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I think I can say good afternoon now. We're officially after noon, unless we have some west coasters dialing in. Good afternoon, good morning, good tomorrow for people who are Zooming in from across the Pacific.

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Do we have a, if we have a global audience, that, that'd be great, I'd want to know about that. Please identify yourself in the chat if you are... I'm trying to figure out where you are, Dr. McDaniel. I'm looking through, it looks like you have fallen through the looking glass or

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or something. I'm, I'm Scrambling a little bit today. I had to relocate from my usual location to an unoccupied office, an undisclosed location on the third floor of the humanities building due to some construction going on in

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a neighboring office that I was worried would come through on the recording, so. We have to watch that, that audio quality. Well... Can you hear me okay?

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I can hear you fine, and you're reminding me of some technical aspects to this production that I should take care of right now. Well, thank goodness it's Friday and time for doc talks. And we're so glad to have all of you here who are joining us today.

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My name is Caleb McDaniel with Alex Byrd. We're the co-chairs of the Task Force on Slavery, Segregation, and Racial Injustice here at Rice, and every Friday at noon central, we get together to talk about some of the documents that we are examining as part of the first part of our three-part

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charge as a task force, which is to investigate and share research on the history of Rice and its entanglement with slavery, segregation, and racial injustice. This is very much a work-in-progress kind of show. We like to pull back the curtain a little bit and let you see how historians in the

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moment are piecing together information and trying to construct a narrative that can be shared with the broader community and the public. So I'm excited to see what document you've brought today, Dr. Byrd.

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Well, thank you. And you know, you've been doing those intros so long and so smoothly that sometimes I just take them all in at once. I don't, I don't, I'm not able to distinguish sentences or phrases, and so I can't tell if this, this, this part of the introduction where you said how historians

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piece together narratives, I can't now remember whether that is a, a longstanding part of the intro or something that, that has just been added. I don't know either. As a historian, I need to go back and consult the record to tell, when was the first time that that phrase was used on the doc talks?

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That's the kind of question historians are interested in, and it requires evidence. But you might be right. You might, I might have, maybe it was my new surroundings. This is what historians call contingency.

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If you're in a different situation, maybe different words come to mind. Well, what, what I like about it, of course, is that it speaks exactly to some of the work I've been doing today about how to piece together a narrative. And because I've been thinking along those lines today, this is gonna be a day where, at

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least on my part, I throw all the rules of doc talk over the side of the boat. It just may be doc after doc after doc with me today. But I've been grappling with how to tell a story of desegregation, how to tell a story, how to piece together a story of Rice desegregation, which is a, which is the

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question, it's not a new question on these doc talks or on some of our public programming. We have spoken to the issue of from what perspective or perspectives to tell this, that, that story, the mid 1960s story of Rice's desegregation. And one of the ways that has prevailed is a legal story about a victory for the

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university, right. We have spent some time on seeing it as a, a more individual story through the lens, for instance, of Dr. Raymond Johnson, one of our first black students at the university, and through his

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life, seeing also a kind of pre-version of Rice's desegregation, right, because he arrives, arrives before the suit, to break the trust. But, but we also see it in his personal life through his reactions to desegregation and his worries about what desegregation might actually mean in purpose.

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Might it, might it achieve, might it end up achieving much less than, than he, than he thought? And so today, because that is the kind of thing I've been thinking about, right, I've headed for inspiration to the March 1964, a March 1964 issue of the Rice Thresher, was

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published on March 11th, 1964. For you true historians in the audience who are excellent with dates, you will know that that March 11th date is mighty close to a very important date in the history of the desegregation of the university.

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Don't worry, Dr. McDaniel. No test coming. I know we have a truce on dates. At least I hope we do.

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Phew, I was sweating over here. But March 11th is a couple of days after a court rules in the university's favor on its desegregation suit. So you see here on this March 11th, 1964, issue of the Rice Thresher, we have a

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headline in the upper right-hand corner that says "Court Decision Favors Trustees, But Intervenor Appeals Expected." So it's an announcement, a muted kind of announcement of a victory. There, there is some quite interesting details that color a way to tell this story

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of desegregation right here in this article. About midway through, the authors go to describe what they think integration should look like or will look like at the university, and it's a quite dramatic rendering that I that I wanna share.

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It's the beginning of a paragraph in this issue of the Thrasher, and the practice in, in this particular article is to put in all caps the first few letters of a paragraph, and so there is some drama in the typeface about halfway through, because the first letter of this particular paragraph that I'm going to share is "integration." And so

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integration is fully capitalized, and the passage I want to share with you begins, "Integration at Rice will encompass all facets of university life. All facilities, including dormitories, will be open to Negroes." That's, I think that's meant to be, in a certain way, dramatic and provocative to an audience that, to members

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of the reading audience who, who might not be, not be in favor of desegregation at Rice . It's almost inflammatory to a, to a certain, to a certain audience. It reminds me of some of our earlier conversations about social equality as opposed to just civil or political equality and what a phrase like that would have meant.

