00:00:01.070 - 00:00:08.690

Okay. Well, that's one thing we didn't mess up. It's recording. I press the button? Oh, it's recording.

00:00:08.690 - 00:00:26.420

Awesome. Okay. Here comes some folks. Let's give people a few minutes a few minutes to arrive here before we-

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Okay. Sounds good to me. I'm excited. It's approaching class size. (laughs)

00:00:48.550 - 00:00:56.800

Well, welcome everyone. Who's joining the webinar. My name is Kayla McDaniel. I'm a professor and a chair of the history department here

00:00:56.800 - 00:01:08.070

at Rice University and also the co-chair with my colleague, professor Alex Byrd who's here as well of the Task Force on Slavery Segregation and Racial Injustice.

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And we're really appreciative of you for being here and listening in. We've been looking forward to this especially on short notice for you to make the time

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to come to our first Doc Talk. We appreciate it. It won't be the last of these. We're we're envisioning a series

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of conversations like this on Fridays. And so keep a lookout on the webpage taskforce.Rice.edu and you can find out a little bit more about upcoming ones that we have there.

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I will say in advance that we will next week for our second Doc Talk, we're very excited to welcome some undergraduate researchers either present students at Rice

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or alumni who have worked on research related to the Task Force. The Task Force has work, and they're gonna be here to present documents that came up in their research.

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And so please put that on your calendar to come back next Friday at noon for our second Doc Talk and then we'll have others in the future.

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I also wanna point out that since we're in the webinar format, if you have a question later on we're gonna take some time to pause and answer questions at the end of our time,

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no later than about 12:40pm, 12:45pm and so it could be sooner depending on how long we talk. Professors tend to talk more than they plan to. So, but we will be taking questions.

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And so if you have any questions for us please put those in the Q&A. So you can click on the Q&A button at the bottom and we'll do our best to get

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to as many of those questions as we can. Dr. Byrd, how are you doing? I'm holding on. I'm a little afraid whenever I do new things,

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I'm a little scared. You know that's what learning's all about, right? And at least it's Friday. Are you glad it's Friday?

00:03:06.620 - 00:03:18.480

I am so glad it's Friday. And I'm looking forward to my Friday, Blaze Pizza. Something about short weeks, even if we didn't have Monday work for Labor Day

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but I know our kids are going back to school and it's been a really busy week. Short weeks always feel that much more packed but I'm glad that we've made it to Friday.

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And I'm really excited to be here talking with you in the first of these Doc Talks. I know you and I have talked a little bit about what we envision from these conversations

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but maybe we should just say a little bit about what we're doing here. The research that the Task Force on Slavery Segregation and Racial Injustice has been charged

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with doing is to investigate the ways that Rice university's history is entangled with and implicated in the history of Slavery Segregation and Racial Injustice.

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And that's a big charge and there's a lot to that. So we have a lot of research efforts that are underway and we envision at the end, just like when historians write a book,

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being able to synthesize all of that and present it to the whole community. But we didn't wanna wait until then to share with the community.

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Some of the things that are coming up in our research and maybe even giving people a window into the process that historians go through when we look at historical documents.

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And so I'm excited to get a chance to do this with you. And I think we just wanna make clear that these conversations aren't meant to be the final word on the documents that that we're discussing

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but what we wanna do is raise questions and see what things still need to be learned about the documents that we're examining and what things we think we know

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and need to know more about. So And a few of the things that I will say will just be wrong. Which is why you would have a conversation like this.

00:05:08.930 - 00:05:20.900

So if I'm working in the archives for a year, one of the things that I really look forward to my favorite archives is the National Archives at (indistinct)

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and my second favorite is the National Library of Wales. And I like noon because noon, you go down and you get lunch and you talk to other historians

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about what you've been finding. And that's a process of some air correction and also some direction and so we'll be doing some of that here I know.

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Absolutely, I think a lot of times when you first look at a document and we'll talk about this, you miss some things or you don't notice things that maybe later you would see

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because you've found some other documents that put that in context and so there's sort of an evolving learning process when it comes to doing archival research.

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And so that's what we're hoping to show a little bit. So let's get to it. I mean, what document did you bring that you wanted and talk about today?

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So I'm gonna focus on, I'm probably misusing this word just a little, but when it comes to the history of black students at Rice if there is a photograph is becoming iconic.

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I think it's Jacqueline McCauley's photograph outside of the Fondren Library in 1965. And I'm gonna show it on my screen here but I'm gonna drop into the chat,

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a link to a Rice Magazine article that contains the photograph that I'm going to be talking about. And the other thing I wanna drop into the chat is a link

00:07:00.700 - 00:07:14.730

to a Rice history corner blog that Melissa Keane did. I cheated, I just now started my timer. I've used about 30 seconds and it wasn't even timing. I want to also drop in there

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a blog chat from Centennial historian Melissa Keane that helps contextualize it. And so I'll share my screen now and try to chat for maybe about

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10 minutes or so and see what happens. Okay. That's Great. Sounds great. So I'm hoping now that you're seeing the slide in question.

