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Hey, Dr. Byrd. How's it going? I'm doing well, prof. How are you feeling? Feeling ready for the fall recess coming up Monday, Tuesday.

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It always seems, It always seems to come just when it's needed. Yeah. And I, you know what, if they wanted to put another one someplace pretty close to it, I would call that just as it's needed too. You wouldn't object?

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Would not object. Would appreciate it very much. So you're telling me that your, your provostial duties don't give you the power to make something like that happen, I mean...?

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No, my, my particular provostial duties don't come with a great deal of power. Well, we can, we can, we can hope that the recess that we do have will at least be restorative for our colleagues and our students. I know it's been a...

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The students need it. I'm excited about the students getting some time off. Definitely. Well, we wanna welcome those who are joining us today. My name is Caleb McDaniel.

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I'm the chair of the history department here at Rice University and co-chair of the Task Force on Slavery, Segregation, and Racial Injustice, and we meet on this webinar every Friday at 12 central for doc talks, and we're so glad that you're here with us. This is an opportunity for Dr.

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Byrd and myself as co-chairs of the task force to talk through some of the sources that we're examining as part of the research of the task force, and this is very much a work in progress webinar. We like to open the, pull back the curtain a little bit and let you see how historians

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work with documents and set them in context. I have to say I'm still buzzing a little bit from our wonderful task force event last night. What did you think of our panel on, on black staff at Rice? I thought it was phenomenal.

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We've done some really good programming with the task force, and I want to give our working group that concentrates on programming a lot of credit. And last night they put together another marvelous panel on black staff at the university. And I agree wholeheartedly.

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It was an education and an inspiration. Absolutely. I learned a lot and it gave us a lot to think about as we look forward to making Rice even better. I'm trying on my calendar, I should have had this at my fingertips to remind our listeners

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of our next task force event, and I'm having trouble though. November, November 5th. November 5th, yeah. So put that on your calendar.

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Davarian Baldwin. Put that on your calendar for sure. November 5th at 6 P.M. central Friday night, we're gonna have historian Davarian Baldwin speaking with us

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about his work on the history of higher education in cities and their impact on urban development. He's also gonna be talking about how the, the, what he calls in his, his lecture title, the, the racial reckoning of the last year, impacts universities and can be impacted by universities.

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So we're really looking forward to having him in conversation with Bill Fulton from the Kinder Institute. I think I have that right. Yes.

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And it will be moderated as well by our colleague and fellow task force member, Professor Ruth Lopez Turley from the sociology department. So I don't think you wanna miss that event. Be sure and get that on your calendar and be on the lookout for the Zoom information about

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it as it becomes available. Yeah. It's, it's two, two major events this semester in addition to the doc talks, but, and these, both of these events are just going to be, you don't wanna, if you missed, if you missed last night, don't, don't miss this one in November, it will be just as

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promising. Absolutely. And thanks for coming along to the doc talks as well. And I guess we should just dive right in and talk about some docs. Let's do.

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So the doc that I wanted to talk about, or docs, I guess I should say, comes from 1957, and we were talking on one of our recent webinars, it may even have been last week, losing track of time, we were talking a little bit about student opinion and how students at Rice felt about the issue of integration, both at Rice and also at other

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Texas schools. So we were talking on a recent doc talk about student leaders traveling to UT Austin, for example, to talk about the issue of desegregation with students at UT. And the documents that I wanted to talk about today sort of continue in that vein,

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and I wanna zero in on an event that happened this week in 1957, on October 5th, 1957. But before we get to that particular event, I thought that I would set the stage a little bit, as historians do, by situating us within this calendar year of 1957. So what we're gonna talk about is towards the end of that year, but I also wanted to

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turn back the clock a little bit from October to the spring semester of that year, 1957, the Rice Thresher reported on its very front page about a poll that had been conducted on campus on the question of integration. Let me see if I can zoom in a little bit so we can look at these numbers in a little bit

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greater detail. This was a poll that was sponsored by the Rice Thresher and the Forum Committee. We've, we've talked about the Rice Forum a little bit before, and we'll mention them again in a moment.

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It was an organization on campus that encouraged debate and discussion about policy issues and current events, usually with sides being taken and debate of the issues. And so it's not surprising that the Forum Committee would join together with the Thresher to sponsor a poll for the purpose of gauging campus opinion on the subject,

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although the Thresher made very clear that it would have no effect on future Rice policy, this was just an opinion poll, and it was broken down into three different parts. Students and some faculty voted on the questions of bus integration, key issue in the civil rights movement; public school integration; and then finally, Rice

00:07:37.850 - 00:08:06.110

integration. And the results showed in March 1957 that a very large majority favored the integration of the buses almost immediately. So if you, if you look just at that question, then 46.6%, nearly half, favored immediate integration, and then another 32% favored eventual integration.

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So if we put those two together, there seems to be a majority in favor of bus integration. But on the question of the integration of the Rice Institute, there was a slightly smaller majority in favor of integration, and I think that here it's interesting that only 32.7% of those who were polled favored immediate integration.

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Now, if you were to add to that, those who favored eventual integration, then, as the Thresher reports here, you get a total of 61.4% favored integration at some point, but again, thirty, about a third, were ready right then in March 1957 for integration. There were others who were a little bit more cautious, but nonetheless a majority.

