00:00:10.300 - 00:00:24.480

Hello, hello, it's Friday. It is again, 12:01, right on time, happens at same time, same place every week. We must have remembered to put our clock back.

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I did, and it looks like some folks did too. oh, what a week. Indeed, there's quite a bit going on this week. Little bit,

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a little bit happening. I'm sure, yeah. Great webinar last night for the task force. I thought that was a fabulous webinar, and what I really liked about it

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is how phenomenally Rice it was, if you're a Rice student or a Rice alumnus, I just felt like you were into that. (laughs)

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It was very nerdy I think is what you're trying to say, (laughs) there was a lot of nerdiness on display. Let the record show that I just said Rice like,

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and you used the other word. Rice, okay, well, I meant that in a good way. It was good, and we were really grateful to Aquila Manns of course for helping to bring

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that group together and organize the discussion on the charter trial, and I learned a lot just from listening to the webinar myself,

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so, I hope that our audience did as well. If you missed it by the way, it will eventually be put on the university's YouTube account, and placed on a task force website, taskforce.rice.edu,

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and that's also the place where you can find YouTube videos of all of our past webinars as well, so, if you have not been to the website at all or in a while,

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I strongly encourage all of those who are in attendance to check out taskforce.rice.edu. It also has, I'm excited to say, the first two episodes of our Doc Talks podcast

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are now live on the website. So, we've been promising for weeks, what are we? in week nine I think, these Doc Talks we've been promising that we're going to record them and release them,

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we've got some great undergraduate media fellows who have been producing them with Kate Coley from the association of Rice alumni, they're doing a great job,

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and they're making these recordings. So we have two already up for our first two Doc Talks that you can download and listen to as podcasts, and we have a third one hard on their heels

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that should be coming out next week, and so, please if you missed some of those early Doc Talks, you can catch up with the podcast, and we'll continue releasing past episodes

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throughout the rest of the year, so, check out the website if you haven't in a while, taskforce.rice.edu. And if this is your first time coming to a Doc Talk,

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welcome, we're really glad to have you here, we do this every Friday, I think that was your idea, wasn't it? That we have to (laughs).

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Yeah, I feel like I was asking you around about a couple of weeks ago I was wondering whose idea this was to do it every week. Well, it was a good idea, it was a good idea,

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it's something I look forward to, the chance to talk with a fellow historian, and we get a little nerdy ourselves I think at times, looking at historical documents,

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and trying to provide you with a sense of the kinds of things that the task force is working with in terms of our source material,

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and the ways that historians use that material to build interpretations of the past and draw conclusions, so we ask what we can know from the documents, maybe what we can't know,

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what kinds of questions the documents help us answer, what questions they raise, they require further research, and so thank you for being here with us along that that journey.

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And let's dive right in today to what we have to talk about. Let's get going, I'm going to try to share my screen and I hope that worked, you should see a building, don't say what it is though

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Professor McDaniel, 'cause we're starting with a test for the people who are visiting with us today. So, if you're here, I'm just gonna start with an exam, and you can put the answers in the chat,

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so I'm just gonna run through a couple of shots, and what I'd like for you to do is just say what you see, you're gonna identify buildings, that's what you're gonna do.

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Is the chat on or maybe the chat is off, if the chat is off you just put it in the Q&A. Yeah, I think the chat is off. Yeah, so put it in the Q&A,

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which is a good idea by the way to keep the chat off, so whoever did that congratulations. If you've been with us the past few weeks, you've noticed something different,

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I never go first, I try as hard as I can to never, ever go first, but I lost out on something today, and so here I am. So there you go, put it in the chat,

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we've got answers coming in right now. And so just keep going, don't worry, this isn't a graded exam, and I'm not gonna put you too far out there

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if you guys are wrong, so just keep going. That's the first one, do you wanna make a stab at that Dr. McDaniel? I'm struggling, I'm struggling,

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I feel like I should know but- I don't know that we see this that much, I don't know that we see this like this anymore, and I'm not- Not in that

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perspective or angle. Yeah, I feel like there are trees in the way, and that's why it's tough to see it now, but I think I know what it is, but I'm too scared to guess,

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so I'm just gonna continue on. We've got one in the Q&A that says the Rice Cloisters, and that's about where I am. The thing over the top,

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is that the bell tower Yeah, bell tower. at the RMC? That's what I thought it was, I thought it was the bell tower at the RMC,

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I thought that lower part of the building is where the office of multi-cultural affairs office is now, and I thought I was looking at the side of the chapel, does that sound right?

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Well, that's what was throwing me was the sort of curved end of the building. At the back end. Yeah, that could be the chapel, your right.

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We'll see, we'll continue seeing. Here's another one, what is this? We won't spend too much time with this, this is in the guts of the university,

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this is a part that makes the university actually go, and not as many people see this daily, but on one side on the right which is hardly seen, I think is a Power Plant,

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and the left is something related to the Power Plant. Here is my parking, physical plants as someone. Here is Cohen House parking, won't leave any too much time on that.