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Oh, it's pointing there and all those other places. Is it, it not? And, and also a kind of historical critique, I would imagine, about the ways desegregation had unfolded at other universities in the South before Rice.

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I think that would merit some investigation. Is the writer familiar with the way the University of Texas desegregated, in which students arrived at the university before the dormitories are actually open to African Americans? But it continues, "Athletics will be integrated, Rice

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being the last Southwest Conference School to announce this policy." So they're, I wouldn't be surprised if the writer does have this kind of historical understanding of not just athletics and its desegregation, but the various ways that other schools, at least in the Southwest conference, had, had desegregated.

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And so this is where I started with, with, for, for inspiration today about different ways to tell this story. And we see this story of a perspective of university victory makes sense, it's, it's, it's present from the beginning, and it's a, it's a perspective that is unavoidable,

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right, because it's the actual action that brings desegregation to the university officially, even though Raymond Johnson's arrival on the campus, there's a good argument that, that that is just as dramatic as a, as an act. Because we're historians, we should stop here and just see, you know, a little break.

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Ten, ten students were given the Wilsons, the Woodrow Wilsons. These are graduate fellowships that at the time covered a first year of tuition and and gave you a stipend and money if you had kids While you're in graduate school. So just a brief detour here.

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I'm excited that Mark Elson, a Baker mathematics major from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, won a Woodrow Wilson this year in 19, 1964. But Caleb, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, let's, take my glasses off, make sure I'm reading, reading this right.

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Mark Elson, a Baker mathematics major from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Dr. McDaniel, how did he get here before the trust was, was broken? Is this, is this, can this be correct? I thought it was inhabitants of Houston only.

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Quite, quite strange. And there are plenty of Houston people on this list. It's actually dominated by Houstonians. But we got some folks here from College Station, some folks from Liberty, and, but

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Mark Elson seems to be from the farthest afield. Okay, we won't, we won't pause there, so we'll just, we'll just, we'll just keep on going. But I'm glad we got Mark Elson in, and maybe, maybe we can return to him someday. So, so this is a, this is a start, and this is a perspective that we are, we are

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quite used to. But we know, we've been challenged before in some of our previous conversations to think about what Rice looks like from a little farther afield. And related to that, right, we've spent some time on Rice at the university when we're

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talking about desegregation, of figuring out what the image of of black students and black people were in the imaginations of Rice students at the time. And I thought what I'd do next is to, is to turn that, is to turn that question a little bit around. Dr.

00:14:11.770 - 00:14:21.460

McDaniel, you wanted to interject. Well, I, just before we leave this page, are you about to leave this page? I'm about to leave it. What else do you wanna talk about?

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Well, we've another theme of our, of our doc talks has sometimes been music, and so I'm, I'm struck by, right under the paragraph that you mentioned about integration at Rice. There's a mention of Josh White, "noted folk artist," appearing at the RMC on Sunday, and what caught my eye is if you scroll down a little bit there, it seems that he's

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described as someone who grew up in South Carolina and "led blind singers on their rounds in Greenville" and learned how to sing and then landed a role in a Broadway show as John Henry. Which makes me wanna know a little bit more about Josh White.

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Yeah, absolutely. We're gonna have to put him on our, our, our unfolding music list, right. Come back to that, maybe we'll come back to that another day. I don't even think that's a maybe, prof.

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I think that our viewers-slash-listeners can be, can be guaranteed of, of, of that. So we'll get back to to Josh White and and the likelihood that he may fit into this story of desegregation at Rice before desegregation. But right now, I want to turn to the question of what desegregation at Rice looks

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like from, from beyond Rice. And and I want to go up the road a bit to our friends and colleagues in Prairie View, at Prairie View A&M University. Dr. McDaniel, did I ever tell you I had Prairie View roots?

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I don't think you did. I would... Do you know this about me? You would mention that, but... So the, there's one side of my family that leaves Alabama in the, in the late 19th

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century and jumps on a wagon and heads west to Texas, and all I know is they, they stop roundabout Prairie View. And there, there are a group of people called the Wells, and my, my grandmother is an issue from those Wells, Wellses, outside Prairie View.

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She graduates from Prairie View A&M in the early 1920s, I think 1923, teaches school after that. But that's an aside. Well, get back to the story about how to talk about desegregation from a different perspective. We have in this issue of the Panther, which is kind of sepia-toned, says

00:17:18.510 - 00:17:52.230

"Panther" across the middle, "the voice of the students of Prairie View," Prairie View A&M University being A historically black land grant University here in Texas. In this, in this February issue of the, of the Panther, I turn to it because I wanted to get a sense of whether Rice figures in any news, at this moment of Rice's

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desegregation, is, is it being treated in newspapers at historically black colleges and universities and its, and its neighbors, and at some of its neighbor institutions? And we see in this, at least on the front page issue of the, of the Panther, there's a good deal going on here in Prairie View.