00:07:40.830 - 00:07:49.230

You're the only person I can see. So if you can say it, I'm gonna assume everyone else can see it. So this is a photograph of Jacqueline McCauley

00:07:49.230 - 00:08:02.040

from the September 12th, 1965 issue of the Houston Chronicle Sunday Magazine. McCauley was one of the first two black undergraduate students admitted to the university.

00:08:02.040 - 00:08:14.940

And the picture in question as I've said, has been featured in a wonderful Rice Magazine story by David Medina and Fall of 2016, the Fall 2016 number of Rice Magazine.

00:08:14.940 - 00:08:31.220

And also in an insightful Rice history corner blog posts by the university, Centennial historian, Melissa Keane from September, I'm sorry, from June of 2014. And I'll just describe the document quickly.

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The photo in question is by a Chronicle writer and photographer, ADA Morehead Holland and it features McCauley outside of... I'm terrible at compass directions.

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But I think this is the East entrance to Fondren Library. It's either the North, the South, the West or the East entrance. Cardinal directions on the right thing.

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Let's still haven't figured out why West server is called West server even though I've- There's some kinda way it's West.

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I don't know, I'm hoping this is easy. It used to be the main entrance when we only had one entrance. Now we have two,

00:09:05.830 - 00:09:16.040

but she's outside the main entrance to Fondren Library. She's leaning in profile against one of the supporting arches of the covered walkway that runs outside of Fondren.

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She's in a light blue dress. She's steadying three books. I wish I knew what those books were. She's got a white parcel,

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a pair of glasses that she's also studying. The academic quad opens up behind her and so too does a vast limit and lists potential field sky. I think there may be one other person in the quad

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and there's also the back of the founder's Memorial, no other human figures that I can make out. And so that's my document.

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Hmm. So what was it that drew you to this or sort of excites you about it when you see it? Well, so a couple of things, right? I'm drawn,

00:10:03.660 - 00:10:15.850

I tried to describe it in a way that speaks to what I think is an argument and I don't know if it's McCauley's argument. I think it's definitely ADA Morehead's argument,

00:10:15.870 - 00:10:26.320

the writer and photographer 'cause she also writes a story on this but there's an argument about a kinda universal reality of McCauley's position at Rice.

00:10:26.320 - 00:10:44.360

This photograph, I believe makes that argument. It sets her at a kind of key point in her life and alludes to the place of the university and the opening up and the continuation of that life,

00:10:44.360 - 00:10:57.720

that straight line out through the academic quad, through the sally port and into Houston, I think means something here. The photographer takes a photograph

00:10:57.720 - 00:11:06.690

of her outside the sally port, looking in toward what's now the Physics Building. That photo didn't really have an argument. And I think it makes sense

00:11:06.690 - 00:11:22.700

that this is the one that Chronicle chooses to feature the written story around. It also highlights that university reality that Americanism, it pulls out some what can be interpreted

00:11:22.700 - 00:11:38.640

as anti-communist quotes from McCauley as an army brat, she's lived in Germany or her father was a Sergeant in the army and she brings up and a story about her and some classmates

00:11:38.640 - 00:11:56.450

taking off their heels and banging and upon the wall and the East German wall in Berlin and getting some pieces to take home with them. So I'm drawn to that part of the argument

00:11:57.600 - 00:12:08.520

because it speaks to what I think the liberal Houston audience of the time would want to consume in a way. And maybe it represents a lot about McCauley,

00:12:08.520 - 00:12:16.390

maybe it doesn't but that argument is important to I think recognize. It's interesting to me, I mean the way that she's standing you're right

00:12:16.390 - 00:12:28.100

that there's sort of a diagonal line composed by the sally port in the far distance and then the Founder's Memorial in the middle. And then there's a McCauley leaning

00:12:28.100 - 00:12:39.130

against the corner almost would you say kind of in a statuesque way. I mean, she's not looking at the camera. She's sort of looking off in the distance, so very-

00:12:39.300 - 00:12:43.890

Absolutely. So what did you... We talked about how sometimes when you first look at documents

00:12:43.890 - 00:12:54.930

you don't see everything that you later come to notice. So there's the way that the Chronicle reporter presents McCauley and in this photo, but what have you come to see the longer

00:12:54.930 - 00:13:05.140

that you've spent with it? Well, all it takes is a kind of opening up of the magazine article. So this is one of nine photographs

00:13:06.090 - 00:13:19.430

and two of them are in the Rice's campus and McCauley is the only person featured. But the majority of the documents are not a McCauley at Rice.

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They beg questions about a different world in some sense that a black world I think out of that, that helps produce McCauley and sensor to rise.

00:13:37.170 - 00:13:53.090

I love this picture of McCauley dancing with David Murdock Jr. Who is a student at Prairie View A&M University, right? Which is a historically black college.

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If we're in the 1950s, we would say historically black for like a reason, right? Preview, you don't have a choice about being historically black.

00:14:05.580 - 00:14:21.020

And so what becomes immediately evident once you look at all the photographs, is just how the Rice photograph how isolating it is in a way that it doesn't feature.