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This is kind of off the Rice Campus, is cheating a little. That's First Christian Church across the street That is, that is First Christian Church. And it speaks to-

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Living at Duncan, seeing that end of the building very often coming out of entrance 23. Oh, that was almost part of the campus for you. There are certainly students on campus

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who treated as part of the campus because there some students in your college and others on that side of campus who paid a park there, I think, so it is in some ways in annex.

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Here's how I want it to start but I can't, because I don't have enough information, you know, we talk about Doc Talk as being about what we can know and what we can't know,

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and how I wanted to start was with this building here across the street from Rice University, which is First Christian Church built 1959, it's one of the, I don't know that it's celebrated,

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but it's a noted piece of modernists, surviving modernist architecture in Houston right across the street from Rice, designed by Hamilton Brown and built in 1959.

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And here we have on Sophomore Street, in the Third Ward section of our City University Christian Church, and if you look at both of these,

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you see a little bit of an resemblance in their design, and I couldn't start here, because I only think that Hamilton Brown did both of these, I know he did First Christian Church,

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and I think he did this one, but I couldn't run it down, and I thought this would be a great way to start. And why did I wanna start this way? I wanted to start this way

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because if this is Hamilton Brown, the building across the street from Rice and this building in the Third Ward that are kind of Mears in some way,

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not kind of but they are designed just on different scales, but recreations of one another, it begins to speak to a theme that I'm interested in speaking to today, or at least one of them,

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and one of the themes I'm interested today is, is connections between our part of the city, by our I mean us at Rice University and the Third Ward, and particularly Rice University

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and Texas Southern University is a theme that I'm interested in, and these two might've helped me get to that theme. Another theme I'm gonna follow is early black faculty,

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which is something I've been discussing for a couple of weeks, also the question of Rice in the African-American imagination in Houston

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is a theme I want to touch on, and the way I'm going to do it in instead, because (laughs) this works better, is through the life of Dr. Thomas F Freeman,

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and his time at the university. And we've started, I've started not we, don't wanna blame you, I've started in a kind of roundabout way,

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because those images that I just shared with all of you, come from some of Dr. Freeman's home movies, it comes from they're still captures from films that he made, and an interview that was done

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with him about his time at Rice, and what I wanna do now in order to begin to go into some of those themes in greater depth, is I wanna listen to about five minutes of,

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watch and listen about five minutes. Oh, sorry, I gotta come out of that. Those of you who knows Zoom, know you need to push the right buttons

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in order to get sound, and I didn't push the right button. What I wanna do now is listen to and watch, about five minutes of this work, and it's at the Texas Archive of the Moving Image.

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And tell me if you can hear please. There we go, sorry. You can't see anything, can you? But now you can, hopefully.

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Yeah, maybe we should back it up and start is out. One of the few blocks of the faculty. Well, unfortunately I have it all the way. For that topic creative course.

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All right, so we'll have to watch it on small. I was a guest professor in the Department of Religious Studies, one of the few blocks of the faculty.

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Well, I taught really in the department of religion, but I taught a creative course, every year I made a new course, and one was Ethical Dimensions,

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another one was Social and Ethical Problems, another one was Varieties of Religious Orders, there wasn't anything standard. what's going through your mind

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when seeing this? Just reflecting, but then, did I really do that? (laughs) A beautiful environment, I was a part of it,

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it's just something taken for granted. How did you end up teaching there, did they approach you? Nielsen, who was the dean

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of the Department of Religion, he was at Yale and I was at Andover Newton, I will go to no details, so, okay. I didn't know anything about Neil being at Rice,

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one day Neil came over to see me and caught me completely off guard, he said, "Tom, don't you miss teaching?" By then I was dean of the Newton College,

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I said, "Oh, Neil I certainly do," then he said, "Why don't you come over and teach for us at Rice?" I made no application, I filled out nothing,

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and he said, "Come on, I want you to meet the dean," I was to visit and meet the dean. And then President Sawyer called me into his office, and he said, "Tom, I want to congratulate you,"

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I said, "For what?" "I have approved your teaching at Rice," I said, "What?" (interviewer 1 laughs)

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"Yes, the president and I talked, and we thought that it would do both schools good to have you teach at Rice." That's how I got to Rice, I didn't fill out an application,

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I didn't see any dean, I didn't see everybody. And I went over to sit down and to get the courses, and I asked Nielsen, I said, "Niel, won't you show me the outline

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of courses you want me to teach?" He looked me and said, "Tom, that's why we got you, we don't have an outline, you are to make the outline." And that's how I got to Rice.

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And then I realized it's probably wise to not make noise at whatsoever. (laughs) Well, I was well received, so far student responses.

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At Rice classes were very small, my class was about 15, and you had to sign that semester in advance together in class.

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And the average class in ratio 8:10 I remember, but when I first have my classes at was it six, seven, eight, and when I devolved these new courses,

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it was flocked until I had to turn them away. At that time, you see for a long time, blacks didn't go to Rice, not because they didn't want to,

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but the charter said that no blacks will be ever admitted to Rice, for Rice was for white and white only, and Rice had to go to court to change the charter

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so they could admit blacks. Now, William Marsh contributed millions, and this was his wish and desire that no blacks would ever attend Rice.