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Their, their honor roll has come, has recently come out, and there are four students with perfect marks, absolutely perfect marks. The Panther is relating an English conference that is going to be held at PV at the time. But what catches my eye in terms of the question that I'm most interested in

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is in the News in Brief section on the front page of of the paper. And what we see here, and maybe I need to, I see you straining just a little, Dr. McDaniel, I may need to, may need to see if I can make this a little bigger. I'm sometimes afraid, no, I oughta be able to do this with Zoom Plus.

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There we go, a little bit more. What we see here in the News in Brief, on the front News in Brief section on this first page of the Panther, is that there's a ping pong tournament that is gonna be played up the road at the University of Texas.

00:19:28.320 - 00:19:50.880

And I'm really excited to see ping pong on the front page of the paper because what you have here is you've got a February edition of the paper saying that toward the end of the month, this ping pong tournament is going to happen, and Prairie View's team will be there, but there'll also be other universities there.

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Can you guess which one, or maybe one of those universities might be? One of them's Rice. "Other universities that will be represented in the meet include Louisiana State University, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M, the University of Houston, Rice University,

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Stephen F. Austin, and Arkansas A&M&N," which is another historically black school. So what's interesting here to me is there are two historically black schools on this list that I can identify by sight, but that, that would be it for me, Dr.

00:20:29.490 - 00:20:52.170

McDaniel. Do you see any? So quite, quite fascinating, right. So here we are in 1964, before the suit, right, that we've got this other round of, of, of a kind of desegregating that you also introduced us to last week when you talked

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about football games at Rice and what would happen when Rice would play teams that had already integrated their, their, their sports teams. But here we have, here we have a ping pong, here we have a ping pong match. And gonna, I'm gonna rush to in, cause I wanna, I wanna make sure I don't go too much

00:21:15.030 - 00:21:33.210

past 12:30 so we can ask some questions, and so I can also hear your document. So if I, if I, if I head quickly to the next issue of the Panther, we see how the folks at Prairie View did. Their doubles team won!

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The doubles team, the doubles team goes up to Austin and, and wins. And here we have them in the next issue receiving their trophies. The champions are Charles Brown and Claude Weaver, who defeated, they're gonna go ahead and list who, who lost, right, who defeated the University of Texas, Rice, and Trinity

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Universities. Now, if they defeated all those universities, didn't they also defeat Arkansas A&M&N? Wouldn't you think? Stands to reason.

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Stands to reason. But they're, but they're not listed there. I just see the historically predominantly white institutions listed as the ones who took the beatdown in table tennis from Charles Brown and Claude Weaver.

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And in that same, in that same issue of the paper, if you go from page three to page eight, Dr. McDaniel, there is a play-by-play! There is, of the ping pong match that happened. I mean, they give you it nearly blow-by-blow.

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This might as well be a football game. And so we have a slightly longer story about this match where there's even some effusive commentary about how dedicated and hard-working these folks have been. "This is the finest group I've worked with." Just really disciplined ping pong players.

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But there is some disappointment in this part of the story because we learn, even though the doubles team won, they weren't able to bring home the victory in, in the singles, as good as these two were as doubles. The singles were played by Charles Lawson and Howard Warren.

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"Lawson played like a true champion, but was somehow defeated in the quarterfinals by Elson from Rice University 21 to 19, 21 to 18." Elson. Elson, where have I heard that name before? Oh, I don't, maybe, I told you I'm struggling with how to tell a story about desegregation,

00:24:04.740 - 00:24:25.350

Dr. McDaniel. And this is, this is part of that story, right, where, where have we heard that name before, right. Elson, if, we if we wanna rush back wins the Wilson, right, he's this guy, wins the Wilson, this, this, we, this, this may be him.

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If we, if we search the Rice Thresher for a few other years, this is on January of 1964. We find that Elson has won the college championships in table tennis at Rice. I don't know if table tennis is still a college, intercollege sport at the university, but Elson was burning up the college circuit at that time.

00:24:57.750 - 00:25:22.860

But but, Dr. McDaniel, try as I might, I can't find, as, as highly covered as this table tennis tournament at the University of Texas is treated in the Prairie View Panther in the spring of 1964, and even though Elson himself shows up as a Wilson winner, if, if

00:25:22.860 - 00:25:51.760

I'm right about that, that name, and as a college table tennis champion, and Elson, I won't go on. Elson was also good at cards, and so we find him winning some card tournaments. What we don't find, notice of, is this, is this tournament in Austin. It may be table tennis just doesn't rate in 1964 at, at Rice.