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Now, that does mean that, as the Thresher points out here, a cautious 37.7% voted, "not at all," no integration at Rice. So that means that close to 200 voters, mostly students, but also a few faculty, were voting against integration at Rice at any time, 37.7%.

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So that's March of 1957. We're kind of getting a sense of the fact that this is a question that's coming up on campus, and it's coming up partly because of changes that are happening in the nation. It was in this year that Rice started to realize that they were gonna have a problem

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getting federal grants and federal funding because of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's executive orders enforcing nondiscrimination in federal contracts. And so that's something that the administration was starting to think about in 1957, and it's clearly an issue on students' minds, as we can see from, from this poll as

00:10:09.650 - 00:10:31.550

well. But it does tell us that there's still a pretty strong group at Rice that's opposed to integration, or at least very cautious, and sort of open to it eventually, but not, not very soon, and certainly not immediately. And I think you can see that too when we speed ahead a little bit to November of 1957.

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So this is after the event we're gonna talk about, and it features the Forum again. You can see Friday, November 1st, 1957, the "first Forum airs student views in a lively debate." There was a lively debate. And what was the Forum debating?

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Well, the question was integration. Segregation and integration. And as the Thresher reported in its first line, "'Whose side is God on?' was one of the questions raised in this informal debate." And we learn in this spirited discussion,

00:11:09.640 - 00:11:26.590

which was never settled, but took place in the lecture lounge, not sure where that was on campus, it'd be interesting to set the stage a little bit and figure out where that might have been. Two teams of students, two pairs of students representing both sides of this question had a public debate.

00:11:27.010 - 00:11:48.190

So the integrationist argument was presented by Harrison Wagner and Elmo Johnson. And then on the other side, arguing in favor of segregation, were two other students, Gerald Dansby and Gary Canion. And we find out in this debate some of the arguments that each side made.

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Wagner and Johnson talked about the fact that legally, especially in light of the Brown v. Board decision of the Supreme Court, the, the decisions that were being made by the federal government, that it was, it was more a matter of time rather than a question of whether integration would occur.

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And there were arguments being made about why it was better to do it sooner rather than later across society, because it would be, it would be better for all involved, according to the students on the affirmative side, to begin now. But then there were also arguments on the other side.

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"Gerald Dansby, speaking for segregation," the Thresher said, "said that contrary to popular beliefs, integration was not a cure-all." That "segregation had something to offer both races." And you can kind of sense with that allusion to popular beliefs that Dansby is aware that he's having to argue against the kind of rising tide of sentiment

00:12:56.440 - 00:13:18.130

that's more open to integration. You can see rhetorically that Gary Canion, the other segregation speaker, also "added that mutual respect between races is needed." He was, he was willing to grant that, mutual respect was important, but "that respect does not imply social mixing

00:13:18.580 - 00:13:54.000

and miscegenation." We've talked about those kinds of phrases before on the doc talk. I, I think it's, it's difficult, I know with with our students sometimes, to, to, to bring to mind the ways in which that language could and was meant to inflame. It sometimes falls too flatly on, on modern ears.

00:13:55.500 - 00:14:18.540

Right. The idea of social equality as opposed to political or civil equality. I mean, here it is in 1957, we saw it in the 1920s in the pre-law debate that was held, a kind of similar sort of debate to this one, earlier in the Rice Institute's history, that that was, that was the, the issue that was raised by defenders of segregation, to, to

00:14:18.540 - 00:14:42.810

argue that, that segregation should be preserved. So these are kind of two bookends that I wanted to show you from 1957 to set the stage and the context for the event I really wanted to, to talk about, which occurred a few weeks before this Forum that we were just discussing on October 5th, 1957.

00:14:43.410 - 00:15:05.350

So that means that this was in the fall semester, and one thing that we know about the fall semester at Rice is the fall means football. It's football season. And on October 5th, Rice had an important non-conference game

00:15:05.860 - 00:15:25.270

that they were playing before the main games in the Southwest Conference began, against Stanford University. So Stanford University had, the team had traveled to, had traveled to Rice and played the Owls. The Owls won handily.

00:15:26.530 - 00:15:46.390

But something happened at the game that, that prompted a letter to the editor in the next issue of the Rice Thresher, which is the one that we're looking at here, October 11th, 1957. And let me just scroll through to see if I can find the page.

00:15:51.700 - 00:16:13.750

Here we go. So this is on page four, just under the Peanuts comic, which is up here in the upper right hand corner. It looks like a Linus and Lucy edition. At the bottom of the page, we find a letter to the editor with a headline that says,

00:16:14.290 - 00:16:37.740

"Rebel Flag Noted with Disfavor." I'm just gonna read a little bit from this letter to the editor. It says, "To the Editor: At last Saturday's football game, a large Confederate flag was hung conspicuously on the front of the Rice Student Section throughout the game. It looked very official.

00:16:38.690 - 00:16:55.940

The players on the field could not help seeing it all evening, nor could the 25,000 spectators on the opposite side of the field. Now," the writer says, "both my grandparents fought for the Confederacy and I myself am very proud of being a Southerner.

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But today that flag has become the symbol of racism, intolerance, sectionalism, and tacit encouragement of lawlessness. Regretfully..." Sorry, sorry, prof, I've gotta, I've gotta, I've gotta...