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And I think I told Marsh, that when I walked across the campus, Marsh must've been turning over in his grave, he didn't want.

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All right, that's what I wanted to start with, or at least that's what I wanted to prime our audience with, and I wanna start in terms of working questions, I wanna return quickly or briefly to some work

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that some of our audience may remember that one of the task force's student researches Indya Porter is working on. So, one of her projects is examining the curriculum

00:18:20.210 - 00:18:32.710

at the university, and examining ways that it diversifies over the years. And so I wanna start by examining some of the methodological issues

00:18:32.710 - 00:18:49.410

that this moving document raises for some of Ms Porter's work. I was gonna say, I think this is a first for the Doc Talk, where we've had a doc that was actually a video,

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and of course that had the interview with Dr. Freeman playing over the video, but do we know when the movie itself was taken? According to the metadata on the site,

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it was taken in 1972, which is the year that he begins teaching. And it showed him sort of walking around, or what I noticed it showed him walking around campus,

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dressed in a very sharp suit, with a briefcase, and walking along sort of the inner loop parking at the founder's lot, or probably the parking lot that's over close to where McMurtry is now,

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and then walking along the inner loop across from Martel Houses now, and Sewell hall, and then into the Central Quad, and past the Founder's Memorial, and through the Sallyport,

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so, it was really amazing to see the image from 1972 of Dr. Freeman walking around campus after being appointed here. And I would encourage this, I didn't put the URL

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but I have the QR code, for those of you have your phone, go ahead and take a look at that entire film, the talking, the voiceover only lasts about six minutes,

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but the rest of it is really just a landscape, not just, but provides a sweeping landscape of the university from Founder's Court out to Rice Stadium, and also the environs of the university on sunset,

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some of the neighborhoods off university, and also the drive leaving Rice out toward what used to be the Warwick Hotel and it's now the ZaZa. And if you've never seen the ZaZa

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the color that it used to be, it's worth just seeing the Warwick, which is still one of my favorite buildings, but used to be even more my favorite

00:21:03.990 - 00:21:22.180

when it was a little duller in color. So let's get to some methodological questions that speak to some of Ms. Porter's research. So we can see here that yes indeed Freeman shows up

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in the general announcements in 1972, so, he's ready to teach, he's good to go, if you go to the very back of the general announcements you find him and his education

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from Virginia Union, to Andover, oh, I lost the second name for the theological seminary that he's at, and then University of Chicago for his PhD in the late 1940s.

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But I guess apparently he arrives, it doesn't look like he arrives in time to get his actual classes in the '72, so he might be staff if he's teaching, and he is.

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So, we know he's either teaching a course that doesn't make it into the GA, or he's teaching one of the staff courses, and I see the Q&A is active,

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so we may be getting the answer to that as I speak. When we move on, we find the next year in '73, '74, that he is of course back in the department, listed as one of the lectures,

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and now he's showing up in the GA for courses that are being taught, and I've outlined two of them here. But now we get to the question

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that Ms. Porter will have to grapple with when she returns for her third sweep through the material, and you'll see here I have two pages from the general announcements,

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and Ms. Porter has gone and underlined two of the classes here in green, and if I'm remembering correctly, when she outlines a class in green

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that means it's high probability. Ms. Porter is a social scientist, so she's got her marks give different levels of probability that the class speaks to African,

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or African-American studies, or some type of multicultural studies in the curriculum, so she has two classes that are listed here in green, one is called

00:23:45.360 - 00:23:58.370

Readings and Non-Christian Religious Philosophy, Reli 521A we would call it now, and then Reli 415A which is Contemporary Moral Problems, which she's read through the description.

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So, and she sees here that it's a study and discussion of major public and community ethical issues, including man's relationship to the state, the just war, political ethics, poverty,

00:24:10.380 - 00:24:23.250

civil rights, decent, ecology, and civic responsibility, so it's that attention to civil rights that I think helped her determine that that's pretty high probability of course.

00:24:23.250 - 00:24:37.620

But then we have Dr. Freeman here teaching Reli 312 and Reli 303, and 303 is Job and the Hebrew Prophets, and then Reli 312 is a History of Religion,

00:24:37.620 - 00:24:49.030

the Western Tradition, which focuses mostly on the Old and New testaments of the, I mean, he is calling them Old and New Testament so of the Christian Bible,

00:24:49.030 - 00:25:04.310

as well as some reference to the Quran. So the question that this document poses for Ms Porter's work is, how is she gonna go back and treat Reli 303 and Reli 312,

00:25:06.220 - 00:25:19.110

if she comes and asks us Dr. McDaniel, what advice should we give? Well, to me it sort of speaks to the some of the silences in the archive,

00:25:19.110 - 00:25:29.160

I feel like this is a repeated theme in our Doc Talks because, we have the description for these classes, and that gives us some sense of