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But I have questions. Also have questions about what it, what it would mean to feature this kind of one-on-one, kind of personal competition between white and black players in, in the Rice newspaper in the 19, in the spring of 1960, in a very sensitive time, where we know

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from Raymond Johnson's letters, for instance, that, that, that Rice is trying to be a little quiet about this, issues around integration and, and desegregation. But let me, let me, let me wind to an end. So one of my questions, right, one of my questions about here is, one of the questions

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that I wanna grapple with here that these documents raise for me in terms of crafting a narrative about desegregation is, at Rice, is, we've got another avenue about precursors for desegregation, and another perspective. And so this, this table tennis tournament provides a different type of entrée, but I

00:27:04.320 - 00:27:39.450

also think a different type of commentary on, on desegregation at Rice and what it looks like from the black community in and around the university. And I wanna close with this from the editorial page of of the February issue of the Panther, when the, when the table tennis tournament is

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being announced in Austin. Because here on the editorial page, we see a very brief three paragraph editorial called "Integration Problems at Rice," which is interesting, right, because what is the, what is the problem? What, what, what, what are they, what are the, the editors of the

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Panther referring to? They're paying some attention to the trial and they have some commentary on it. "Many strange things happen where whites and negroes are concerned. We aren't surprised too much at the peculiar court proceedings in the suit by Rice

00:28:24.650 - 00:28:43.340

University to integrate and change tuition." Okay. It makes sense that they would put those two together because that's what the, that's indeed what the case is about. "According to news accounts, the judge tells the lawyers not to mention the fact that the

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school was originally established for inhabitants of Houston and Texas. Rice already has students from many states and foreign countries. The founder also stipulated that the school should be for whites only. Yet Rice has students of many races and colors except American-born Negroes.

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Such hocus-pocus by intelligent people is hard to fathom. But at least in this instance, the purpose is to write a longstanding wrong, and we are glad of it." What I appreciate is the, is the kind of tension that's produced between this editorial and the, and the news story in the Rice Thresher of March of 1964,

00:29:44.110 - 00:30:14.750

the editorial-like aspects that are in that news story, and by that I mean the, the paragraph that goes on to describe integration at Rice's news, but it might also be just a little bit more than news, the way that it's presented. But up the road in Prairie View, they're glad of it, but, but none too impressed, Dr.

00:30:14.750 - 00:30:27.780

McDaniel. None too impressed. Hocus pocus. That's fascinating, great documents. And I think if you're gonna bring documents like that, throw the rules out.

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To me, the only rule of doc talk is talk about doc talk and share it with others. So you can, you can bring more than one doc. Let's just agree to that, since we've violated, we've observed that rule only in the breach, I think, for most...

00:30:41.730 - 00:30:58.260

I don't know that we've ever just brought one doc. Maybe in the early days. That also would have to be a question for future historical investigation. But I know I'm going to violate the rule today as well, because, and maybe this is why

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I said that at the beginning, I'm also trying to piece together a narrative and and do the difficult work of even figuring out starting points and ending points and turning points. And so today what I wanted to talk about, let me get back to my screen. I wanted to talk about someone whose name I know you know, and possibly our audience

00:31:29.330 - 00:31:47.000

members also know of his name. This is a photograph of Jack Shelton. And you can see in the center of a large grassy field, clearly very well kept. There's lush grass on the ground.

00:31:47.480 - 00:32:13.850

An African American man sort of leaning on his side. His elbow is, is holding, holding him up, and he's wearing a straw hat with what looks like a ribbon around the hat and possibly a little flower or bow on one side of it, and it's placed jauntily on top of his head as he looks towards the camera and has a slight

00:32:13.850 - 00:32:33.470

smile on his face. So if you did your homework, audience members and carefully read our task force updates on research this summer, then you've encountered Jack Shelton's name before, because he was mentioned in the update about the Founder's Memorial.

00:32:33.800 - 00:32:54.510

But if you haven't heard of Jack Shelton before, I'll tell you just a little bit about him. He is believed to be, and I want to, I want to underline that because it's one of the things that I'm trying to piece together, but believed to be one of the first employees, African American employees, of the Rice Institute.

00:32:54.530 - 00:33:16.070

We've met one other person who, of color, who worked on the campus in an earlier doc talk when we were talking about Jenny Petit. I'm sure you remember Jenny, Jenny Petit, who appeared in the Rice Thresher as a woman who, from the earliest days of the Rice Institute in 1912, took in laundry for

00:33:16.190 - 00:33:35.250

students who were living on campus. And Jack Shelton, according to some accounts, began his work at the Rice Institute at around the same time, perhaps as early as 1912, maybe 1913, maybe 1914. We'll come back to that.

00:33:35.700 - 00:34:00.270

But he remained at Rice, I believe, much longer than Jenny Petit. And the work he did, which is suggested here by the photograph that we're seeing in front of us, was predominantly around the athletic fields. So Jack Shelton worked for the Rice Institute football program in a variety of

00:34:00.270 - 00:34:19.410

capacities, but among them was to keep the turf for the football team looking good and ready for the big Southwest Conference football games that the Rice Institute team played in those years. But Jack Shelton did a lot more than just work on the fields.

00:34:19.410 - 00:34:38.430

We know that as we peruse through various issues of the Rice Thresher, we can look at issues of the Campanile, the Rice yearbook, we find him mentioned there in an early Campanile as Dr. Jack Shelton. You can see him pictured here again with a straw hat that has a ribbon

00:34:38.430 - 00:34:59.070

around it and perhaps a little bow on the left. And he appears here on the page that lists the athletic coaches, the people who worked on the staff, and although he's the last one to be mentioned there on the coaching staff, it's kind of interesting that he's placed here among the coaches in this particular

00:34:59.070 - 00:35:15.030

issue of the Campanile, and it was interesting enough, at least, that the editors commented on it. They said, "Jack has not usually been placed along with the coaches in previous athletic writeups, but his interest in the university he works for and the men he works with should

00:35:15.030 - 00:35:31.860

place him there. He has been here," says the Campanile, "as long as we have had athletics." And that's just the first of several mentions of Jack Shelton, here referred to as Dr. Jack Shelton, in the Campanile.