00:17:11.600 - 00:17:27.440

Yes, yes, please, jump in. Yeah. I've gotta jump in to make sure I heard you right. And that's, and I need to clarify some things. So this, this opinion on, on the Confederate flag is, is being spoken by a person in

00:17:27.440 - 00:17:46.900

1957. 1957. That's right. That's right. And it turns out, not only was it being spoken by a person in 1957, it was being spoken by an alumnus of Rice, we find out if we keep going

00:17:49.170 - 00:18:00.980

to the continuation of the letter. Where is it? Page eight. Page eight, page eight.

00:18:03.770 - 00:18:27.300

We find out it was from an alumnus of Rice writing to the Thresher. And interestingly to me, the alumnus is unnamed. The name was withheld by request. But nonetheless, this alumnus wanted to write into the Thresher and say it was "bad

00:18:27.300 - 00:18:52.220

taste," as it says here on the second page of the letter, "to flaunt this point of view, as represented by the Confederate flag, in the faces of guests in the Rice stands. [...] But worst of all, the flag marked Rice students as being tacit supporters of racism, intolerance, sectionalism, and lawlessness.

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Just when Rice is achieving a national, and even international, reputation, this evidence of narrow-mindedness is most unfortunate. The Confederate flag has no place in the same stadium with the flag of the United States, and it certainly has no place at a university hoping to be something else

00:19:11.310 - 00:19:30.570

besides another little two-bit country school filled with local prejudices." Okay. Now, one of the things that's interesting here that I've kind of learned to notice from some of our earlier doc talks as well is, when we talked about the Pre-Law Society, we didn't just talk about what the lawyers were saying at that banquet, or the students were

00:19:30.570 - 00:19:48.840

saying at that banquet. But we also asked who else was in, in the room, including the, the black waiters who were lining the walls and listening in, and that's something that is interesting, that this alumnus also notices and points out that seeing this flag would have been a

00:19:48.840 - 00:20:12.330

deliberate insult to, quote, "the colored boys playing on Stanford's team." So the alum kind of points out that this was pretty poor sportsmanship, at the very least, to be displaying this Confederate flag when, when Rice was playing an integrated football team in 1957 on their home field.

00:20:12.340 - 00:20:26.560

So that's how we learn about this incident that happened on October 5th at the Rice-Stanford game. One interesting question for me as a historian is to wonder, is there a visual piece of evidence of this event?

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Is there a photograph that might exist somewhere that would show how prominently displayed the flag was? We can tell from the letter writer, it sounds like it was pretty prominent, and it was hanging from the student center.

00:20:39.100 - 00:20:52.120

In fact, it looked kind of official, and it would be interesting to know what it looked like, if there was a photograph. We don't, we don't have that, at least as far as I know yet, but what we do have were some responses to this letter.

00:20:53.240 - 00:21:11.300

So this was in October 11th's issue. The alumnus wrote in, and if we scroll ahead to the next week's issue, so October 18th, 1957, one of the things we learned on the front page is that Ronald Reagan came to Hanszen as a dinner guest to give a talk.

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But we're just gonna move past that for the moment to find some of the responses to this, to this letter. And if we go down to page four again under the Peanuts comic, this time we've got a Linus and Charlie comic in, comic in the upper right-hand corner.

00:21:35.780 - 00:22:03.780

Now we've got a letter with a different headline that says, "Rebel Flag Is Stoutly Defended." And this letter, unlike the previous one, is signed, and it's also from an alumnus who addresses this earlier alumnus with the epithet "scalawag." "Your scalawag, your contemptible attack on the Confederate flag dishonored none but

00:22:03.780 - 00:22:27.000

yourself. You revealed only the depth to which you have sunk when you called it a symbol of racism, intolerance, sectionalism, and tacit encouragement of lawlessness." And basically, he goes on to say that this alum is forsaking the proud Southern heritage of states' rights, "which alone protects the dignity of the individual against the tyranny

00:22:27.030 - 00:22:49.730

of an all-powerful, centralized socialism." And goes on to say, you have the right to think what you want about the Confederate flag, but don't impose it on the rest of us. You've basically shamed yourself. And it's signed, Mildred McCall Fike, Class of 1946.

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And beyond that, there's another letter. There's a letter from two freshmen students who also signed their name, who also back the flag, but for a slightly different reason, if we read their response, even though the headline says, "Frosh Support Confederacy.

00:23:09.740 - 00:23:25.940

Let's get a little taste of their response. Says, in, "In last week's Thresher, there appeared a letter written by an alumnus complaining about the display of a Confederate flag at the Rice-Stanford game. The author of this letter states that the flaunting of this flag marks Rice students as

00:23:25.940 - 00:23:41.840

being narrow-minded supporters of racism, intolerance, sectionalism, and lawlessness." I feel like we all almost need an acronym for that phrase. It's popping up in a lot of these letters. But the students say, "Nothing could be farther from the truth.

