So that's the article that I, that I wanted to start with, the first document here, and what, what do you see in this article, Dr. Byrd, and more importantly, I'm curious, what other institutes did you or our audience come up with that the writer might have called to mind in this period?

00:45:01.030 - 00:45:29.440

Well, so, I'm taken by the counterintuitive work that's happening toward the middle of the, of the essay, and I wonder if, if there's just some confusion that, that didn't get pushed out of this, of this article before it went to publication, because I have some trouble following it in that way, right.

00:45:30.370 - 00:45:50.500

Yeah. But also, I think there is, at least because when I think of "institute," right, I think of two institutes that are quite related. You say "institute" to me, two come immediately to mind: one that, in African

00:45:50.500 - 00:46:10.120

American history, one that leads to the formation of the other, and so I wonder also if some choices are being made here not to say certain things, just like there are some choices being made to say things, and just like I made a choice just now not to say the things.

00:46:11.770 - 00:46:38.210

Yeah, I mean, there seems to be some organizations that, that the writer assumes everyone kind of knows, what institutes he might be referring to. He's also at pains not to actually name the institutes, right, he says "there are institutes that we can all call to mind." And there's also kind of a reference to other

00:46:38.210 - 00:46:59.110

organizations, a number of state institutions, and institutions that are connected with "instruction of an agricultural sort" that "don't lend academic dignity to the term." But we don't have those named here. And I think this is a, this is a prime example of why, even though on our doc talks,

00:46:59.110 - 00:47:19.900

we only look at one document or maybe two documents, we know that as historians you can't really do historical work in that kind of isolation or focus. You have to build a context out around any document that you're looking at, and sometimes that means turning to other primary sources, other documents from the

00:47:19.900 - 00:47:40.990

time, and sometimes it means relying on secondary literature and work that other historians have already done on the subjects that you're interested in. And one book that came to my mind, maybe it came to your mind too, Dr. Byrd, as I was first encountering this, was one that, that our students read in our task

00:47:40.990 - 00:48:00.670

force courses last academic year, by Christie Smith, who is a sociologist, and the title of the book, I believe she's a sociologist, is that right? She is. The title of the book is, Reconciliation and Reparation, and it's, the subtitle is, it's a

00:48:00.670 - 00:48:24.430

history of interracial higher education, coeducational institutions, The Rise and Fall, as she puts it, of Interracial Education. And the years place most of the book in the 19th century, which is also maybe a little counterintuitive, we tend to think of segregation coming first, and that that's

00:48:24.430 - 00:48:46.510

what falls, and then you have integration on the rise. But one of the things she points out is that there were, even before the Civil War, some very prominent interracial, integrated institutions of higher education that also grew dramatically in the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War because of the

00:48:46.510 - 00:49:16.600

idealism of post-war Republicans, formerly enslaved people, black Americans in the North and the South, who lobbied to ensure that educational access was extended to, to all in the United States, rather than, than only to one group or another, and she points to the legacies of schools like Berea College, Oberlin College, and towards the end of this

00:49:16.600 - 00:49:39.790

book, this is why I thought of it in connection with this document, she points out that by the end of the 19th century, this postwar wave of, of founding of educational institutions placed some of those older institutions in a little bit of a quandary, because now, schools like Oberlin or Berea were competing with many, many more

00:49:39.790 - 00:49:56.920

institutions of higher education than, than existed before, and I think the writer is actually kind of hinting at this, in 1923. Any "little two-by-four school founded for educational purposes takes it upon itself to assume the title of 'university,' whether its curriculum or faculty rates good

00:49:56.920 - 00:50:14.510

prep-school standing or not," kind of hinting at the fact that there's been an explosion of institutions of higher education, but a sense that they're not all similarly prestigious. They don't all have the same curriculum, they don't all have the same faculty, they

00:50:14.510 - 00:50:38.540

don't all rise to the same level, and so there's a lot of comparison going on between different schools. And in that moment of comparison, she points out that interracial institutions faced a difficult challenge of continuing their mission, because this was also a moment of

00:50:38.540 - 00:51:03.100

rising Jim Crow segregation in the South, and an increasing differentiation of institutions of higher education that separated out schools intended for white students from schools intended for black students. So there was still the kind of, the lingering echoes of the postwar idealism that

00:51:03.100 - 00:51:24.990

all should have an education, but maybe not everyone should have the same kind of education. And maybe black southerners, for example, instead of attending universities where they would, they would have a full liberal-arts education, they should attend a school like, and maybe this is one of the organizations that came to your mind, Dr.