00:14:21.020 - 00:14:38.820

So how does McCauley's a member of John's College but there's no social life here in the David Medina article, McCauley mentions, "I'm going to a mixer at one of the men's colleges."

00:14:38.820 - 00:14:48.100

During her time. And she recalls for him the fact that the president of that college, which remains that name and the vice president of that college

00:14:48.100 - 00:14:59.330

asked her for a dance and it's implied that she dances. But what this raises the question for me, right? Is with the Chronicle had dared present, right?

00:14:59.330 - 00:15:13.500

In any type of picture that suggested that type of interaction? And is it actually important to put this picture of McCauley with a black man dancing, right?

00:15:15.420 - 00:15:24.940

Yes, she's come to Rice, but don't worry y'all. Don't worry. That's right. Yeah. Some of our boundaries are still secure.

00:15:24.940 - 00:15:40.040

So I like this this black living room, the fact that Mr. McCauley is reading Sepia Magazine, a black periodical. I've got a minute and 30 seconds.

00:15:40.040 - 00:15:52.440

So I'm gonna say three things that I'm gonna get out of here. McCauley lives on Boyce wood, and these articles come from a time where

00:15:52.440 - 00:16:01.910

if you got in the paper, your address also got in a paper. How terrifying is that? Wow. So we have her on Boyce wood, which raises the question

00:16:01.910 - 00:16:12.800

to me historically, where have Rice's black Houston students from where they hailed? Where did they come from? Boys went to I'm sorry McCauley went to

00:16:12.800 - 00:16:26.960

Cashmere Senior High School- And she was a National Merit scholar, I mean- Was a National Merit scholar. The article highlights the first African-American woman

00:16:26.960 - 00:16:38.750

Merit scholar in Texas. Yeah. It's interesting to think about sort of these photos and what I'm noticing too that the photos of her social world and her family life

00:16:40.000 - 00:16:55.110

are not in color the way that the one on the Rice Campuses. So it's kind of interesting to think about how these photos were presented in juxtaposed with the one that it's taken on the campus.

00:16:55.110 - 00:17:05.880

Do you have a sense of, you've talked about how the photographer, the argument that photographer was making. And I know that David Medina talked a little bit

00:17:05.880 - 00:17:18.620

about her own thinking about coming to Rice and that she came partly because she knew that there were alumni at Rice who were opposed to her coming to Rice.

00:17:18.620 - 00:17:32.840

And so there's an aspect of her coming that really shows the determination to confront that. And it does pose a lot of questions I think for our research to think

00:17:32.840 - 00:17:44.850

about her experience and how she was presented and represented in the press. Well, and that question about how she came to Rice, right? is also answered.

00:17:44.850 - 00:17:56.030

And these two answers aren't contradictory, right? When she's is reflecting for David Medina, she gives the answer that you just gave when she's interviewed for the-

00:17:57.050 - 00:18:04.230

Chronicle. Chronicle. She gives a slightly different answer that fits probably a little better into this argument of the Chronicle.

00:18:04.230 - 00:18:13.560

I always wanted to go to Rice. Right. I drove past Rice when I was 10 years old and I asked my family, "What was that?"

00:18:13.560 - 00:18:23.190

They said that was Rice University and I always wanted to go there. Yeah, yeah. I have to say, when I look at that photo,

00:18:23.190 - 00:18:35.040

this weekend one of my graduate seminars, we were reading a book by our late colleague, Stephanie Camp, Closer to Freedom that talks all about space and place.

00:18:35.040 - 00:18:47.010

And the ways that space is open to some and not others and how people make their own space and create their own place. So seeing that picture of her, not really in the quad

00:18:47.010 - 00:18:58.590

but on the quad ad looking out over the sally port and the Founder's Memorial. The Chronicle doesn't take a photo of her in the quad or next to the Founder's Memorial.

00:18:58.590 - 00:19:14.980

It raises questions about the quad and about what places she made her own places on campus where she felt most comfortable and maybe where she did not. Those are all research questions that we could ask

00:19:14.980 - 00:19:27.810

of this source and gain some more insights on. I won't take 30 seconds to say this. I think there are also some structural questions about the relationship of the university to the city, right?

00:19:27.810 - 00:19:40.350

So Jan West is raised in the chat that she thinks it's that she got founded interesting that McCauley Hills from Cashmere, not (indistinct) And I find that interesting too.

00:19:40.350 - 00:19:50.280

And I think one of the larger, again, research questions about the university when replacing black students in it is where do our students do our students come from?

00:19:50.280 - 00:20:03.040

In particularly, what high schools do they come from? And does where the university draws its students especially when they're most during the time when they're mostly from Texas,

00:20:03.040 - 00:20:17.730

what is that akin to, right? So if I'm a school that can be more or less know that six or seven students from my high school are gonna be at Rice every year in the 1970s or 1980s,

00:20:17.730 - 00:20:28.490

what does that mean for my school? And what does that mean for the relationship between the university and the school? Is the constant drawing of students from a school akin

00:20:28.490 - 00:20:43.140

to a kind of investment and a development that matters? Absolutely. And I think we shouldn't leave this document either without noting that Ms. McCauley passed away this year in her home in Australia.