00:25:29.160 - 00:25:37.700

what was taught in the class, but it's obviously not a perfect source because it doesn't tell us everything that was said or covered in the class,

00:25:37.700 - 00:25:51.920

I mean, listening to Dr. Freeman talking in that interview, it's seems hard for me to believe that he would not have raised in these classes some discussion of what Reli 415 calls

00:25:51.920 - 00:26:05.670

contemporary moral problems, even if it wasn't listed explicitly in his course description. Which might get if he's raising these issues directly,

00:26:06.540 - 00:26:21.950

it could get us to Ms. Porter's high probability. I think the other thing, I've been holding off a bit on Dr. Freeman's biography, I didn't actually hold off on it,

00:26:21.950 - 00:26:36.120

I got too excited and I forgot to give it in the slide that I was supposed to give it, but one of the things I would have mentioned there, is that he preaches at Mount Hermon Baptist Church

00:26:36.120 - 00:26:52.020

in the Fifth Ward section of the city, so I just wanna lay out that he is a minister, in addition to being a scholar and a debate coach, three other things that I failed to mention.

00:26:52.020 - 00:27:05.820

And so- His reputation I hope proceeds him. And if not we'll add more, I think, as we continue. But knowing this about him,

00:27:05.820 - 00:27:25.290

means we can also maybe read a little bit more into the course. And so one of the questions that it raises for me if I'm knowing that Dr. Freeman is a scholar and a minister,

00:27:28.120 - 00:27:43.010

is what were the materials he would have drawn on for this course on Old Testament prophets, for example, and so it raises to my mind, I know that I'd be very surprised

00:27:43.010 - 00:27:58.030

if there was a person who was both a preacher, a scholar of religion, and a debate coach who wouldn't be familiar for example with James Weldon Johnson' God's Trombones,

00:27:58.030 - 00:28:17.050

which is an African-American literarian or rhetorical reading on sections of the Christian approach to the Old Testament. And so, this is a direction that I would lean toward,

00:28:18.150 - 00:28:30.140

and this is also why for some of these courses we need our syllabus, what we need are what Dr. Freeman referred to as the outline of those courses.

00:28:30.140 - 00:28:45.400

As we continue on in the next year, we see that Ms. Porter has located Dr. Freeman's classes again, but some of them now fall into a territory

00:28:45.400 - 00:29:00.270

that she's considering whether this material speaks directly to African and African-American studies, so in Reli 348B, Community Ethical Dilemmas, which is a course that Dr. Freeman alludes to,

00:29:01.420 - 00:29:12.500

we see that that has gotten her attention, and it's on her radar, current community problems and their ethical and religious implications,

00:29:12.500 - 00:29:27.220

drugs, race, inequities, poverty, law enforcement, religious intolerance, guest speakers, and visitations. There was another silence, who are the guest speakers? Yeah, yeah.

00:29:30.440 - 00:29:42.270

One of the things, we'll see if it's a very detailed syllabus that might be on there, if it's a less detailed syllabus, this is where we're gonna need to people

00:29:42.270 - 00:29:55.760

who have some experience either in this particular course or in other courses, that we might be able to use as evidence to speak to what would have been the chances that some of his later courses

00:29:55.760 - 00:30:09.870

would have reflected some of his earlier ones. So, I tried to leave about three minutes, and that's all we have for some of the other themes that I raised,

00:30:09.870 - 00:30:24.620

I think one of the most prominent there is Rice in the African-American imagination. So when Dr. Freeman is talking about the charter, and juxtaposing that with his discussion

00:30:24.620 - 00:30:39.710

about how he comes to Rice in the first place, and then negotiation between I'm assuming Presidents Hackerman and Sawyer about what's about to be this new opportunity.

00:30:43.780 - 00:30:54.050

Certainly some of that material may come from things he learned about Rice once he was on campus and teaching there, but I think we also have to take into consideration

00:30:54.050 - 00:31:08.950

that some of those things he's reflecting on, especially when he says, "Everyone's trying to get to Rice, and here I get there and never even applied," that speaks to something

00:31:08.950 - 00:31:20.650

about the reputation of the university, but also there's some material that kind of takes it from a different angle when he's talking about the charter

00:31:20.650 - 00:31:34.230

and what certainly understands as Rice's intentions for his university. Yeah, I'm struck by in the interview the way he says something along the lines of,

00:31:34.230 - 00:31:45.350

as he's watching the film, "Did that actually happen?" And he said, "It really did, I was here in this beautiful setting, and I was a part of it,"

00:31:45.350 - 00:31:55.840

and I think between the lines there is maybe the implicit understanding that had been in question, you know, could he be a part of Rice,

00:31:55.840 - 00:32:10.560

could African-Americans belong to this community? So to me it brings to mind... I know, just the other day we were talking to one of the black alumni of Rice University,

00:32:10.560 - 00:32:20.540

who was remembering his, I think is either his father his grandfather saying that, when they would drive by the campus in Houston, he would say, "Well, don't pay any attention

00:32:20.540 - 00:32:30.630

to what's going on over there behind those hedges, that doesn't have anything to do with you, or that's not for you," and so that to me makes all the more powerful