00:35:31.890 - 00:35:52.080

You can find some of the other mentions if you go to the Woodson Research Center and ask to see the folder from the information files in the Woodson Research Center on Dr. Jack Shelton. That's the way that it's listed in the Woodson Research Center's archives. And there are photocopies there of several appearances of Shelton in the

00:35:52.080 - 00:36:16.800

Campanile, as well as a eulogy that was written about Shelton and published after his death in 1950 in the Houston Press by a former member of the Rice Institute football team. And that eulogy shows, along with lots of other evidence, that Shelton was often remembered particularly fondly by members of the football team from those years.

00:36:17.790 - 00:36:43.080

In fact, so fondly that when Shelton died in 1937, his, his passing was noted in the Rice Thresher with a lead editorial just below the masthead of the Rice Thresher that referred to Jack Shelton's death, and in this case says that he had begun his career at the Rice Institute 23 years ago.

00:36:43.260 - 00:36:54.840

23 years ago. This is in 1937. And here I think we get a sense of the wide range of things, as I alluded to earlier, that Shelton had done during his time working at Rice.

00:36:54.900 - 00:37:18.010

This editorial described him as, "General handyman, trainer, waterboy, locker room attendant, and groundskeeper." That was one of the main things that he did and was mentioned as doing in in the Rice Institute. But here you can see some of the same themes that you would find in that 1950 eulogy, that

00:37:18.010 - 00:37:37.570

he "pursued his work diligently and efficiently," that he had "the undying friendship and respect of hundreds of Rice students who frequented the athletic fieldhouse," that numerous Rice students attended his funeral, and that he took great pride in his work, according to this editorial.

00:37:38.160 - 00:37:55.480

And there's also, below this signed editorial by Harry A. Scott, another student's tribute. Now, this student's tribute, though, I think is important to note, and it's, it's a point that was brought out in our update this summer as well, because it tells the story of

00:37:55.480 - 00:38:13.330

Jack Shelton in a slightly different way and calls him by a different name. We've seen him in the Campanile referred to as Dr. Jack Shelton with the "Dr." in quotes. We've seen him referred to as Jack Shelton in Harry Scott's editorial.

00:38:13.360 - 00:38:38.140

Here he is referred to just as, with his first name, Jack, and before that, a racial epithet, the N-word, is mentioned with Jack's name. And that's one of the points that was made in the update on the Founder's Memorial, that in the 1920s and '30s, when Shelton was associated with Rice, and when around the

00:38:38.140 - 00:39:02.380

time that the Founder's Memorial was erected, it's telling that he was referred to in this way often by students in the Rice Thresher and in the Campanile. And one of the things that's emphasized here that you often also see in these stories about Shelton is a comment on his encyclopedic knowledge of Rice football.

00:39:02.740 - 00:39:25.590

He was known to remember a lot of the games from the early years of the Rice Institute, and according to this student, he could also predict the winner accurately of any upcoming Southwest Conference game. So I mentioned that Shelton often was responsible for keeping the football field

00:39:25.590 - 00:39:49.830

up, and this is another article from 1933 that, in the headline, as you can see here, also refers to him with a racial epithet, and talks about his pride in keeping the football field ready. And in fact, he is quoted here as saying, towards the end of this article, "I love my

00:39:49.830 - 00:40:11.690

job, I live for it, and my only hope," Shelton is quoted as saying, "is that I can stay here at Rice until the end." So that's just a very little bit about Jack Shelton, and I think that we could say a lot more about him. In fact, as I was preparing for this doc talk, I realized that really to piece

00:40:11.690 - 00:40:36.200

together this narrative and tell a story about Jack Shelton's experience probably will require more than one conversation between the two of us looking at different documents that refer to this clearly very central figure in the early history of the Rice Institute, before desegregation began, long before desegregation began, Shelton was a

00:40:36.200 - 00:41:00.950

fixture at athletic events and and was known by Rice students. It's mentioned here that many of the friends of Jack Shelton, the former members of the football team, would, when they graduated, leave souvenirs for the trainer and they would sign towels or helmets, and he had a collection of these things.

00:41:01.750 - 00:41:21.050

And I think that that's something that we really need to talk about and could spend a whole, a whole doc talk discussing, what the relationship was between these Rice students and Jack Shelton. How did they view him, and how did he view them in return?

00:41:21.560 - 00:41:44.000

One thing I wanna say, just maybe as a placeholder for those future conversations, is that just like you did in your document, by turning to other schools and placing this document in the context of what's happening in other places at the same time at other universities, I think it would be very important for us to look at, at other

00:41:44.000 - 00:42:05.840

universities in the south around the same time. And one thing that we would find is that many Southern universities, particularly ones with very large and popular football programs, frequently had an African American man, always a man, associated with the program as a trainer, a groundskeeper, a

00:42:05.840 - 00:42:22.550

waterboy, a confidante of the Rice football team. You can, you can read online an article from 2018, for example, about a man named Washington Randall, who was associated with the LSU football program in the early 20th century.