00:23:42.610 - 00:24:11.220

To the typical Rice student, the Confederate flag is one thing: a symbol of hellraising." So basically they go on to say that, you know, all that this flag meant, it didn't, it didn't convey racism or intolerance, it was just a kind of a, to rally the team, it was about raising hell, kind of having good fun, and anybody who can't see that, "is

00:24:11.220 - 00:24:34.530

ridiculous," as they say, "and reflects a type of narrow minded asininity," because this "idea of the flag symbolism is not shared by the majority of, of Rice graduates." And as if to prove their case, they add a little postscript here where they say, they seem like they kind of know who hung the flag, because they, they say, "It

00:24:34.530 - 00:24:53.670

might be of interest to a certain alumnus to know that among the Confederate flag supporters at the game were a boy from Oklahoma, one from Nevada, one from Colorado, one from New York, and only one 'Johnny Reb.'" Okay. That's the argument of the two freshmen students.

00:24:54.540 - 00:25:16.400

Their names are listed here as Leslie Arnold and Tom Oliver. Now, so far, we've heard from alumni, we've heard from students. There's just one more issue that I wanted to show you from the next week, October 25th. What group have we not heard from yet in this exchange?

00:25:16.400 - 00:25:30.280

We've heard from the frosh, but we have not heard from... The faculty. The profs, that's right. But the next week, we do hear from a professor about this incident, and it's on

00:25:30.280 - 00:25:55.150

page four, this time next to the Peanuts comic, with the headline "Prof Views Flag with Cool Reason." We're gonna get past the passions here and we're gonna just get to a reasoned response, says the Thresher. And this is from John E Parish of the English department.

00:25:56.600 - 00:26:17.700

And basically Professor Parish responds mostly to the two freshmen and Mrs. Fike who had written in to defend the flag. And he points out that he, he has a kind of, he's willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the students, he's a, he's a good professor.

00:26:18.390 - 00:26:37.280

He's trying to teach these freshmen. So he says, you know, maybe "Mr. Oliver and Mr. Arnold are sincere, and probably correct in stating that the typical Rice student of 1957 would not intentionally use this flag to represent anything more than

00:26:37.280 - 00:27:01.500

innocent high spirits." But he says, "evidence is now in" that the impact, nonetheless, regardless of what they intended, was that to other people in the stadium, the display of that flag meant something very, very different. And he points not only to the, the first alumnus who wrote, but also to Mrs.

00:27:01.500 - 00:27:24.200

Fike. Clearly to her, "the Confederate flag is a symbol not of collegiate prankishness, but of what she considers courageous Southern opposition to" tyranny and socialism. And so, "if Rice students want to fly the Confederate flag," Professor Parish says, "they must risk its being misinterpreted by large numbers of people at

00:27:24.200 - 00:27:44.540

every game. They may receive congratulations which they do not welcome and condemnations which they do not deserve." So there's the exchange. And I guess the question that I think is worth thinking about here is, in this, what

00:27:44.540 - 00:28:09.530

does, what do these articles tell us about the state of opinion in 1957? And I guess we could also talk a little bit about, it's not as though this is an ancient history lesson, because here today in 2021 and 2020, of course, we still are in some places talking about the Confederate flag and Confederate monuments and Confederate

00:28:09.530 - 00:28:30.140

statues. So it's interesting to go back, as you kind of paused as we were looking at it too, to go back and find in 1957 that the debate was raging then too. And I'm kind of curious to know what you make of these exchanges and, and the arguments that were being made on each side.

00:28:35.990 - 00:29:03.290

Muted. And I think this is just a remarkable exchange, and I'm glad that it carried as many issues as it did. I'm gonna start at the end with some of my responses with, with Professor Parish, who I think is associated with Wiess College.

00:29:03.830 - 00:29:40.250

And as a former Magister of Wiess, I need to, I need to recognize that. But I wanna start with the kind of gentleness with which the students are, are treated. Right, we do have this debate where the lines are clear, and I'm taken with the, with the, with the relative gentleness with which Professor Parish handles the, the

00:29:40.250 - 00:30:07.550

students. He, and I don't wanna say assumed, because I can't, I can't get in his mind, but he at least offers them a kind of innocence that I think is, is of course a good way to start, right. But, but also, given that this is 1957, and we are in the aftermath of Brown, and given

00:30:07.550 - 00:30:36.500

the information that, that, that you presented on what the talk of the campus is in some ways, I think it would, it would also be useful to, to think about what a, what a quite different approach might have been to take with the students that was, that was less innocent, and that assumed that they were more knowledgeable about these

00:30:36.500 - 00:31:07.580

things than Professor Parish lets on, and that, and that they, and that they let on. And so part of this speaks to me about the larger condition of a, of a university campus, and what a gentle place it can be around these issues that everyone beyond the campus doesn't necessarily have the luxury of of approaching with that type of

00:31:07.580 - 00:31:27.660

innocence or gentleness. I think that's a, that's a great point, because he does kind of offer them the benefit of the doubt, but at the same time, he, as a professor would, frames the question in a slightly different way and, and teaches them something about the context in which

00:31:27.660 - 00:31:49.820

this is taking place. I think, even though the arguments on each side of this debate sound very familiar to us, I mean, they can almost be ripped from the pages of newspapers in very recent years, there are also aspects of, of this moment that, that were different from the moment

00:31:49.820 - 00:32:08.450

that we're in now, and some questions that are on the table now for our society clearly weren't yet on the minds of students in this particular example. And I wanna go back to the students' letter to make that point. One of the arguments that they make, a kind of rhetorical question that they ask is,

00:32:10.280 - 00:32:30.410

well, if the Confederate flag is so bad, then, then how come there are schools and colleges that actually have mascots associated with the Confederacy? And they're the Fighting Rebels of different schools. They say, "we have yet to hear," the students say, "of any of the high schools or

00:32:30.410 - 00:32:51.110

colleges who have adopted the flag of the Confederacy as the symbol of their school being accused of being supporters of" RSNIL, "racism, sectionalism, narrow-mindedness, intolerance, or lawlessness." And it's true that that was an issue that, well, who had they not heard that from?