00:32:30.630 - 00:32:46.890

that Dr. Freeman decided when he got this job to bring a team of cameramen with him on campus, and if you watch the whole movie you eventually see the photographers that he has with him,

00:32:46.890 - 00:33:07.530

and made a point of documenting his coming inside the hedges and claiming space in the quad. Seeing him walking past the monument of Williams Marsh Rice and him sort of imagining Rice rolling in his grave,

00:33:08.470 - 00:33:21.010

it raises a question for me of whether a movie like this is also a monument of a kind, it may not be one in stone, but it's a performance that does carry with it

00:33:22.170 - 00:33:38.700

a particular memory, a particular argument if you will, and so it's a powerful monument in that sense. A powerful moving image that I hope folks and our audience will take a look at.

00:33:38.700 - 00:33:53.810

And I'll close with just 30 seconds of institutional connections that are worth, this is me giving myself an assignment, the institutional connections that are worth exploring here.

00:33:54.780 - 00:34:13.610

So, Dr. Freeman suggest that he might be the first black faculty person at the university, he's not sure about that, we know that he isn't, but he also lays out, when we look through

00:34:13.610 - 00:34:31.730

who we know who are those initial black faculty, and faculty and staff who arrive after him, you can't help but see that Texas Southern University is seen as an important human resource for Rice on campus,

00:34:35.540 - 00:34:58.060

Dr. Kennard Reed, who is the the first black faculty person comes from TSU as a visiting professor as well, Dr. Bell, who is a former student of Dr. Freeman arrives later in the '70s,

00:34:58.060 - 00:35:19.220

also a student at TSU before he arrives at Rice. And lastly, Dr. Freeman's vivid description of how he comes to Rice, may fill in a silence that we don't have a lot of information about

00:35:19.220 - 00:35:34.240

concerning how Dr. Reed comes to Rice, it speaks to the need to look at these relationships in the '70s at least between President Sawyer and President Hackerman,

00:35:34.240 - 00:35:46.420

to get a fuller sense of what might be going on here. And that's it for me, and boy, I sure hate that I had to go first. That was great, I liked it.

00:35:46.420 - 00:35:57.170

(laughs) I'm happy to follow along with that (clears throat). Actually the document that I selected to talk about, I wasn't sure which one I was gonna talk about,

00:35:57.170 - 00:36:07.900

but I think that this one fits well with some of the themes that you were raising in your presentation as well, but that's not really why I settled on it,

00:36:07.900 - 00:36:28.000

let me show you, and maybe you'll have some clues. This is an article, a front page of the Rice Thresher from 1930, and you can see why it caught my eye, the headline above the top right under the masthead,

00:36:28.000 - 00:36:38.740

Campus Buzzes With Election Talk, and of course as we're recording this this week, I'm sure that's true, today as well there's lots of election talk going on around campus.

00:36:40.410 - 00:36:53.430

But this particular election was not the presidential election, you can see the date of this issue is May 2nd, 1930, and so, it's actually elections for student offices,

00:36:53.430 - 00:37:02.590

and in fact it says that the contest for cheerleader commands the greatest interest, 25 students had put their hat in the ring to be the Yell Leader,

00:37:02.590 - 00:37:09.410

we've met one of the Yell Leaders in one of our other Doc Talks Shotty. The well known Shotty. The well known Shotty,

00:37:09.410 - 00:37:19.560

but that's what this article about elections talk is referring to in the Spring, this is an interesting issue of the Thresher too, because as you can see up on the masthead

00:37:19.560 - 00:37:32.720

it says that this is the Co-ed Edition, and there was a semi-regular tradition on the Thresher in these years to have a takeover of an issue by women on campus

00:37:32.720 - 00:37:45.360

who would write the articles and edit the Thresher, that would not have been a typical, but on this particular issue the entire one was produced by what the Thresher calls the Co-eds.

00:37:46.630 - 00:37:58.560

So, that caught my eye as I was thinking about what to present today, but what I really wanted to focus in on, is two articles, one is right here to the left

00:37:58.560 - 00:38:14.760

where it says, the Seniors are to Hear Ralph Adams Cram, and Final Ball Plans Are Now Nearing Completion. And this is an article May 2nd, 1930, that's talking about the upcoming commencement exercises

00:38:14.760 - 00:38:28.310

in the spring at Rice in 1930, and that was a significant commencement because, it was the year that the Founders' Memorial, the statue of William Marsh Rice was unveiled

00:38:28.310 - 00:38:39.730

for the first time in the Rice Quad, and so it says here in the very last paragraph of this article, "During the exercises a special feature will also take place,

00:38:40.920 - 00:38:51.180

that is the unveiling of the statue of William Marsh Rice. This statue which is to be located in back of the AB Building," Administration Building I'm assuming,

00:38:51.180 - 00:39:02.190

"will be unveiled with simple ceremonies, then everything will be over for the 1929, '30 year, except the shooting which will take place during the process of the final ball

00:39:02.190 - 00:39:14.680

on the night and morning of June 9th and 10th respectively," I don't know what that's about, but it must've been some celebratory fireworks or gunfire, I'm not sure.