00:42:22.550 - 00:42:47.720

At the University of Mississippi, every time the Rebels would play football in the early 20th century, there was a man there named Blind Jim Ivy, who was described in much the same way that Jack Shelton is described at the Rice Institute in these years. Somebody who was present at many student events, who had a collection of souvenirs

00:42:47.720 - 00:43:10.850

that were left to him by Rice students, and was seen both as an athletic booster, but also as someone who served as a kind of confidante to, to Students at Rice. And this particular article about, that I'm showing on the screen right now, about Blind Jim Ivy, as he was known at the University of Mississippi, and some other scholarship on

00:43:10.850 - 00:43:33.170

this phenomenon of black trainers at Southern universities in the early 20th century, have pointed out that at a time when these institutions were not integrated by any means, and even the games themselves could not be attended by, by black audience members from the local community, these were figures who had rare access to white spaces,

00:43:33.170 - 00:43:57.860

within the fieldhouse, on the football field, and they were often described in ways that are reminiscent, to this historian and others, similar to, reminiscent of the, the mammy figure that we've, we've talked about before on this doc talk from the antebellum period, the sort of exceptional figures who had access to white domestic spaces or white

00:43:57.860 - 00:44:17.570

university spaces and were, were remembered fondly with a kind of intimacy by white students in a sort of patronizing and paternalistic way, but with a very clear set of boundaries around what the participation of those figures in the university's history would actually look like.

00:44:17.570 - 00:44:31.970

So I think we need to come back to this, I think, to really think about Jack Shelton and what he meant to the Rice Institute and what men like him meant to other programs. There were, there were similar, similar figures at the University of Alabama, at the University of Georgia.

00:44:32.420 - 00:44:56.210

But right now and today, I'm in a mode similar to the one that you were in, Dr. Byrd, of trying just to piece together a narrative. Because even though Jack Shelton is not a stranger to those who are familiar with Rice history, there's not a lot about Jack Shelton that we can turn to just to construct

00:44:56.210 - 00:45:11.490

a basic narrative of his life. In the Woodson Research Center, as I mentioned, there's a folder that has some clippings associated with him, there's mentions of him in the Campanile. I was able to find his death certificate from 1937, and that would be an interesting

00:45:11.490 - 00:45:31.740

document for us to discuss, perhaps at a future webinar. But when it comes down to trying to figure out even a seemingly simple question, such as, when did Jack Shelton begin to work at the Rice Institute? And what kind of work was he hired to do?

00:45:32.570 - 00:45:49.310

And when did he stop working for the Rice Institute? And what kind of work was he doing by that time? Those seem like simple, maybe those aren't, maybe those don't seem like simple questions. One might think those would, would be simple questions to answer from the archive, and yet

00:45:49.310 - 00:46:02.960

they turn out not to be very easy to answer at all. I've already referred to the fact that some of these eulogies and articles about Shelton referred to him as having been there from the beginning for as long as there had been athletics at Rice.

00:46:02.960 - 00:46:26.990

So all the way back to 1912 and the opening of the Rice Institute's doors. The eulogy to him in 1937, though, you might recall, remembered him beginning his career 23 years before then, which would place his starting date around 1914 or 1913. So it's a little unclear which of those years he began working and how he came to

00:46:26.990 - 00:46:50.000

Rice. But there is a story that's often told, including in that 1933 article, that says that the football coach, the first football coach at the Rice Institute, I believe, someone can check me on that, Phil Arbuckle, was responsible for bringing Shelton to Rice because he would frequently take the football team to a, what was

00:46:50.000 - 00:47:11.840

sometimes described as a sanatorium, sometimes described as, as a place at the Rice Hotel in downtown Houston for massages after a particularly brutal game. Football in these years, as a sidebar, was a pretty violent exercise. Of course it is today as well, but if you've ever seen early 20th-century football players

00:47:11.840 - 00:47:33.770

in the Southwestern Conference, they were not wearing the same kinds of protection and pads that football players today wear. And so you can imagine the Rice Institute Owls going up against some of these programs at Texas A&M or LSU and coming back a little beat up and bruised at the end of those

00:47:33.770 - 00:48:00.680

games. And according to the story that's often told about Shelton, Arbuckle went to take his team to this sanatorium where Shelton worked as a "rubber man," was the term that's sometimes used, or a masseuse, who would help to bind up wounds and wrap sprained ankles and, and give, give a rub down to the sore muscles of the football

00:48:00.680 - 00:48:20.240

players. And so the story is that Arbuckle, after several years of doing this, decided to bring Shelton to Rice to actually do this work full time. But as I said, it's difficult to know at what point did, at what point did Shelton also take on some responsibilities for the turf?