00:20:43.140 - 00:20:58.510

And I think we at Rice owe her a great deal of thanks and respect and looking forward to learning more about her life and her experience here. Did you hear what I was trying to do

00:20:58.510 - 00:21:05.110

with that word investment? Hmm. Yeah. It didn't work. I didn't do it very well.

00:21:05.110 - 00:21:16.120

(laughs) I heard you. What are you sharing with us today? Well, I have to say, I'm not sure

00:21:16.120 - 00:21:27.730

that the document that I brought... Well, I'm interested in it as a 19th century historian but get excited 'cause it's a mortgage. Oh, no. This is good stuff.

00:21:27.730 - 00:21:39.180

This is gonna be good stuff. it's a lot of legal documents from the research of the Task Force that can be kind of hard to decipher and understand, especially when they come

00:21:39.180 - 00:21:48.900

from sort of the other chronological end of our scope. We're charged with thinking about Segregation and Racial Injustice in the 20th century

00:21:48.900 - 00:22:01.650

but also thinking about the entanglements of our founder in the history of slavery. And that takes us a long time back to the 1840s. And that's around the time

00:22:01.650 - 00:22:14.940

that that way Marsh Rice arrived in Texas. And so what I have is a deed record that shows a business relationship that William Marsh Rice entered into in the 1840s.

00:22:14.940 - 00:22:35.600

And so let me see if I can pull it up here and show it to you. So you can see that this was a handwritten document and it comes from a very large volume

00:22:35.600 - 00:22:48.220

of similar deeds in the Brazoria County EAD records. And so what I find really interesting about this particular deed is that it gives us an insight into the kinds

00:22:48.220 - 00:22:59.320

of business that Rice was involved in and the way that enslaved people were commodified and exploited as part of that business. So I wanted to talk about

00:22:59.320 - 00:23:12.030

this deed record from Missouri County in 1849. People need to blow this up big, right? This is where you go full screen on your view. Yeah, A lot of people

00:23:12.030 - 00:23:18.940

when they see this for the first time say, "Well, it's difficult to read the handwriting." This is actually really good handwriting for the 19th century.

00:23:18.940 - 00:23:33.160

And it was a profession to be a clerk to write these kinds of documents before there was Microsoft word or legal documents could be filed in TypeScript. It was really important to have clerks

00:23:33.160 - 00:23:45.360

who could very clearly write because if you couldn't make out how much a person like Rice was owed or owed someone else, then fortunes could rise or fall on good or bad handwriting.

00:23:45.360 - 00:23:57.150

And so this is actually pretty good handwriting, but it is a little difficult to decipher. And even if you can make out what the words say, it does describe a sort of unfamiliar world to us.

00:23:57.150 - 00:24:12.990

One where there was a lot of land that was being exchanged and it really takes us back to a period when in Brazoria County, the main agricultural product

00:24:12.990 - 00:24:29.240

in Texas at the time was cotton and the cultivation of cotton, but also increasingly sugar. And that's what first interested me and drew me to this particular document was it was mentioned

00:24:29.240 - 00:24:43.590

in a biography that was written by Andrew Forrest Muir or at least based on notes by Andrew Forrest Muir. He was a historian here at Rice back in the 1960s and he mentioned almost sort of in a throwaway line

00:24:43.590 - 00:25:02.150

in a chapter of that book that William Marsh Rice in the 1840s loaned money to a man named James Love to build a sugar house on a plantation in Brazoria County. And as a historian, I know that sugar cultivation

00:25:02.150 - 00:25:16.370

in the 19th century would have been one of the most backbreaking kinds of plantations for enslaved people who did the work of cultivating the sugar cane and harvesting the sugar cane-

00:25:16.370 - 00:25:28.420

Only for sugar? Very dangerous work to produce molasses and sugar from the cane. And it was a very capital intensive kind

00:25:28.420 - 00:25:41.590

of plantation as well, because you had to have all kinds of large kettles to boil in to get the cane juice out of the cane. You had to have a large mill that was usually operated

00:25:41.590 - 00:25:51.370

by a horse, but over time it became operated by steam engines to crush the cane and produce the sugar. So if somebody wanted to start a sugar plantation

00:25:51.370 - 00:26:00.400

in Brazoria County in 1840s, they needed a lot of capital upfront even to get started. And that's where William- Highly skilled workforce.

00:26:01.330 - 00:26:13.790

Absolutely. Absolutely. And so that's why Rice came in because he was a, if we think a little bit about his business, he was a merchant and he entered into partnerships

00:26:13.790 - 00:26:32.070

with other merchants to provide plantation supplies to cotton and sugar planters around Houston. And he also, because he had capital, he could loan money to people like James Love, who is the man mentioned

00:26:32.070 - 00:26:44.240

in this particular deed to do things like build a sugar house on a plantation. And so that's what Muir mentioned in his book was that Rice had had loaned this money.

00:26:44.240 - 00:26:57.800

What he didn't mention in the book was that the enslaved people on the plantation were actually put up by James Love as collateral to secure this loan.