00:51:25.000 - 00:51:53.260

Byrd, the Tuskegee Institute, founded by the, by Booker T. Washington in Alabama, or maybe the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, which, the focus on "agricultural" there is also mentioned here in the Campanile. And so universities and colleges were, as they competed with one another, increasingly

00:51:53.260 - 00:52:24.370

taking on, Smith argues in her book, a very kind of racially specific mission that was often tied to the words they used, the titles that they used. The, the flip side of this coin at schools like Hampton and Tuskegee and, and others that aren't, aren't often remembered, is that there is a practice among black

00:52:24.370 - 00:52:48.520

colleges and universities-slash-institutes to have to do the opposite, to, whatever it was you were teaching at that institute, even if it was giving students a liberal-arts education, you, you had to make decisions about what you would call yourself in order to ensure funding from southern and northern philanthropists.

00:52:49.480 - 00:53:12.440

So it wasn't unheard of to have institutes that were teaching Latin and Greek and moving people along a liberal-arts curriculum, but had "institute" and "agriculture" and "technical" skills prominent in the title of their schools. Absolutely. I think that's right.

00:53:12.440 - 00:53:26.960

So it's not, it's not a perfect, you can't always judge from the title of the school, what's happening in the school. And in a way, the writer of the Campanile here is hinting at that. You know, you don't know what's happening inside just from, from the title that's being

00:53:26.960 - 00:53:37.430

put on it. But the pressure is the same. The pressure that you're alluding to, right. The pressure's there. There's, there's clearly, in a, in a, in a context of

00:53:37.940 - 00:54:02.120

proliferation of these kinds of educational institutions, there's comparison, there's competition for funding, as you, as you hinted, and the name has something to do with that. Now, a lot of that postdates the years when William Marsh Rice was initially planning his school, right, or creating his charter, which was 1891.

00:54:02.120 - 00:54:24.980

Now, by that point, there was a Tuskegee Institute that was already taking shape in Alabama, and so we can imagine that maybe William Marsh Rice would have heard of that or heard of the Hampton Institute, which was founded even earlier in 1868, so there were already institutes around, so to me, it's kind of interesting that if institutes by

00:54:24.980 - 00:54:50.290

1923 were typically associated with agricultural or technical schools of learning, or normal schools for high school teachers sometimes, why did William Marsh Rice choose the word "institute?" This is the question at the top of the page, "Why Institute," and the choice of "institute" with the rest of the title kind of confuses

00:54:50.290 - 00:55:08.920

this clear separation. An "institute," which makes you think technical, agricultural, "for the advancement of science, literature and art," right, more a liberal arts, more like a university. So there's, it's kind of a weird hybrid in, in the William Marsh Rice Institute name that

00:55:08.920 - 00:55:32.770

doesn't fit squarely in any of these particular categories. Now I can hear, I think I can hear someone in our audience saying that we are doing a very historian thing here, which is overthinking, overreading, drawing a lot out of a source that's not explicitly saying any of what I just said, and that's why I wanna

00:55:33.100 - 00:56:02.680

rush to my second document and spend just a few minutes on the second document, because in this second document, what's unsaid in the 1923 Campanile is said explicitly, and this document is from the Edgar Odell Lovett Papers in the Woodson Research Center, and it's dated July 19th, 1944, and you can see the folder that it's in here on the right,

00:56:02.680 - 00:56:25.870

it's in a folder in the Lovett papers titled, "Memoranda on the History of the Rice Institute." That's what we're interested in. And what we have here is Lovett's memories or his recollections of his first trip to Houston to be interviewed by the Board of Trustees for the job of President of the Rice

00:56:25.870 - 00:56:47.430

Institute. So this would have been, I should know the year, but it would have been after 1900, when, when Lovett was coming down to Houston to visit, and I was thinking about this yesterday, actually, as the trustees were announcing our new president, they were talking a little bit about the process.

00:56:48.060 - 00:57:06.810

They brought candidates from around the country. I think they were, they were looking intensively at ten candidates, many of whom traveled to Houston and had dinner in the homes of trustees and were asked all kinds of questions about their vision for Rice, and that's what Lovett kind of remembers about

00:57:06.810 - 00:57:23.280

his first presidency as well. He says, "I happen to have been in many an examination, but I think the one that night was the most trying ordeal I have as yet passed through. Question after question about things I knew nothing about and had never thought out" were

00:57:23.280 - 00:57:39.780

being fired at him by the trustees. And so you get a sense of how tough it was, and Lovett remembers a few things, though, that he did say that night, that he singled out as particularly important. One was that he thought it would be important to maintain the institution out of

00:57:39.780 - 00:57:59.050

the income alone, to not touch that endowment, so that it could continue to grow. But then on the second page, he also talks a little bit about the mission and the name of this school that he would be presiding over. And I'll read this paragraph.