00:39:14.680 - 00:39:27.710

But there's this little paragraph that talks about the unveiling of the statue of William Marsh Rice, the statute wasn't on campus from the opening of the institute, it came along later,

00:39:27.710 - 00:39:38.970

so the Institute opens in 1912, and then the statue was unveiled as part of these commencement ceremonies in 1930. What's interesting to me though,

00:39:38.970 - 00:39:47.910

if you look on this Thresher page, is what's around that article, and so I zoomed in a little bit at the article. And sometimes as historians

00:39:47.910 - 00:39:58.320

when we're looking at a particular article, we don't wanna look just at that one article to understand the meaning of it, we wanna set it in the context of everything else

00:39:58.320 - 00:40:13.110

that was happening around that time, and newspapers can be really helpful in this regard because, sometimes seeing what's set alongside an article, can shed light on the one that you're most interested in.

00:40:13.110 - 00:40:25.210

You know, often as a teacher of 19th century, civil war history and the history of slavery, students will often notice the newspapers that, you'll see fugitive slave had been placed in a newspaper

00:40:25.210 - 00:40:34.810

right alongside advertisements for the sale of horses or cattle, and looking at that context helps you understand a little bit better

00:40:34.810 - 00:40:45.550

the time that you're looking at, and maybe shifts the way that you're thinking about the specific item that you're most interested in. And I think there's something like that

00:40:45.550 - 00:40:55.620

in this issue as well because, right next to this article about at the end veiling, you'll see another headline just to the right of it, and it's under the biggest photo on the front page,

00:40:55.620 - 00:41:11.890

which is a picture of Homoiselle Hayden, I think I'm pronouncing her first name correctly, a senior who was going to be crowned as the queen of the annual May Fate at Rice University.

00:41:15.280 - 00:41:27.620

And a few weeks ago we had a student from the Racial Geography Project here on the Doc Talk, Morgan, who shared with us some of her research about the first May fete,

00:41:27.620 - 00:41:38.130

and so if you were here for that Doc Talk you know a little bit about this annual spring event that would have a royal court, would have students sort of dressing up,

00:41:38.130 - 00:41:46.770

and usually there would be a theme for this Fete each spring, and it was kind of a big event, there were grand stands set up,

00:41:46.770 - 00:41:56.840

and members of the general public from Houston would come to observe this, there was entertainment. What's remarkable about this particular May Fete in 1930,

00:41:56.840 - 00:42:09.890

is the headline says, Scene of Southern Splendor Set For Colorful Ceremony, and it says, "On Saturday at five o'clock at Rice Institute, the entire student body,

00:42:09.890 - 00:42:21.400

and hundreds of interested Houstonians, will gather to witness the colorful May Fete which is an annual custom at the institute." And it goes on to say that,

00:42:21.400 - 00:42:36.610

"This year a Southern theme has been chosen for the Fete, and the tall oaks and spacious lawns of the campus will form a beautiful background for the plantation home, which is..."

00:42:38.900 - 00:42:50.940

You're telling me Dr. Byrd that people can't see the screen? I got a message from one of our attendees that they can't see the screen Okay, let me try again here, let me try and see.

00:42:50.940 - 00:43:01.360

I can see it. You can see it, okay. So you can see it? Let me go back to full screen.

00:43:02.740 - 00:43:14.900

Yeah, I can see it. Okay, now I've got confirmation they can see. So, it's describing this May Fete theme, and it says, "This year a Southern theme

00:43:14.900 - 00:43:27.610

has been chosen for the Fete, and the tall oaks and spacious lawns of the campus will form a beautiful background for the plantation home, which has been painted by the architects

00:43:27.610 - 00:43:39.340

under the direction of Alan Caldwell, the set depicts a colonial mansion with massive pillars and deep veranda," and it goes on to say that it was on this veranda

00:43:39.340 - 00:43:50.510

of this colonial mansion set, that the May queen and her royal court would receive their coronation as part of this annual May Fete setting.

00:43:52.430 - 00:44:03.480

So, what this is telling us is that, you know, there's two ceremonies being described on the front page of the Thresher here, that took place about four weeks apart,

00:44:03.480 - 00:44:18.970

the May 5th, event May Fete, where a significant part of the campus, the lawn of the campus would be converted into sort of a backdrop for a scene of Southern splendor,

00:44:18.970 - 00:44:33.580

a plantation home, and then only a few weeks later, Ms. Hayden and her fellow seniors would participate in another ceremony which was the unveiling of the statue of William Marsh Rice.