00:26:57.800 - 00:27:11.590

I mean, somebody who loans this much money, we're talking about 1000s of dollars in the 1840s which would have been an order of magnitude more if we're thinking about our own currency

00:27:11.590 - 00:27:22.350

and anybody who loans that much money wants some collateral to secure the loan. And so in oftentimes in these mortgage records like the one we're looking at here, it goes into detail

00:27:22.350 - 00:27:38.430

about how, if the debtor does not pay back this loan in this particular way and by this particular time, then the creditor can obtain execution on the property that has been securing that loan but-

00:27:38.430 - 00:27:48.550

The collateral makes all of this possible. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yep. And so I was kind of struck that there was no mention of that in Muir's biography

00:27:48.550 - 00:28:04.110

but I was teaching a class maybe eight or nine years ago and took some students here at Rice down to the Watson Research Center. And they found a note in the research notes

00:28:05.180 - 00:28:20.900

that Andrew Forrest Muir kept and are still stored in the Watson Research Center today. And the notes that they found showed that Muir had noticed that enslaved people were used as collateral in this line.

00:28:20.900 - 00:28:37.790

You can see the note here. He said that among the property that was used to secure the loan was 720 acres Richardson head place. And then I'm quoting him here, "Slaves as of the 9th

00:28:37.790 - 00:28:56.490

of April 1846 being 18 grown ones, 44 women and children, horses, cattle, mules, hogs, other animals, wagons, plows. And he goes on and I knew that having looked at these kinds of documents in the past that he

00:28:56.490 - 00:29:05.880

must've been abstracting here from the original document. And so I was very interested to look at the original document. That's the handwritten one.

00:29:06.770 - 00:29:17.950

And when we obtained that one from Brazoria counties, historical records, I- I think it's about to happen, isn't it Dr. McDaniel? Oh, my goodness-

00:29:17.950 - 00:29:36.120

This is where the people need to get ready. So if we scroll down to page one 17, we can find a list of the names of all of the enslaved people who were on this plantation, April 9th, 1846.

00:29:36.120 - 00:29:46.710

I don't know if you're able to make out some of those names, professor Byrd but I know if you wouldn't mind maybe reading some of them because I think the names are really significant

00:29:46.710 - 00:29:57.090

for us to talk about. Yeah. "Said slaves since the said ninth day of April, 1846 Tuwit, Harry,"

00:29:57.090 - 00:30:09.200

Is that Harry? Hmm. "Ben Cola, Bob, Ado, Ellick, George, Tatie." Does that look like Tatie?

00:30:10.420 - 00:30:17.070

So even with good handwriting sometimes it's hard to make out some of the- What do you think that is? Yeah, it looks a little bit to me

00:30:17.070 - 00:30:25.770

like there's a letter before the Tatie. So hot Haitie? Oh my God. Haitie. That's yeah.

00:30:25.770 - 00:30:42.410

That could be at an H. Yeah. "Tony, Cudjoe." Interesting. "Koka, Dick, Tom, Adela. Yua, Daniel, Louis, Jim and Charles.

00:30:43.000 - 00:30:56.140

All of whom are grown together with all the women's slaves on said place and their children to wit." Oh, this is- Our list of yeah.

00:30:56.140 - 00:31:06.660

Yeah. I got too excited as an African American historian of Afro-American now we're doing some generational work, right? We've seen the names of the former generation

00:31:06.660 - 00:31:17.320

and then we've seen the name of the next generation. And there's a lot of work we can do generationally with those names. I'm scared to read them because-

00:31:17.320 - 00:31:31.360

Well and to put together families and to see that their children listed for some of these women. One of the first names there is Eliza and Anthony her children (murmurs), I think it says and her children.

00:31:31.360 - 00:31:45.740

But I have to ask, I noticed Dr. Byrd, when you read Cudjoe's name, you said interesting. Can you say a little bit more about that? Yeah, so some of these names more than others

00:31:46.540 - 00:32:04.260

speak to an African connection and Cudjoe is one of those names for me. I don't know if the other names that I would look into for that or maybe Adela, Yua,

00:32:06.820 - 00:32:22.080

what also gets fascinating is where you see those names in the next generation of presumably Creole but not necessarily Creole. And if and when those African names persist,

00:32:23.480 - 00:32:37.100

that's also fascinating. So to see Egu in the next generation is interesting. And I said, Oscar but I should've said, Oscott.

00:32:37.100 - 00:32:47.220

Huh. Could be, could be. Yeah, there's also interesting some place names here. Sabin is one that's mentioned there.

00:32:47.220 - 00:32:58.640

And these were some of the names that I missed, the first time that we looked at the note and didn't have the original record but once we had the original record,

00:32:58.640 - 00:33:14.830

it opens up all these questions about connections to slavery in Texas, in this particular period, because it turns out that in the years before William Marsh Rice came to Texas even though the transatlantic slave trade

00:33:14.830 - 00:33:27.450

by that time had long been abolished, historians know that there were numerous slave traders who were smuggling enslaved people into the Republic of Texas first

00:33:27.450 - 00:33:40.680

and then to some extent, even after annexation but especially during the Republic of Texas period there were con men and pirates and speculators who took advantage of

00:33:40.680 - 00:33:55.040

the limited control that the Republic of Texas had over its own borders. One of them was a man named Monroe Edwards who we know in the 1830s, brought at least about 200 people

00:33:56.100 - 00:34:10.650

from Cuba into Texas and sold them as slaves, even though they were probably people who had been emancipated by the British Navy after being captured on board and illegal slave trading vessel in Cuba.