00:48:20.960 - 00:48:37.580

Because we can see that here. And what kind of pay did he receive, maybe I should hasten to say, if any, to do this kind of work? Those are questions I have. Can we, can we confirm that in the archive?

00:48:37.580 - 00:48:58.580

And so I'm breaking all the rules, just as you did, about multiple documents, but believe it or not, the document that I really wanted to talk about, I haven't mentioned yet, but it comes from 1921 in the Rice Thresher. And so now you'll see here on the front page of the Rice Thresher from January 7th, 1921,

00:49:00.020 - 00:49:26.510

an issue that mentions a pretty significant event. As the kids would say today, huge if true, right, big if true. There's a headline about halfway down, right at the fold of the front page on the left that says in big, bold letters, "Trainer Jack Leaves the Institute." And I'm gonna

00:49:26.600 - 00:49:43.940

read just briefly what it says about, about Shelton here. "Jack Shelton, the first president of three successive freshman classes," that's another story we could talk about, "and for years, the doctor and trainer of Rice athletes, has virtually resigned his position with the institute.

00:49:45.470 - 00:50:05.620

Disagreements as to his duties are given as the reason for his resignation." And then the Thresher goes on to say, and I'm quoting again, "Jack is one of the best Negro trainers in the country and has several good positions open to him at any time. He has served Rice faithfully and well.

00:50:05.650 - 00:50:29.020

He takes all the gaff from the boys in good spirit and makes a friend of every athlete he trains. It is with sincere regret on the part of many students that they see Jack leave. It is not yet known where he plans to go from here." That's the document I wanted to talk about, Dr.

00:50:29.020 - 00:50:53.330

Byrd, and maybe you can see why it caught my eye. It's high drama, for one. It is. There's kind of a cliffhanger at the end. And maybe it's not that much of a cliffhanger because I, I've already spoiled the end of

00:50:53.330 - 00:51:16.450

the story to some extent. We know that in the 1930s he was still associated with the Rice Institute. But at least at the end of this article, it sounds like that, that the career that he had begun in 1912, 1913, 1914, had come to an unceremonious end, because it says that

00:51:16.450 - 00:51:34.150

Shelton had resigned his position from the institute. So I find that very interesting. Another thing that strikes me here, too, given what we were saying earlier about the various ways that we've seen Shelton referred to over the years in the Campanile,

00:51:34.720 - 00:51:54.180

he's referred to as Dr. Jack Shelton, and of course, we saw in one of the editorials upon his death and in the 1933 article, he was referred to with the N-word as a part of the title that students used to refer to, to Shelton.

00:51:54.180 - 00:52:19.120

Here he's, he's referred to as "Trainer Jack." So it kind of raises a question in my mind that might be worth pursuing, when did ways of referring to Shelton take a turn in the direction of this, this more disparaging title? I don't think we could say that because Jack was referred to here as a trainer, that that

00:52:19.120 - 00:52:43.360

indicates there was a lack of racial prejudice or stereotyping of him at this moment, because, I kind of skipped past this part as I was reading, but it mentions that Shelton was the first president of three successive freshman classes. And, you know, somebody who's reading that for the first time might wonder how Shelton,

00:52:43.360 - 00:53:06.580

a black man, could have been a member of the freshman class. Well, it turns out he was not a member of the freshman class, but in the Orientation Week-like hazing activities that sophomores often put the Rice freshmen, or "slimes," as they were known at the time through in this period, they often had the freshman class

00:53:06.580 - 00:53:29.110

elect class officers, and the sophomores would present to them a slate of officers to vote for, not telling them who the people were, and they would trick the freshmen to vote for Jack Shelton as their president. And one of the other officers that they often elected was Miss Sally Port.

00:53:29.880 - 00:53:43.290

You get it, Miss Sally Port? And then the freshmen would, would, according to the Thresher stories, not know what was going on, and then it was a big laugh that, that Jack Shelton was elected as president of the freshman class.

00:53:43.290 - 00:54:06.780

So I think that gives you an idea of the way that Shelton, as appreciated as he may have been, although we might want to put a question around that, by some of the students who remembered him after his death in 1937, he also became the punchline of a joke even in these years. And yet the title that's used to refer to him is different and worth,

00:54:06.900 - 00:54:24.690

worth thinking about and maybe trying to piece together a narrative around. But since we left it on a cliffhanger and we're running out of time, let me at least tell you another article that interested me from just a few weeks after this one in the Rice Thresher that says that Shelton was leaving the institute.

00:54:24.690 - 00:54:47.480

We find another article in, in the Thresher, on January 28th, 1921. It's right underneath an announcement, by the way, of a visit by Rabindranath Tagore to speak in Houston, so that makes me want to ask a whole bunch of questions, just like we wanted to learn about Josh White in your document.