00:57:59.050 - 00:58:16.120

He says, "I had great sympathy with the board, but I did not venture to patronize them. They were successful men of business and facing as difficult a problem in trying to select a college president as a group of college professors would be in if they had to set about to find a railroad president.

00:58:16.210 - 00:58:34.600

Indeed, I think the chances might have been in favor of the college professors group." It's a tough job, as trustees to pick a college president. And it says "the trustees had sought and received a great deal of advice." Now, we don't know what kind of advice they received, but the next sentence is the one

00:58:34.600 - 00:58:54.070

I'm interested in. Lovett says, "The very designation 'institute,'" quote unquote, "if it did not mean a female seminary or one for defectives or one for the colored race, meant an institute of technology.

00:58:55.010 - 00:59:16.400

There was some hint of this that night, so I told them that I could not be a party for any such undertaking that would not assure us, would not assure, as large a place for pure science as for applied science. It was an entering wedge away from technology and towards the university idea.

00:59:16.850 - 00:59:40.360

I always have thought that it bore fruit in the future." Okay, now, that's Lovett in 1944, when we can imagine that the context surrounding higher education has changed yet again from what it was in 1923 or what it was in 1891, so there's a whole host of questions we could ask about what's going through his mind in 1944.

00:59:40.360 - 01:00:04.720

But he's thinking back to that earlier moment, and there, I think he says what the Campanile editor was careful not to say, which was that for many contemporaries in the early years of the Rice Institute, there would have been an association with the word "institute" that called to mind a technical institute, like the Hampton Institute or the

01:00:04.720 - 01:00:27.070

Tuskegee Institute, and also like those organizations, an institute for African Americans. And so maybe that sheds some light on the, the urgency of the question, "Why Institute?" for, for the Campanile editor. I find it interesting to think about the question in light of that document from 1944.

01:00:27.250 - 01:00:47.350

Obviously, Lovett was a visionary, and I think all of us have him to thank, that he envisioned Rice as a, as a broad university, one that was interested in liberal arts as much as, as applied science. This entering wedge against the technology idea, as a historian at Rice, I'm grateful

01:00:47.350 - 01:01:17.430

for, but I think it also sheds some light on how those choices were made in a particular moment where words like "university" and "institute" sometimes had a racialized tinge. And this is something that Smith's book, I think, brings out really well, is that often we think of segregation as a system created simply by the laws or by the state to, to

01:01:17.430 - 01:01:41.520

separate out who can go where or who can be where, but she also points out that private institutions and organizations play a role in creating the infrastructure of segregation, partly with these seemingly insignificant but perhaps very significant choices like what to call themselves and how to position themselves in the wider society.

01:01:43.280 - 01:02:10.910

Great, great letters, and especially because, as you say, segregation isn't just legally manufactured, right, it's not, it's not just laid out in, quite clearly in the law, it's choices, social and cultural choices, that, that people make, and assumptions, right, that a lot of people carry with them.

01:02:11.600 - 01:02:27.110

You have to, historians sometimes have to work just as hard as you just did to get those assumptions, to see those assumptions that are assumed that everyone shares to actually get them articulated. Especially since our assumptions are different.

01:02:27.410 - 01:02:50.750

I mean, by the time we get to 1960, the change from "institute" to "university" is, is precisely the move that signals integration's on the horizon or coming, because to be a university in the 1960s begins to have this different association of, of a desegregating institution of higher education.

01:02:52.430 - 01:03:14.040

But when Lovett arrives in Houston for that fateful interview, "university" has a different connotation of a white institution of higher education as opposed to an institute, and so there's changes over time we have to track in order to understand what the assumptions were then, they may not have been the same later.

01:03:14.490 - 01:03:22.460

But it's something worth reflecting on. Well, thanks to our... Great work. Thanks to our audience for, for being here.

01:03:22.460 - 01:03:36.560

And we'll hope to see you next Friday when we will have our special guests joining us to talk about the updates from the summer that were put out by the task force, so put that on your calendar. I hope you have a wonderful weekend and enjoy this great weather.