00:34:10.650 - 00:34:25.860

So think about people who had been brought from Africa across the middle passage boarded by a British Naval vessel then emancipated into kind of a quasi slavery

00:34:25.860 - 00:34:40.170

a term limited apprenticeship in Cuba for a few years after which time they were supposed to be completely free. But when people like Monroe Edwards came along, they saw a business opportunity and realized

00:34:40.170 - 00:34:50.640

if they could smuggle those people into Texas they could sell them for a much higher price than what they had paid in Cuba. And we know that's what Monroe Edwards did

00:34:50.640 - 00:35:04.150

and there's some great work being done by a historian named Sean Kelly, about the extent of these kinds of smuggling operations and estimates maybe as many as 600 to a 1000 African born people

00:35:04.150 - 00:35:15.880

arrived in places like Brazoria County in Texas in the 1830s. And so by the time William Marsh writes, gets to Houston. What that means is that there were some surviving

00:35:15.880 - 00:35:30.000

communities of people who had been born in Africa, had been violently separated from their Homeland and ended up near Galveston along Oyster Creek. And I think one question for me, as I read this deed

00:35:30.000 - 00:35:44.120

is are some of those people who are named in that deed, part of that group of people that smugglers like Monroe Edwards brought into Texas? Fascinating.

00:35:45.540 - 00:35:58.720

And what happened to them after this? That's another big question because anytime that people were put up as collateral for a loan, that meant that if the debtor defaulted

00:35:59.100 - 00:36:12.330

and couldn't pay back their loan, then they might be sold. In this particular deed as we said, William Marsh Rice and his partner, his business partner, Charles W. Adams put up all

00:36:12.330 - 00:36:20.420

of this capital for sugar plantation. We also know that in the 1850s, James Love failed to pay his debt. Okay.

00:36:20.420 - 00:36:32.260

And so there was a court case and sort of whole tangle of lawsuits that we still need to try to untangle and figure out that show that Rice was trying to get paid.

00:36:33.310 - 00:36:42.970

Whether the enslaved people in this particular deed ended up becoming part of the settlement of that debt is one of the questions that I think we still don't have the answer to,

00:36:42.970 - 00:36:56.550

but we know that there's other court cases where Rice did pursue payment from debtors and accepted payment in the form of enslaved people. So that's a question that still

00:36:56.550 - 00:37:11.770

needs to be answered about this particular deed. For this is exciting work. I would jump up and down if we weren't in a podcast, right?

00:37:13.970 - 00:37:27.610

So one of the things I think this does for, especially students of American history who are used to a kinda careless use of words, like opportunity and promise, right?

00:37:27.610 - 00:37:40.600

What does it mean to come to Texas for opportunity for white merchants? Right? In the 19th century, right?

00:37:40.600 - 00:37:52.830

When we get down into work like this, that you're stressing for us it helps us really unpack what that word can mean. That's a good point.

00:37:52.830 - 00:38:03.980

I mean, often we talk about William Marsh Rice who was born in Massachusetts, started business there, and then after the panic of 1837, he decided to move to Texas.

00:38:03.980 - 00:38:18.180

And that was kind of a meme in the 19th century to say people had gone to Texas GGT. And a lot of times it was people who were fleeing creditors and other States because of this economic crisis in 1837,

00:38:18.180 - 00:38:31.220

other times it was people who saw a dollar to be made. People like Monroe Edwards by going to Texas. And so when we say that William Marsh Rice saw that there was economic opportunity in Texas,

00:38:32.410 - 00:38:44.040

what did that opportunity mean? And where did he find opportunities to make money? And a lot of times it involved the cultivation of products like sugar and cotton

00:38:44.040 - 00:38:52.120

in which enslaved people were entangled. Yeah. I don't know if we have any questions from our attendees.

00:38:52.120 - 00:39:04.110

We do have a Q&A button if anyone would like to pose some questions to us about either of these documents or if you'd like to use the chat and send a message to us as the panelists,

00:39:04.110 - 00:39:16.920

we'd be happy to entertain your questions. We might not necessarily have the answer to all of them because we're still making sense of some of these sources but we would be happy to hear from you

00:39:16.920 - 00:39:27.240

if you have any questions for us. I feel like we've made a terrible technical error here as you open this up, right? And if we were more experienced with this,

00:39:27.240 - 00:39:35.960

we would have closed this chat down because here's what's gonna happen, we're gonna get and it's not gonna be... We're gonna get a great question in the chat there.