00:32:52.760 - 00:33:06.470

So that, that becomes a, a big question. Who had, who had they been talking to, where they hadn't heard that? They're obviously in a kind of a bubble at an institution where they wouldn't have heard those kind of critiques.

00:33:06.560 - 00:33:27.250

Although it is kind of interesting that Stanford at the time, the mascot of the football team at Stanford was not the Cardinals as we know them today, but the Stanford Indians. And in fact, the front page, I don't know if you noticed it when we were clicking through

00:33:27.250 - 00:33:53.080

before, the front page of that particular issue, the one right after the game, showed a, a student standing and wearing a Native American headdress in a photo on the front page representing Stanford. So, you know, just kind of a reminder that this is a different moment in time in 1957.

00:33:53.320 - 00:34:08.930

But at the same time, there were things about that moment in 1957 that Professor Parish was really quick to point out, even though in this gentle way, this kind of pedagogically, I think, complex way. You mentioned Brown v.

00:34:08.930 - 00:34:33.490

Board, but one of the things that Professor Parish points out is the recent actions of Governor Faubus of Arkansas. And he says the unnamed alumnus whose letter you published two weeks ago feared that the flag would be interpreted by many who saw it as proof that Rice students side with

00:34:33.490 - 00:34:47.020

Governor Faubus of Arkansas and against the federal government on the question of integration in the public schools. And his prediction is confirmed by the letter from Mrs. Fike, another Rice graduate.

00:34:47.350 - 00:35:12.250

And that's something that I kind of skipped over in my survey of the context of 1957, because very recently before this game, remember, the game was, was played on October 5th of 1957. It was only a little more than a week before that, on September 23rd, 1957, that the

00:35:12.250 - 00:35:34.510

famous Little Rock Nine integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, and of course, probably our listeners would be familiar with the images from September of 1957 around Central High School of African American students attempting to enter the school, being blocked at the schoolhouse door by Governor Faubus, an

00:35:34.510 - 00:35:53.890

arch-segregationist, of troops being brought in first by Governor Faubus to try to prevent the integration of the school, and then finally the National Guard arriving to ensure that, that these nine students could attend the school. This is only days before this game.

00:35:54.160 - 00:36:18.130

And so it does kind of raise the question that you were raising, Dr. Byrd, of, were the students really that uncertain of what this flag would mean in that immediate context, especially since the flag played a prominent role around Central High School in the protests and the kind of pitched battles that broke out in the weeks

00:36:18.130 - 00:36:39.130

before this game over the Little Rock Nine. And this is an example of a photograph taken outside Central High School in Little Rock, where you can see on the screen, a student, we can presume, holding up a Confederate flag, or maybe it's a parent holding up a Confederate flag, to oppose the integration

00:36:39.310 - 00:36:56.230

of the Central High School. So I think what Professor Parish did so effectively was, gently and with some benefit of the doubt, set this in a different context, and did what I think good historians would have to do too, if we were to ask the question of what is the, what does the

00:36:56.230 - 00:37:14.500

Confederate flag mean, what does that symbolism convey? Is it, as Mrs. Fike said, just a states' rights and the, the rights of the individual against the federal government, or is it, as the unnamed alumnus said, a symbol of racism and

00:37:14.500 - 00:37:37.060

intolerance and sectionalism? As historians, the meaning of a symbol has to come partly from the context in which it's used, right, and when you place the Confederate flag squarely in its many contexts, whether that's in the 1860s or in the 1950s and 1960s, that context, I think,

00:37:37.060 - 00:38:00.430

Professor Parish knew, makes really clear what the message being conveyed by its display would have been. Well, and I guess my only, this, this is, I don't know that this is a disagreement, but I think where I'm turning around Professor Parish's teaching work, I would raise the

00:38:00.430 - 00:38:19.030

question, does he indeed make it clear enough? And that, I'm not, I'm not certain of. I'm not certain that he, that he makes it clear enough for them. I, he leaves them a lot of room, I think.

00:38:19.030 - 00:38:40.720

He basically says, you don't want to be misunderstood, you know, and maybe you don't intend the flag to have this meaning, but some people are gonna see it that way, and so you might want to think about that. But you're right, he doesn't explicitly say, as I think we might see from some faculty in

00:38:40.720 - 00:39:00.700

later exchanges in the pages of the Thresher, it'd be interesting to compare this letter with Professor Galambos's letter that I think we were talking about a couple of weeks ago, the faculty sound-off in the Rice Thresher. You could see maybe some different approaches to teaching on this question.

00:39:02.300 - 00:39:17.210

Alright. Well, thank you for that work with Rice, Stanford, who won the game, by the way? Rice won. Rice won the game. Rice won the game. Alright. Go Owls.