00:54:48.890 - 00:55:14.660

But I wanna zoom in here to the end of the story about Shelton's retirement and read to you a brief article that appears around the same place. I think it's around the fold, below the fold in this case, but right above the, the calendar on the front page of the Rice Thresher, it says, "Jack Shelton, for years

00:55:14.750 - 00:55:42.400

Rice's negro rubber and trainer for athletes, and who resigned his position just after the holidays, is back in the employ of the institute. His difficulties were settled satisfactorily to all parties concerned. He will serve only as the official rubber and field man now, other help having been

00:55:42.400 - 00:56:05.100

secured to assist in the gymnasium." What do you make, what do you make of that? Does that raise any questions for you? I know it raises some questions for me. Raises a few for me, right, so one is, I'm about to go far

00:56:05.100 - 00:56:23.190

afield, but. Do it, do it! So one is, right, we have some type of labor dispute where his other duties as assigned are perhaps a bit overbearing.

00:56:23.610 - 00:56:48.480

But then I also have questions about whether there's something, I would want to raise questions about whether there's something in particular about working in the gym that is problematic. And when I, when you, in the article before, where you're, you're when you raise the question or juxtaposing the different ideas that are floating around

00:56:48.480 - 00:57:13.920

about Jack Shelton, in the ways in which students see themselves as appreciating him, but, but also the ways in which even in that article, there's an understanding or there's an expression about potential mistreatment of him. And so there's this area about, "takes all the guff," right, there's that, that phrase,

00:57:13.920 - 00:57:39.030

"takes all the guff in good humor," that, that raises the question of me, so once you tell me someone did do something, I can't help but consider whether they did it, right. And so what what is less questionable for me is that there was guff. What, what is more, what is a question is how he took it, and whether there was a place

00:57:39.030 - 00:58:05.430

where there was more guff than, than less. And your, your framing of him in a kind of domestic space where you raise the issue of the ways that his work may have parallel to mammy figure raises the question for me about the different difficulties of domestic space that, that black women navigated, and whether

00:58:05.700 - 00:58:31.190

the gymnasium presents itself as a kind of parallel domestic space, not just one of overwork, but also maybe one of different and peculiar, particular types of challenges. Now that's a great idea. And it kind of connects to the, the discussions we were having earlier about integration and, and different kinds of integration, and what were

00:58:31.190 - 00:58:48.440

the boundaries, not only for Shelton, but for a lot of these other trainers at other schools as well, that they crossed only at their peril or perhaps that they found to be less tolerable. Certainly not that any of the situations they worked in were tolerable.

00:58:49.320 - 00:59:14.630

You know, I think one of the challenges, just like we had with, with Jenny Petit, with Jack Shelton, is trying to get through the documentary record that we have, which is obviously told to us from one perspective, primarily that of students who are writing in the Rice Thresher or perhaps later white eulogists who were remembering these figures,

00:59:15.170 - 00:59:32.810

and how do we, how can we get through that perspective to the perspective of Shelton himself, if we can? That's, that's something that I have on my mind as I look at these two articles, and one reason they caught my attention in particular, as opposed to some of the other

00:59:32.810 - 00:59:49.670

better known descriptions of him, is the fact that his, his resignation is presented here as something that, that he himself initiated. I mean, I think we have to bracket that and kind of ask some critical questions about that, too, just to see exactly what happened there.

00:59:49.850 - 01:00:14.120

But the fact that there is this kind of dispute and, and maybe some preferences on Shelton's part being expressed, that's interesting, and it's interesting that it was resolved. Whether it was resolved to his satisfaction, or how it was resolved, or the reasons, the impetus behind it needing to be resolved, those are all questions that I

01:00:14.120 - 01:00:37.550

don't think these two articles answer, but they're the kinds of things that would be a part of any narrative that we would want to write about the history of black staff working at, at the university, if we can, and I want to hasten to add, if we can even say with confidence that Shelton was a permanent member of the staff at the Rice

01:00:37.550 - 01:01:00.380

Institute. That's a question that that bears some additional research too, to figure out how he was paid, how often he was paid, what he was paid, and for what kinds of duties, and did that work sometimes expand in particular for him, in ways that might not have been true of other employees of the institute, to include a lot of things that

01:01:00.380 - 01:01:22.400

were not part of the original agreement or the original understanding of what the job would be? Is that part of what's what's happening here with Shelton? Great beginnings to piecing together a narrative. You may have to use that phrase at the start of every show from here on.

01:01:23.510 - 01:01:42.730

Well, that can be, that can be our tagline from, from now on. We certainly appreciate all of you being in the audience with us, working alongside us. We hope that you'll share any questions that you have with us at our email or visit our website, taskforce.rice.edu, to find podcast episodes.

01:01:42.730 - 01:01:57.740

The podcast is really taking off, Dr. Byrd. We've got three episodes I think released so far already this semester, if I'm not counting wrong. So if you haven't caught up with some of those podcasts, I really encourage you to do

01:01:57.740 - 01:02:18.170

so. Even if you were here at the original doc talk, there's a lot of value added, a lot of value added, by the conversations we have at the end of those episodes with Kate Coley, reflecting back sometimes many months later on the original conversation. And so I want to encourage everyone to head to taskforce.rice.edu and see what you can

01:02:18.170 - 01:02:22.280

find there. Thanks again for, for being with us, and hope everyone has a great weekend.