00:39:35.960 - 00:39:45.280

We're not gonna know the answer to and we won't be able to ignore it and save face because it's in the chat. Whereas if it was in the Q&A,

00:39:45.280 - 00:39:56.100

we could act like we never got it. (laughs) Well, we do have a question in the Q&A "Were there merchants who declined to accept enslaved people

00:39:56.100 - 00:40:06.490

as collateral for loans?" It's an interesting question. I mean, certainly there are examples of loans that did not involve enslaved people as collateral.

00:40:07.810 - 00:40:20.620

I don't know of any merchants in the Houston area who were sort of out of principle refusing to accept enslaved people as collateral if that's what the question is kind of getting at.

00:40:21.610 - 00:40:36.300

Now, I'm just start madly speculating, right? I wouldn't be crazy to say there were such people who existed, right? We do know that this doesn't mean that all Quakers do it.

00:40:36.300 - 00:40:52.130

Right? But there are folks who are involved in trade in the history of what becomes the United States in the United States has few who do take positions of principle around slavery and the slave trade

00:40:52.130 - 00:41:00.390

and who work to disentangle themselves from it as much as practicable. That's absolutely true. That's why I said, I don't know

00:41:00.390 - 00:41:13.090

of any merchants in Houston find to do that but that's a good point. I mean, when way Marsh Rice was in Massachusetts in the 1830s,

00:41:14.080 - 00:41:23.570

I know from my earlier research that the abolitionist movement was thriving in Massachusetts in the 1830s. It's not as though there weren't people

00:41:26.560 - 00:41:35.780

who were challenging slavery. And so William Marsh Rice would have been aware of that in coming to Texas. And in fact, here's some indication

00:41:35.780 - 00:41:49.440

that some of his family members who remained behind in Massachusetts challenged him on that or were critical of that, but it does indicate you're right Dr. Byrd that even in the 19th century

00:41:49.440 - 00:42:03.090

people had choices to make and they could decide where they wanted to seek business opportunities and where they did not want to. So another question that's come to us is,

00:42:03.090 - 00:42:13.820

"From the deed record on page 117 that we were looking at, there was a mention of the Mexican land grant, where they respecting those Mexican land grants after Texas independence?"

00:42:13.820 - 00:42:32.130

So that gets into the tangled history of Texas independence and Mexico's decision to outlaw slavery but also to give an exception to American settlers in the sort of so-called old 300

00:42:33.220 - 00:42:47.530

who came in to Texas with Stephen F. Austin to settle there. And so a lot of those land grants I'd have to look at it a little bit more closely to see in this particular deed, what that's referring to

00:42:47.530 - 00:42:56.980

but many pieces of real estate were still referred to by their original grant names. And that's true even today, I think in a lot of legal documents,

00:42:57.920 - 00:43:13.120

it would mention what league or what grant that small piece of land came from. But this was a huge piece of land this particular plantation that I think I'd have to go back

00:43:13.120 - 00:43:28.740

and look but it was I think, 100 of acres on Oyster Creek. And so that may be why it mentioned that particular league. Let's see, do we have some questions here in the chat?

00:43:28.740 - 00:43:42.090

We got a question from Jan West concerning free black people in Houston, "And where there any free black people in Houston who could work?

00:43:42.090 - 00:43:53.100

I saw some census numbers of the period of enslavement that showed a few African-Americans but also huge numbers of enslaved people."

00:43:54.570 - 00:44:10.180

Well, that answers the question of a few of many people but in counties like Fort Bend County or Brazoria County, these were counties in which the majority of the population were enslaved.

00:44:10.180 - 00:44:23.760

And in the antebellum period in Houston in urban areas, you might find a few free people of color working in those kinds of urban centers in the South, but their freedom was increasingly precarious

00:44:23.760 - 00:44:37.140

over the course of the antebellum period. And many Southern States actually passed laws either forbidding the slave owners from manual bidding or emancipating and slave people are requiring

00:44:37.140 - 00:44:48.930

that free people actually leave the state and not remain in the state. And so it's a good question that I think warrants further research to see how that affected Houston

00:44:48.930 - 00:44:59.530

and maybe some of the people who might have come into contact either with William Marsh Rice or with other figures that were connected to the early Rice Institute in some way.

00:45:01.120 - 00:45:12.670

This has been a good Doc Talk doc and I'm- Well, next week is gonna be better because it's students. I'm really looking forward to next week.

00:45:12.670 - 00:45:23.120

We're gonna have some great researchers who are gonna be sharing some of their documents but I think will bear on some of these questions as well. And so if you're interested in learning more

00:45:23.120 - 00:45:34.560

about these documents, please come back next week and put us on your calendar for Fridays at this time. We do have some plans to record and release these conversations as well

00:45:34.560 - 00:45:46.320

so if you'd like to keep an eye on taskforce.rice@edu, you can find out more information about that. But in the meantime, we want to wish everyone a great weekend.

00:45:46.320 - 00:45:55.610

And thank you or do we have some more questions? I think we've got to take the next three minutes and answer these two questions. One just came in and I missed that.

00:45:55.610 - 00:46:07.190

Yeah. No, it was my job. Whoever's talking, it's the listening person job to do this. "So concrete number on the number of slaves, William Marsh Rice owned?"