00:44:33.790 - 00:44:43.870

And I won't spend too much time talking about the May Fete article, except to say that there's a lot of reporting about who was part of this May Fete,

00:44:43.870 - 00:44:59.910

and it continues on page six to talk about the participation of one student as a court jester in this May Fete. And it interested me to wonder what would a court jester

00:44:59.910 - 00:45:11.130

be doing at this May Fete, what kind of entertainment would the jester, a male student be providing both for the attendees, but also for those hundreds of Houstonians

00:45:11.130 - 00:45:18.180

that were coming on campus to sit in the grand stands and view this May Fete. And to answer that question we have to go to another document

00:45:18.180 - 00:45:33.840

which is the yearbook for 1930, The Campanile, and you can see here in the Campanile a description of the annual May Fete, and it repeats the fact that the colonial theme

00:45:33.840 - 00:45:44.810

was used as a general motif, that the Fete appeared as on the lawn of an old time plantation, and you can see the queen and the King here

00:45:44.810 - 00:45:56.070

all dressed in sort of spring white suits and white dresses wearing colonial nose gaze, as the flowers and the bouquets it describes in the May Fete.

00:45:56.990 - 00:46:08.070

And on the next page it describes a little bit more about the entertainment, it says that the Royal court danced some sort of traditional Southern dances

00:46:08.070 - 00:46:17.550

including the Virginia reel, and it tells us that the coronation entertainment was also provided by the jester, but here it gives us a little bit

00:46:17.550 - 00:46:29.410

more information about the jester, it says that he was, and I'm gonna quote here, "In the garb of a pickaninny," now, I was careful to say I was quoting that

00:46:29.410 - 00:46:41.810

because that's not a word that I would use in conversation today because, a lot of people today don't use that word, they don't even know what that word means,

00:46:41.810 - 00:46:54.780

so they might not understand what that word is referring to, but in this period of time in the early 20th century and then also in the 19th century, that would have been a racist epithet,

00:46:54.780 - 00:47:10.190

and it essentially refers to a young enslaved child, so it has a particular racial charge to it, and I think what we can conclude from this is, is that the court jester at this particular May Fete,

00:47:11.400 - 00:47:25.040

was most likely wearing blackface, dressing up as an enslaved person in the context of this plantation themed ceremony. And I know that was a question Dr.Byrd

00:47:25.040 - 00:47:39.440

that came up a few weeks ago when we were talking about the May Fete is, were there any instances where this May Fete included that kind of black face, or red face, or racial racialized display?

00:47:43.180 - 00:47:52.770

And here I think there's clear evidence that it was, and it's interesting that it happened only a few weeks before the ceremony that I know has been garnering a lot of interest

00:47:52.770 - 00:48:11.390

on campus recently, the installation of the statue of William Marsh Rice in the spring of 1930. Well, and I would encourage right this, it wouldn't be unlikely that the way the student

00:48:12.430 - 00:48:26.250

would have dressed in the, quoting again, "Dressed in the garb of a pickaninny," they would have drawn what that was more from their imagination

00:48:26.250 - 00:48:41.860

and a kind of grotesque representation of an enslaved African-American exaggerated out of all proportions and an image meant to

00:48:45.050 - 00:49:02.250

draw on quite racist representations of not simply African-Americans in the past, but also the ways African-Americans inhabited the current imaginations of some of the participants.

00:49:03.870 - 00:49:14.700

Thank you for making that point, I would have drawn on your rights sort of minstrel show traditions that would have intentionally denigrated African-Americans.

00:49:16.890 - 00:49:25.620

I think this connects to some of the themes you were raising in your presentation as well in a couple of ways, it's sort of the inverse of the question you were raising which is,

00:49:25.620 - 00:49:38.150

what was the image of Rice in the imagination of Houston's African-American community? And what this document is helping us think about is, what was the image of the African-American community

00:49:38.150 - 00:49:54.640

in the imagination of Rice students in this period. And I think it also is similar to the way that we thought about Dr. Freeman as claiming space by filming himself in the quad,

00:49:55.190 - 00:50:05.870

in this very respectable suit, walking around on campus, and we thought about that as a kind of performative monument, that in a way we could think

00:50:05.870 - 00:50:19.960

of the May Fete in a similar light, you know, this was a claiming of space, a reimagination of the campus space as a plantation, and a kind of monument in a way,

00:50:19.960 - 00:50:29.310

even though it wasn't as permanent, it's not something that we can still see in the quad, we don't see the evidence of this May Fete, and yet, if you think about

00:50:29.310 - 00:50:41.680

Dr. Freeman's impressions of Rice as somebody who grew up in Houston before World War II and after World War II, would help us understand why he would think

00:50:41.680 - 00:50:52.360

of Rice in this way, if this was the kind of event that hundreds of Houstonians would come to witness and participate in. There's one other thing from this yearbook

00:50:52.360 - 00:51:02.240

that I had not seen before this morning when I was locating this article again that I think also speaks to those questions, and it comes at the very end of the yearbook,

00:51:02.240 - 00:51:16.630

and a sort of a parody section of the yearbook, where the editors wrote an article about the football team. And in this particular article the students said that football hadn't been going very well at Rice

00:51:16.630 - 00:51:26.060

in the 1920s, but that in recent years, it had started to turn around, the football team was doing better. And what this writer suggested was that,