00:39:17.390 - 00:39:44.270

Well, I have a document. I am, I'm going back old school today, Professor McDaniel, I only have a single document, which rarely happens in the, in the doc talk, and it's a document that I know a little about, but that is mostly full of questions for me.

00:39:45.110 - 00:40:02.930

And I want to just describe it and go over it for a second now. Can you just see the document, or are you seeing my whole messed up screen? I'm seeing your whole screen. I don't know if I'd call it messed up, but I am seeing your...

00:40:02.930 - 00:40:17.180

Oh, no, well, I have, I have this great... It's a nice background. I have a, I have a nice background, but it's tidied up, so I'll stay on here. Maybe someone will wanna purchase this artwork later and I can give some advice.

00:40:17.180 - 00:40:43.610

So, so I picked up an envelope from someone this week that had some Rice materials in it. And among those materials was this emergency meeting agenda that I'm showing now. And so it's a single document, it's been typed, we're in the age of word processing, I think is pretty clear.

00:40:43.610 - 00:41:05.300

This isn't typed, this looks to have come out of a laser printer. And, and it's, it's got two broad categories, in addition to being an emergency meeting agenda. The agenda is divided into two parts: one says issues, and the other says proposals.

00:41:05.300 - 00:41:29.330

And in a, in a kind of classic outline fashion, the issues are then run down with Roman numerals and subpoints. And then, and there are two issues, one retainment, and one is recruitment. And then there are a number of proposals that have, seven, go down to Roman numeral

00:41:29.330 - 00:41:47.840

seven, underneath. And so I'll run through the issues and then kind of back out and figure out if we can place and see what we can make of this document. But as I said, it's an emergency meeting, and there are two issues under consideration.

00:41:47.840 - 00:42:10.910

The first is retainment, and the second is recruitment. And under retainment are the following points: "Not enough support from faculty and administration." That's A. And then B, "not enough diversity." And then there's some details under B: "Need someone

00:42:10.910 - 00:42:33.530

who has been there and done it (upperclassmen, graduate, faculty)," and "no diversity within minority groups," it reads . And C under retainment, "feeling that we are not wanted." And then some subpoints under there, "admissions meeting; athletes; ignorance of issues confronting black

00:42:33.530 - 00:42:58.230

students, feel disregarded; treatment by the Thresher-slash-Trasher." And then the second, the second Roman numeral on the issues is recruitment, and so these are interestingly placed, right, retainment, retaining students led, and then recruitment is following up.

00:42:58.230 - 00:43:28.460

And under recruitment, "difficult to get students here when there are no retainment efforts," and B, "general attitude of present and former black and Hispanic students toward Rice." So what we have I think fallen into here, doc, is, is an attempt to solve a problem around the recruitment of black and Latinx students at

00:43:28.460 - 00:43:53.090

the university at, at a critical moment in time, right. It says "Emergency Meeting Agenda." And then there are a couple of proposals that are listed out. And so part of my problem, and some of this problem is manufactured, right, but some of it is real, is, what is this about?

00:43:54.080 - 00:44:16.420

Who is meeting? Who has been called to this emergency meeting and why? So for some reason, the recruitment of black and Latinx students at the university has reached a level where an emergency meeting has been called and, and the issues have been

00:44:16.420 - 00:44:45.730

framed, as I just outlined, and then a run of proposals has been, has been given, and I'll run through the proposals quickly. Proposal one is "Black and Hispanic interest advisors." Proposal two, "more financial support," and the financial support is around cultural groups on campus, basically.

00:44:45.820 - 00:45:16.020

Number three says, "associate provost." Number four, "curriculum." Number five, "OMA," comma, "affirmative action." Six more faculty members and seven admissions. For those of us who, there are people here, but sometimes it's become podcast, so we need to explain. Under proposals, all of the Roman numerals have been checked off except

00:45:16.020 - 00:45:32.760

for six, which says faculty members, and that, so I don't know if that was skipped at the meeting, or who knows what that means, but everything is... Still waiting to check that one off. Still waiting to, still waiting to check that one off.

00:45:32.760 - 00:45:51.900

And we'll, we'll, we'll return, we'll return to that one. So let's, let's, let's head to some of the questions about who's likely to be at this meeting and when it is. And I'll say that I know by context, because the folder I picked this, this material was

00:45:51.900 - 00:46:29.100

put in a folder that had a couple of Rice Threshers in it, had a photocopy of a, of a program from 1935, from May of 1935, from the Houston Negro Little Theater, a program from a play, a three-act play they had just put on called The Savage. And then also in this envelope was a report from a, a consulting firm

00:46:29.370 - 00:46:55.440

around public opinion about diversity, and how the public might likely respond to arguments about diversifying business and and diversifying higher education. And so this helps place this document, right, that, except for the 1935 piece, which is, which is kind of throwing us off, but I'll, I wanna take a two-minute detour into

00:46:55.440 - 00:47:22.530

the 1935 piece, which treats the Houston Negro Little Theater, because in that program, it's the last, it's the last night of their the last play of the season, and within that program, which is a small black theater company in Houston, operating in the mid 1930s with the support from, among other places, the Houston Public Library and the

00:47:22.530 - 00:47:48.040

Carnegie branch of the Negro Library, that, that one of their presentations for that year of 1935 was Eugene O'Neill's The Dreamy Kid, which... That's the one we just talked about, isn't it ? Yeah, which was, we treated, I believe, a 1923 rendition of that play that was put on

00:47:48.040 - 00:48:02.400

on on the Rice campus. So we may need to circle back to that, but, but I think that 1935 piece probably throws us off a bit on the kind of, the, the context of this material... Misfiled. Misfiled, perhaps, or...