00:46:07.190 - 00:46:16.810

I can take this 'cause I've heard you- Sure go ahead. This is the struggle that we're in, right? Is we have snapshots in time.

00:46:18.750 - 00:46:31.430

One of the most fascinating parts of this mortgage document is to tell us that that's an okay question to ask how many slaves William Marsh Rice owned

00:46:31.430 - 00:46:43.370

but it's also too small of a question, right? It doesn't actually if following the charge of the Task Force, it doesn't get to what are charges.

00:46:43.370 - 00:46:57.780

And that is the way the founder is implicated. And so- Yeah. In other words, even enslaved people that he did not own were still doing work

00:46:57.780 - 00:47:08.080

of a certain time for him and making possible certain business partnerships and helping him build his fortune. So I think that's key.

00:47:08.080 - 00:47:23.090

And there's also evidence in Texas of enslaved people who were hired out, which meant that somebody who wanted to employ this person, they would pay the owner. They would pay the enslavers in essence

00:47:23.090 - 00:47:32.760

renting the labor of enslaved people. And so that's another question we could ask, how many people's labor William Marsh Rice have benefited from in that way?

00:47:34.220 - 00:47:47.030

And what kinds of work were they doing for him? That's another good question that just knowing the number doesn't necessarily tell us. so I think that's a great question that's been raised

00:47:47.030 - 00:48:01.720

and it's exactly what we're working hard to do. With the awareness to that it changed over time. You can look at the census records from 1860 and you can see how many people were listed

00:48:01.720 - 00:48:14.640

under Rice's name at that particular moment. But it doesn't tell you if there were people after 1860, that he enslaved. In fact, we have evidence that there were more people

00:48:14.640 - 00:48:29.410

even after 1860 or people that he had enslaved before 1860 and then sold or people who had run away. I think a lot of these complicated financial transactions like the one we were talking about means that

00:48:29.410 - 00:48:44.880

many people may have come into Rice's possession legally speaking only to then be sold or, turned around into another transaction. And we don't know yet what the full extent of that is.

00:48:44.880 - 00:48:54.590

That's difficult to piece together, but it's what we're working on. The other question- The last question is from Terrence G

00:48:54.590 - 00:49:10.530

about McCauley's tenure at the university and whether her decision in trying to get a deeper understanding of what it felt like for her to be at Rice.

00:49:10.530 - 00:49:26.360

And whether her decision to leave before graduation may have been affected by how it felt to be in this place. In the David Medina article,

00:49:26.360 - 00:49:42.470

McCauley mentions that she felt comfortable here or I should say that she never felt any animosity directed at her. And so

00:49:42.470 - 00:49:50.220

I think that's where we have to begin. And as a historian, right? One of the questions you would ask is what is their position?

00:49:50.220 - 00:50:10.030

Right? So we want to honor that answer but we also want to interrogate it because at the... So she says that she makes a personal decision. She marries, she gets involved in her spouse's work,

00:50:10.030 - 00:50:25.500

he's a Vista volunteer and so she decides to leave the university. At the same time, she mentions her grades falling and we want to contextualize that.

00:50:25.500 - 00:50:35.680

We also maybe wanna contextualize with the fact that, what does it mean to be the first to... What's the significance of the fact that the first two African American students

00:50:35.680 - 00:50:52.080

at the university do leave before they graduate? And we also wanna contextualize with the experience of other early other pioneers. And so McCauley mentions no animosity toward her.

00:50:52.080 - 00:51:08.070

That's not when the Faye William's experience at the university and so part of the work will be to trying the more stories we capture we can see where they intersect.

00:51:08.070 - 00:51:21.220

It's interesting how you pointed out what she said in the Chronicle article was different in some ways from what she said in the Medina article. And so one thing the story is trying to do is

00:51:21.220 - 00:51:33.640

take as many sources into account as possible and think about the audience for that particular article, think about the context in which that quotation was given and build a more complex picture

00:51:33.640 - 00:51:46.680

by reading sources alongside, rather than concluding from one quote that, if she said this in this context at this time that it must have been what she was feeling

00:51:48.630 - 00:52:02.270

or wanting to express at another time. And I think one of the exciting things to that that we need to do is try to interview people and talk to people while we can

00:52:02.270 - 00:52:19.220

to get their experiences because whose experiences we have archived as a university and taken great lengths to record and preserve that changes over time as well.

00:52:19.220 - 00:52:30.300

And one thing we want to do is make sure we have a record for the university that can continue, we can all continue to learn from far into the future. Yeah.

00:52:31.470 - 00:52:41.730

So thank you, Dr. Byrd and sorry for almost cutting us off short there, but thank you- We did perfect I think. We're almost to the one o'clock hour

00:52:41.730 - 00:52:53.150

so thank you to everyone who came to this first Doc Talk. And again, we wanna invite you back to our next one next Friday, let your friends and your colleagues know

00:52:53.150 - 00:53:03.690

that we're doing this and keep an eye out on the Task Force web page for information about how to find future Doc Talks and recordings. Thank you again.

00:53:03.690 - 00:53:07.760

I hope everyone has a great weekend and we'll see you next time.