00:51:26.060 - 00:51:37.170

that may be because the school was relaxing its intellectual standards in order to bring in good football players, but maybe they weren't the brightest,

00:51:37.170 - 00:51:51.250

and maybe Rice should reconsider this Athletimania as the article calls it at the top of this page. But what struck me about this article is that, when it continues to it's second page,

00:51:51.250 - 00:52:00.520

there's a photograph that's captioned, Products of the New System, products of this system of bringing in students who according to the author

00:52:00.520 - 00:52:12.980

weren't really qualified to be there, but were being brought in for their athletic skill. And as you can see, that photo is a photograph of young African-American boys,

00:52:14.050 - 00:52:26.260

who appeared to be in the street playing with each other and posing for the camera, and the caption is suggesting that these athletes who are being admitted to Rice,

00:52:26.260 - 00:52:42.110

it's comparing them in a very racist way with African-American children in the city of Houston. So, I think just like with the Thresher articles, when we look at those two articles side by side,

00:52:42.110 - 00:52:56.310

and think about how they reflect on each other, these two articles in the Campanile do the same thing. Thinking about that minstrel performance at the May Fete, this photograph to me, helps us understand

00:52:56.310 - 00:53:05.010

what was happening in that minstrel performance and vice versa, so there's a lot of questions that this photograph raises for me that I hadn't seen before,

00:53:05.010 - 00:53:21.260

but all of that connects to these larger questions we've been raising about space on campus, the racial geography of the city and the campus, and how Rice thought about African-Americans

00:53:21.450 - 00:53:37.250

in the city and vice versa. That's powerful. I think we've almost gone too long to look at our questions,

00:53:37.250 - 00:53:47.870

but have you been keeping track here you've seen if there's any questions. We've got few, so, one of them there's an attendee wants to know do we know when and why

00:53:47.870 - 00:54:03.360

the May Fete tradition was discontinued. We do know, I think it was not until, I wanna say the '40s or '50, I think Morgan addressed that, I have to go back and check.

00:54:03.360 - 00:54:18.570

But it was not because of these issues, I think it evolved into roundelay, sort of another spring social dance event, and a shift in just how it was celebrated,

00:54:18.570 - 00:54:34.450

more towards a dance rather than this kind of formal coronation. I should be answering someone else's question, but I just wanna throw a half question

00:54:34.450 - 00:54:52.630

half remark in there before we leave. One of the things that I think is really amazing about the story you began to sketch for us, are the ways in which some of what we would think of

00:54:53.150 - 00:55:11.320

as present day prominent stereotypes, African-American stereotypes around universities, exist or are pointing toward in a time when there's absolutely no sort of reality around it,

00:55:11.480 - 00:55:23.890

so there are no African-American athletes playing at white colleges in the South at the time. No, I think that's a great point, I mean, 'cause we've talked about it,

00:55:23.890 - 00:55:39.190

and looking into the Thresher articles from the '80s, and black students reflecting on their experience of being asked, you know, what athletic sport they played, I was struck by that too, then here we are in 1930,

00:55:39.190 - 00:55:59.670

long before the integration of campus, there's already that false narrative being built before integration even occurred. And also to me speaks it to the mindset of the students,

00:55:59.670 - 00:56:09.660

when we think about going back to the webinar yesterday, we think about kind of the pre charter trial and post charter trial, and even saw it in Dr. Freeman's interview

00:56:09.660 - 00:56:19.710

where he said there were a lot of African-Americans who wanted to go to Rice, but the charter said that wasn't possible, and so, that kind of makes it seem

00:56:19.710 - 00:56:32.130

as though the only problem that had to be fixed, was this technical issue with the charter, and once that was fixed then there wouldn't be a problem. When you see photographs like that though in the Campanile,

00:56:33.120 - 00:56:49.320

it kind of suggests that we think about the exclusion of African-Americans from Rice and the campus as an ongoing decision that the community was making, not a one-time policy set by William Marsh Rice

00:56:49.320 - 00:57:00.830

that then had to be abided by until it could be changed in the charter trial, but something that was being chosen again, and again, and again in large and small ways

00:57:01.970 - 00:57:15.980

in the kinds of ceremonies, the kinds of monuments, if we could put it that way, that were being displayed and performed on campus. Thank you all, We've come to the end,

00:57:15.980 - 00:57:26.260

I think we're almost to the end of the hour, and especially with everything else competing for your time this week of all weeks, we're grateful that you decided to spend this hour

00:57:26.260 - 00:57:39.980

with us looking at these documents, very complex sources, but ones that give us a lot to reflect on and think about. And so, we hope that you'll share about the Doc Talks with your friends and colleagues,

00:57:39.980 - 00:57:51.560

the first rule of Doc Talk is to talk about Doc Talk, and let people know that we do this every Friday, so if you're interested in learning more about the work of the taskforce,

00:57:51.560 - 00:58:05.780

this is a great way to keep up with what we're doing. And visit our website once again, taskforce.rice.edu to learn more about our podcast and other upcoming events. Thanks again everyone.

00:58:05.780 - 00:58:06.680

Take care y'all.