00:48:03.310 - 00:48:12.880

Well... Maybe, maybe, maybe not. Maybe not. Yeah. I think we're gonna have to, we have to look into it a little, a little bit more.

00:48:12.880 - 00:48:43.120

But it's most like, 1996 makes good sense for this meeting, and those of us on the call who have been around for a while would know why in 1996 an emergency meeting might be called around black and Latinx recruitment at the, at the university, because it's the year that the Fifth Circuit hands down a decision for, in its domain, basically

00:48:43.390 - 00:49:09.190

outlined the use of recourse to race as a, as a factor in higher education in terms of admissions. And so this meeting looks to have been called by stakeholders at Rice to begin to think about ways to address this issue.

00:49:10.150 - 00:49:43.540

And I wanna pause there, because what, now having set that stage a bit, what I'd like to do now is is to look through some of these proposals and just do a little taking of stock, because these issues that are raised under recruitment and retainment are issues of long standing at, at universities since their since their desegregation.

00:49:43.540 - 00:50:12.710

And so one of the things that this document allows us to do is to see how policies develop, or begin to ask questions about how policies begins to, to develop and unfold at the university. So the first one is the need for interest advisors and calling for funds to be allotted

00:50:12.710 - 00:50:44.090

for an off campus person who would conduct sensitivity training for all faculty advisors. And so the the problem that's being spoken to here has something to do with academic advising and the socialization of black and Latinx students at the university and the role that faculty play in, in that work.

00:50:45.110 - 00:51:08.150

And then the third point, I'll skip the second one, which is more financial support. But then the third point is associate provost, which actually is the, is the proposal that has the most detail under it. A, status of the search committee; B, which part of his or her job is a priority?

00:51:08.540 - 00:51:29.900

C, title should include minority recruitment and retention. D, checks and balances system, which I don't understand, meets with students at least once a month, which helps me a little. So that's, that's seen as an important solution, or at least a way to address, and

00:51:29.900 - 00:51:53.180

so what we have, what we have stumbled upon here is the beginning of Dr. Roland Smith's position at the university, which we know coincides with the, with the Hopwood, the Hopwood ruling. And then six and seven, I want to--no, I'll run through five, six, and seven.

00:51:53.270 - 00:52:17.870

Five asks for more funding and staff for the Office of Multicultural Affairs, and one of the points under there says there's only one staff person for every hundred undergrads. I'm not sure what is meant by that, whether they are attending to student support staff in general at the university, because the OMA office certainly isn't that big at the,

00:52:17.900 - 00:52:37.400

at the time. And then six, the place that is unchecked, right, on the agenda says more faculty members. And then there just seems to be something of an idea listed there. "One faculty member of color every two years." I don't know if that's an idea, I

00:52:37.400 - 00:52:55.790

don't know if it's a criticism. The parenthetical remark seems to make it, seems to me that it's an idea. It's the beginning of an idea, because it says, "spread throughout the academic areas, i.e., math and science departments, etc." It seems to be the beginning of an idea.

00:52:57.620 - 00:53:24.290

And then the seventh proposal is broader scope, is admissions, and the second detail under that is asking for a broader scope in recruiting minority students, which would make sense in the aftermath of of of Hopwood . So, Professor McDaniel, the thing I think is, would be interesting to do with our audience,

00:53:24.290 - 00:53:55.400

and with you, if you want to play along, is to begin to think about what, what questions are raised for you in these proposals, but also, what would it, what would it look like to begin to take stock from 1996 to 2020, concerning how and whether these ideas were substantiated and how and whether they, They

00:53:55.400 - 00:54:15.280

bore fruit? It's a great question. I think it's, you know, we, we've seen before on some of our other doc talks, and of course, even in the last year or two, that there's lots of examples of documents like this in the archive or in the Thresher over time of

00:54:15.280 - 00:54:38.200

students and different stakeholders articulating a list of ideas, a list of needs, a list of demands of the university, and some of the same, as you pointed out, some of the same things recur in a lot of those, those lists. And so I think it does then raise a, one of the things it points out, kind of related to

00:54:38.200 - 00:55:03.500

our earlier conversation as well is, if we're, if we're not attentive to the history of those lists, we might think that some of these ideas are new or responding only to the current moment. And we might make that mistake with the critiques of Confederate monuments or Confederate flags in the present moment, for example, and say, well,

00:55:03.500 - 00:55:20.840

that's something that's just coming out of the politics of the moment. Well, no, as you pointed out, we can go back to 1957 and find, find people seeing even then what what the Confederate flag meant. And we can go back even further as well, and I think that's one of the things that make

00:55:20.840 - 00:55:43.700

documents like this so valuable too, is to show a continuity of concern for particular issues. And then it raises the question for me of, what, what are the obstacles that, that prevent some of those ideas from, from getting traction? And I know you skipped past it, but because you skipped past it, I want to go back to it.

00:55:43.970 - 00:56:02.310

The Roman numeral two. Which I thought was really interesting because it asked for more financial support, but also asks specifically for office space for BSA and HACER, which, that would, first of all, would help us kind of date this document.

00:56:03.210 - 00:56:17.940

It's BSA, not BSU. Yeah. And HACER is, is there, and so, since we don't have a date on it, we have to use those kind of internal clues along with the other things that were in the folder to figure out

00:56:17.940 - 00:56:42.000

the dating. But the interest in office space, space on campus, of course, remains of great concern to students in recent classes as well, partly to assist in recruitment and retention of our constituents, but as they point out here, also "to increase general cultural awareness of the Rice community." And what caught my eye that was interesting

00:56:42.000 - 00:57:04.980

here as a historian is the mention of a precedent for this NSBE office space in Abercrombie. I'm assuming that that's referring to the National Society of Black Engineers, and that, I wasn't aware until seeing this, maybe you were, of NSBE having office space.

00:57:05.860 - 00:57:30.400

In Abercrombie at this time. Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't, I forget three quarters of the things that I learned, but I don't know if I was ever aware of it or if I for, or if I forgot it. But it's, it's important, right, I, I agree with you that the ways that space continues,

00:57:30.400 - 00:57:58.300

right, there are space questions in the seventies, space questions in the nineties, space questions in the second decade of the 20th century. And, and even even though the grounds of the university have not remained static, right, in some ways, these issues have been tended to, right, the, the fact that issues around

00:57:58.300 - 00:58:15.090

space still arise, I think encourage us to look at, to reexamine how we're thinking about space. Are we thinking about it as expansively as we should? Are we thinking about it in all the ways that we should?

00:58:15.100 - 00:58:30.590

Yeah, and it sort of, it just makes me wonder and want to reconstruct, what were the arguments that were successful for NSBE, if arguments were being made, that BSA and HACER were having a harder time making? Yeah.

00:58:30.590 - 00:58:50.450

Why was, why was NSBE allotted office space, whereas BSA or HACER are saying that they needed to argue for that? I mean, it kind of, it recalls to mind the, the Thresher issues that we looked at about the blanket tax and the arguments that, that Black Student Association or Black Student

00:58:50.450 - 00:59:07.340

Union were having to make about the contributions to the campus as a whole that BSA events would make or that the space would provide. And you can see that here too, with the reference to the general cultural awareness of the Rice community.

00:59:08.600 - 00:59:30.110

But that's, that's something that caught my eye as well, is seeing if we can find out a little bit more about that history of NSBE and its space on campus. Yeah, yeah. I think that we need to track that, track the development of BSA and how

00:59:30.230 - 00:59:55.760

HACER office space, and maybe even tend to some about aspirations for the future. When you first said we skipped one, I thought maybe you were gonna go to curriculum. That was my hope and my prayer, but that's okay. One of the things, and I'll just, I'll take thirty seconds just to talk a bit about

00:59:55.760 - 01:00:21.800

curriculum, because what I, what I, what I find is interesting there is, there's a slightly different distribution system in place in the mid 1990s, especially for people who aren't in the humanities. And so in terms of folks who are getting distribution courses and distribution group

01:00:21.800 - 01:00:47.660

one, there are a set of courses that are, that folks who don't enter in the school of humanities are more or less steered into in order to get their humanities distribution. And it's the introduction to the humanities "constructing Western traditions," and we don't have time to go too far into it, but we wouldn't be surprised if we found

01:00:47.660 - 01:01:10.550

something of a kind of great Western canon approach. And so there's a, there's a tilting here for a part of our population that has less choice about the curriculum that they're choosing. There's, there seems to be some effort here to give these folks more, more choice in

01:01:10.550 - 01:01:24.390

filling out their liberal arts education. Mhm. That's interesting. And also, a continuing and very current issue that, that Rice is still thinking about. What does a general education look like?

01:01:24.630 - 01:01:45.930

How can we ensure that, that students receive education of the kind that Professor Parish was, was providing in a very elliptical way, but maybe needs to be provided in a more substantive and intentional way in 2021. Yeah.

01:01:45.930 - 01:02:03.480

These are things that we're still, still thinking about. I'm noticing too from the, from the chat, there's a message to us that raises another good question, which is as we look at these lists over time, we can see the things that persist across time in the list, but we should also pay attention to the things that,

01:02:04.500 - 01:02:21.240

that don't persist, or show up at certain moments and not at other moments. So I think that's a very important historical question to consider, too. This is, you know, where are you getting your folders? That's what I want to know, because it sounds like we can, you've got a source to

01:02:21.240 - 01:02:40.410

get us some some really great documents for future doc talks. I think maybe, I mean, who knows? Sometimes maybe people just pop into the doc talk and they say, I'm gonna give Dr. Byrd a little help. Maybe they, I get an email, says, meet me on the, on the 7100th

01:02:40.410 - 01:02:54.970

block of Main Street, and I have something for you. That's, yeah, there's a, that'd be great, the cloak and dagger counterpart to doc talks. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for sharing this, and thanks to all of our audience members for,

01:02:54.970 - 01:03:06.780

for being here. We hope to see you again next Friday. And in the meantime, have a wonderful weekend and fall recess. Always a pleasure, these Fridays. Same. See you next time.